PIKEVILLE’S MARY ELLIOTT FLANERY
In 1924 the Kentucky’s State Historical Society in Frankfort honored Mary Elliott Flanery as “Kentucky’s Most Prominent Female Citizen” in the state’s history to that point in time. As will be seen, she was a forceful and accomplished woman of eventual national import and notoriety as a champion of women’s rights and societal issues in her time. The fact that she lived in Pikeville, Kentucky from 1896 through 1912, started and raised a family in Pikeville, was an influential citizen and member of the Pikeville Methodist Episcopal Church (South), was the wife of a two-term Pike County Judge (Pike County’s First Lady), and began a career in journalism with the Ashland Daily Independent during her time in Pikeville has been essentially lost to time and forgotten!
An authentic woman of substance, Mary Elliott Flanery, while living in Pikeville, used her influence and insightful wisdom to ensure, among other accomplishments, that the works of Effie Waller Smith, Kentucky’s first female African-American poet, were published, securing Smith’s gift with words and her rightful place among Kentucky writers.
This was no small matter. Born in 1879 on Chloe Creek, Smith’s poems were enjoyed primarily by her family and friends until Flanery decided to be Smith’s patron.
Against all odds and impediments, Effie Waller Smith authored two volumes of poems, Songs of the Months in 1904 and Rhymes from the Cumberlands in 1909. She possessed talent inspired by her highly educated (for the times) brother and sister, who did all they could to prepare her for life as a person of color in the Pike County at the turn of the 20th Century. Her early efforts did not go unnoticed and her poems were published in the local newspapers, Pikeville and Williamson, and she had some other success in other minor forums of the time as well. It is sad she did not “catch on” at the time as her writings are read, appreciated, and taught in college and university settings across the country today, inducted into the prestigious Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2015.
There were people in Pikeville who tried to help, friends and associates of Miss Effie knew and who knew her and appreciated her writings, Flanery the foremost among them.
In 1904 Mary Elliott Flanery took on the weighty task of composing the introduction to Effie Waller’s first volume of poems, Songs of the Months. She was well aware of the challenges involved and the chances of success. But writing the introduction to her youthful friend’s first volume of poetry was something she had to do. She had given the task much thought, and there was in her mind an imperative involved upon which she had to act. Everything she believed in, the pressing issues concerning women of her day, suffrage, the rights of women in American society, told her she had to do it. It was that important.
When she took up a cause, Flanery was a dedicated leader and a diligent organizer and would fight for results, as will be seen by her future actions. Flanery recognized Miss Effie had talent and tremendous potential to achieve even in the face of adversity.
That Flanery would further assume the responsibilities of patron, and the cost in dollars involved to help her young friend is interesting, to say the least. She had to be somewhat daunted at the undertaking, but obviously considered the attempt worthwhile. She must have held her young friend in the highest respect and esteem, even admiration, for what she had done and what she might yet do. Her young friend could write and write well, and had flourished and produced high quality poems early in life from an extremely unlikely setting. Helping finance Miss Effie’s volume indicated Flanery’s total commitment. It must be added that Flanery was quite wealthy. Printing Effie’s book of poems was something she could well afford to do.
It is obvious that Mary Elliott Flanery and Effie Waller knew each other well, had a friendly relationship and were close. They likely enjoyed many a cup of tea on Flanery’s front porch at her newly built upscale home on Second Street in Pikeville. Serving in the manner of a patron in support of her young artist friend, Flanery almost certainly paid for or helped pay for Effie’s book, quite an expensive undertaking. It is doubtful from the facts at hand Effie Waller could have done this on her own. Further evidence in the introduction written by Flanery points to the fact that she knew and had a relationship with the book’s printer/publisher. She had conversations with that publisher, S. G. Clow, and elicited comments of a positive nature by him that were used in the book’s introduction. She termed Clow “a competent New York critic.” The fact is Clow owned and managed Broadway Publishing in New York City, which arranged and printed Effie’s book.
Mary Elliott Flanery in 1904 lived in Pikeville with her husband and family. W. H. Flanery had taken a business position in Pikeville and the family located there in 1896. She was born April 27, 1867, in a part of Carter County that would become Elliott County, the county name after her uncle, John Milton Elliott.
Before the Civil War, John Milton Elliott was a Representative to the Congress of the United States of America (1853 through 1859). His district included Prestonsburg, where he was born. In 1861 he was serving in the Kentucky legislature but was expelled from the State House, accused of “aiding and supporting the rebels, if not being one.” In those tumultuous times Elliott chose to side with the Confederacy, actually participating in the Rebel takeover of Pikeville in late October 1861. He had no rank as such but was loosely affiliated with the 5th Kentucky Confederate Infantry, a regiment raised in his hometown of Prestonsburg. He was then selected as a Representative to the Confederate Congress in Richmond, Virginia, representing his eastern Kentucky District. He was extremely popular in the region before, during, and in the days after the conclusion of the War Between the States. After war’s end and the swearing of the required oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, John Milton Elliott was elected to the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Following an opening by resignation, in 1876 Elliott was selected as the Chief Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court. Mrs. Flanery mentions her family ties and related sentiments in the introduction she penned for Effie’s volume of poems. She was a graduate of the University of Kentucky with a teaching degree, though she was far too busy to teach; financially she certainly did not have to.
William Harvey Flanery, an attorney and recent graduate of the University of Michigan, was hired for his legal skills by John C. C. Mayo of Paintsville in nearby Johnson County. Mayo detailed W. H. Flanery to Pikeville in the year 1896 to be his agent in the buying and leasing of coal interests in the area. Mayo owned Northern Coal and Coke, a speculative enterprise looking toward the future of coal and coal mining in the region. It had been long known that there were thick, mineable reserves of coal in the billions of tons throughout the mountainous counties of Eastern Kentucky. At that time there were no rail lines in the upper Big Sandy region to deliver its coal to ready markets. The nearest to the area were nearly 100 miles away. Mayo sensed that this would change in the not- too-distant future, and he was correct.
W. H. Flanery’s duties were to purchase mining rights and lead a team of Mayo employed buyers to tie up as many acres of coal rights for the cheapest price possible. That Mr. Flanery was a highly respected and popular citizen of Pike County is an understatement. In 1904 he was serving his first term as the duly elected Pike County Judge. He was re-elected to a second term in 1908, quite remarkable in mountain politics of that day. Mary Elliott Flanery and her husband, William Harvey Flanery, were certainly members of the Pikeville elite.
In her introduction to Songs of the Months, Mrs. Flanery eloquently heaps praise on her youthful friend, citing the young author’s personal history and the reasons readers should give her a fair, impartial reading. It is more than anything an appeal.
“Modest worth, nobility of character, virtue, and truth, require no ornament, but themselves command admiration, whether the one who possess them be of most humble origin or of princely birth. The writer of these lines sees such a person in the young author of this volume, whose origin was of most humble, being Ethiopian, and whose parents were slaves. The present writer is of Anglo-Saxon race, strongly imbued with Southern prejudice, and whose near relatives, the Elliotts of Eastern Kentucky, fought to keep the Negro in subjection. But time and the development of the colored race will surely appeal to the reason of the anti-Abolitionists and cause them to reflect that perhaps after all they may have been in error. Be that as it may, our intention is to discuss briefly the author and the merits of her book. Miss Waller is the daughter of poor, but highly respected colored people, has one brother and one sister who possess unusual mentality, and are numbered among the best teachers in the South. Miss Effie, the author of this book, as well as the others, had quite a struggle to acquire an education. Being the youngest, she was kept away from school during a great portion of each term, since the only colored school in this whole section was situated at Pikeville, several miles distant from her former home. But she pursued her studies with her mother’s help, and attended school as regularly as she could, and finally was able to obtain a teacher’s certificate. She then began to teach, taking the money she saved, and paying her expenses at the Colored State Normal School, at Frankfort, until she has obtained an excellent education, and she expects to still press forward until she fully completed it. Miss Waller’s poems, as all who read them will observe, are possessed of much pathos and beauty, having an originality all their own. Who knows, that like Paul Lawrence Dunbar she may not one day surprise and delight her own race, and cause white critics to wonder at her genius.
. . . In Miss Waller’s verse there is that simply beautiful, lyrical quality, by which Keats and Burns charm and win all hearts.“
Marry Elliot Flanery
“Modest worth, nobility of character, virtue, and truth, require no ornament, but themselves command admiration, whether the one who possess them be of most humble origin or of princely birth. The writer of these lines sees such a person in the young author of this volume, whose origin was of most humble, being Ethiopian, and whose parents were slaves. The present writer is of Anglo-Saxon race, strongly imbued with Southern prejudice, and whose near relatives, the Elliotts of Eastern Kentucky, fought to keep the Negro in subjection. But time and the development of the colored race will surely appeal to the reason of the anti-Abolitionists and cause them to reflect that perhaps after all they may have been in error. Be that as it may, our intention is to discuss briefly the author and the merits of her book. Miss Waller is the daughter of poor, but highly respected colored people, has one brother and one sister who possess unusual mentality, and are numbered among the best teachers in the South. Miss Effie, the author of this book, as well as the others, had quite a struggle to acquire an education. Being the youngest, she was kept away from school during a great portion of each term, since the only colored school in this whole section was situated at Pikeville, several miles distant from her former home. But she pursued her studies with her mother’s help, and attended school as regularly as she could, and finally was able to obtain a teacher’s certificate. She then began to teach, taking the money she saved, and paying her expenses at the Colored State Normal School, at Frankfort, until she has obtained an excellent education, and she expects to still press forward until she fully completed it. Miss Waller’s poems, as all who read them will observe, are possessed of much pathos and beauty, having an originality all their own. Who knows, that like Paul Lawrence Dunbar she may not one day surprise and delight her own race, and cause white critics to wonder at her genius.
. . . In Miss Waller’s verse there is that simply beautiful, lyrical quality, by which Keats and Burns charm and win all hearts.“
Marry Elliot Flanery
Reading Elliott’s introduction, written most likely in 1903 or early 1904, is a journey back in time. The nomenclature has changed with the times to be certain. In Flanery’s impassioned preamble, she hopes that her young poet friend can receive a fair reading based on the merits of her work. She emphasizes it is now time for that to happen, the author talented, insightful, and deserving, and the past is the past. Some potential readers of the day were of a mindset and opinion to do just that; these could and indeed would, give Miss Effie a fair and critical reading. Others were not so inclined, as Mrs. Flanery well knew. Being the woman she was, a strong advocate and agent for change and equality in the society around her, Flanery had no qualms about appealing to “the reason of the anti-Abolitionists and reflect that perhaps they had been in error.” She tells them it is time to move on, into the new America.
Also in 1904, Flanery began a career as a columnist with the Ashland Daily Independent from her Pikeville home, an unlikely base of operations at one corner of Third Street and the newly expanding Second Avenue in Pikeville. The town was growing and the Flanerys built a beautiful home around the turn of the century that stands today.
Mrs. Flanery’s intense interest in social change, suffrage, marriage rights, and other issues primarily of concern to women led to a burning concern for politics, local and statewide. She was read and appreciated across Kentucky in her weekly column titled “Impressions of Kentucky’s Legislature.” She was recognized as a leader statewide and nationally in the suffragist movement that led to passage of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In 1912 the Flanerys relocated to her Carter County birthplace. She continued her weekly commentary in the Ashland newspaper. In 1922 she exercised her newly won rights as a citizen to run as a Democrat in a highly Republican district for state representative and, in a huge upset, won! She became the first woman elected to a state legislature south of the Mason/Dixon Line, a fact well publicized at the time. She served only one term, then ran against another female for Kentucky Secretary of State. She was defeated.
Her signature legislation and most noted accomplishment as a member of the Kentucky General Assembly was the bill which created Morehead State University, a college educating teachers. She had been a teacher and made it possible for thousands in the eastern mountain counties to impact untold lives with careers in this most noble profession.
