Jesse and Ellen Knight (Memorial Scholarship)

Jesse and Ellen Knight were the parents of former Superintendent/President of Hartnell College, Phoebe Helm. The Knight family owned a small family farm (about 80 acres) in the rural foothills of the Cumberland mountains. They never had a motorized vehicle (truck, tractor or car) and farmed our place with mules. They raised Phoebe and her six siblings and usually housed an uncle or two. Even though he only got to go to school through the fourth grade, Jesse Knight was an avid reader of the Progressive Farmer and a frequent visitor of the Ag Extension Center of the University of TN. He respected and valued the soil and rotated his crops and with the help of the center he figured out how to put running water in the family home using gravity. They didn’t have electricity until Phoebe was ten years old. The Knights valued education and were proud of Phoebe for pursuing hers.