Hilltop Camp
and Summer School for Girls
“
There
~ by Lee Edgren
isn’ t any really right order for telling the story of a camp. It takes everything together to make it come out right and be a true story.” wrote Katherine McAfee Parker, in a promotional Hilltop Camp booklet in 1938. So, let’ s begin with the setting.
There were no trees on Town HIll in the 1920s. From the top of the hill you could look out across the town and beyond. There were fewer than 500 people living in town. Most Brown Countians still travelled by horse and wagon. The now-famed artists would picnic on the hill at the Vawter cabin. Hohenberger roamed with his camera.
In 1924, a progressive, determined, and welleducated woman, Kate Andrews, opened the very first summer camp in Brown County on 20 acres at the top of Town Hill. Most astonishingly, it was a girls’ camp, accredited by the state board of education. It was officially named Hilltop Camp and Summer School for Girls.
44 Our Brown County • July / August 2014
Frank Hohenberger photo of Whippoorwill cabin in the 1930s.
“[ In Brown County you will find ]… not only a valley of peace but a Hilltop of joy.”
— Katherine McAfee Parker
Girls could elect to do advanced or remedial academic work while enjoying their Brown County summer. As Marianne Bessire MIller, whose association with the camp began in 1927 and totaled 13 or more years, observed in a speech to the Brown County Historical Society some years ago,“ It was more cultural than recreational.”
Kate Andrews spent her girlhood in Seymour, Indiana. She graduated from Wellesley College, a prestigious private women’ s college, and did graduate work at Chicago and Colombia Universities, as well as in Europe. She taught for seven years at Western College in Oxford, Ohio, was the principal of the Seymour High School for 15 years, and served nine years as Dean of Women at Hanover College.