Muhlenberg County Kentucky
News: L
Amy Longest
Kentucky Woman Kept on Move by Pioneering Spirit
Now It's School in Alaska for Her After Stay in Philippies.
The pioneering spirit never allows Miss Amy Longest to stay long in one place.
The last move was to Kanakanak, Alaska, for which she sailed on the Aleution, last boat of the season, on September 1. After accepting a position as teacher in a Government school there she said, “Both my maternal and paternal ancestors were pioneers and you know ‘the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.’ I am of the third generation.”
A native of Drakesboro, Ky., Miss Longest was formerly superintenent of schools in Muhlenberg County and a teacher for four years in an Indian reservation school. Unusual experiences followed during the next two years in which she taught high-school English in the Philippine Islands. One of these was six weeks spent as the only white woman on the Island of Samar.
When Miss Longest first left her work in Drakesboro, she entered the civil service department of the United States Goverment and served as a departmental clerk in Washington. This was at the close of the World War.
The first year in the Philippines, she and two other Americans, Mr. and Mrs. Brighton B. Barron, authors of several Filipino textbooks, were the only white persons in the entire Province of Abra in Northern Luzon. The three of them, accompanied by a cook and raftsmen, went in a bamboo balza up the Abra River as far as Manaboa into the heart of the Tinguan country. There they had an opportunity seldom enjoyed by civilized people. Natives were giving a big tribal dance, an unusual celebration to be witnessed by “whites.”
It was during her second year of teaching in the Philippines that Miss Longest had the lonely experience of living six weeks seeing no women whose interests were similar to her own and with whom she could feel a degree of companionship. At the end of this time she was joined by Miss Freda M. Dixon of Bloomington, Iowa, and the two remained until the end of the term, the only white women on the island.
Last year Miss Longest was in Europe and attended the World Federation of Education at Toronto, Canada. She also visited her sister, Mrs. A. J. Mercer of Central City, Ky., and sailed for Alaska on the Aleutian.
Before leaving Miss Longest said “for real pastoral beauty in landscape I have seen nothing more beautiful than the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, unless, perhaps, the countryside of England which is like it.
“Those of pioneer blood really find joy in overcoming difficulties and in adapting themselves to new and strange conditions as found in new, undeveloped countries.”
- Source: Courier Journal [Louisville, KY], 30 Sept 1928.
Updated April 5, 2024.