Lucy Calista Morgan grew up in North Carolina and was educated at a private school in Hickory, North Carolina. In 1915, she graduated from Central State Normal School (today it is Central Michigan University). While there, she became a member of the Beta Chapter of Alpha Sigma Tau. Morgan then taught in Illinois and worked for a time at the Chicago Children’s Bureau. While in Chicago, she studied at the University of Chicago.
In 1920, Morgan returned to North Carolina and took a job at the Appalachian School, which was founded by her brother Rufus, an Episcopalian minister.
Early in 1923, she visited Berea College in Kentucky and during her nine-week stay there she learned about weaving, other native crafts, and Berea’s off-campus community weavers. She purchased looms and headed back to North Carolina with an idea.
That idea, fostering a cottage industry to revive almost lost traditional arts such as weaving and woodcarving and to provide the residents of the mountain communities a way to earn a livelihood, turned into what is today the Penland School of Crafts, in Penland, North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Founded in 1925, it was incorporated in 1929. Nine years later, a board of trustees was formed to direct the institution.
Morgan attended Alpha Sigma Tau’s 1946 convention at the Hotel Gibson in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was a speaker at the convention and she was the first winner of the Ada A. Norton Alumnae Award. The Penland School of Handicrafts was one of AST’s National Social Service Projects. She penned a letter to her chapter sisters, which later appeared in The Anchor.
Dear Betas,
Where were you during the Cincinnati Convention? Imagine my thrill when I got a letter from our National President asking me to go to the convention and tell the girls about Penland . . .The banquet was beautiful and the candlelight ceremony brought memories of my own initiation which I remember thinking was the most beautiful service I had ever seen.
I missed you sorely but I was right proud of our sorority, for, even without you, it was an impressive group. I liked their humor and gaiety and I liked very much the breadth of vision and the eagerness to serve beyond the bounds of the college campus. It was my first sorority meeting in thirty-one years.
Do you know that we are having an Alpha Sigma Tau Room at Penland? It is in our new stone building that replaces the one that was destroyed by fire. The first floor is dining room, kitchen and lounge and the second and third are sleeping quarters….We call this building the Pines because of the white pine trees back of the house…
Fraternally, Lucy Morgan
Today Penland is “an international center for craft education dedicated to helping people live creative lives.” and it “offers one, two, and eight-week workshops in books, paper, clay, drawing, glass, iron, metals, photography, printmaking, letterpress, textiles, and wood. The school also offers artists’ residencies, local programs, and a gallery and information center.”
“Miss Lucy,” as she was known, retired as Penland’s director in 1962. She died in 1981 at the age of 92.
