Author Pearl S. Buck with Marie Orndorff Leist at The Greenbrier Hotel on March 5, 1970. Mrs. Leist, born in in Arbovale, was President of the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace Foundation. The occasion was a gathering of the West Virginia Federation of Women’s Clubs fundraising tour for the restoration of the birthplace in Hillsboro, Pocahontas County. Pearl Buck opened her 90-minute speech with the following:

“I’d like to have this house filled with life, and useful things for life, so that my mother’s extremely rich and busy and productive years, which began there, can go on into the life of this state which she loved so well. And now to see that life begin again in that house with her spirit there means more to me than anything in life. I don’t know how to thank you except to say that it is the loveliest thing to happen to me in my life.”

(Photo by Club Photos/The Greenbrier, Courtesy of Pearl S. Buck Birthplace, ID: MLC000002)

Access the “Preserving Pocahontas” Digital Library at www.pocahontaspreservation.org
If you have photographs or documents to be scanned for the county Historical Archive Project contact Preservation Officer B. J. Gudmundsson at 304-799-3989 or email info@pocahontaspreservation.org

Preservation News

Preserving Pocahontas is excited to have received two separate grants to digitize the archive material at the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace.
A grant of $800 was awarded in April by the Women’s Fund of The Greater Greenbrier Valley Community Foundation to inventory and digitize the most fragile historical documents in the archive.
A recent grant of $4,000 from the Marie Leist Foundation in Lewisburg will be used to digitize the Marie Leist Collection which documents the restoration and opening of The Stulting House. See story elsewhere in this edition of The Pocahontas Times.