Scholarship will go to one student from each Perry County school each year, awarded based on essay competition.
The Perry County Historical and Preservation Society (PCHPS) established the Drake scholarship in honor of local historian Eleanor C. Drake.
Eleanor Compton Drake was the consummate local historian, a wonderful practical historian, and an expert at the art of historical research; she was wholly dedicated to learning and sharing all the history of Perry and Hale counties that she could gather. Her innate ability to learn a new fact and tie it in with other information she had accumulated was a joy to behold. This ability to connect what, appeared on the surface to be unrelated facts was what made her the practical historian who was the go-to person for local history. She was one of the twelve original members of the Board of Directors of the Perry County Historical and Preservation Society and served in that capacity for forty-seven years until her death in 2021.
Drake worked at Judson College first as its registrar and later as its archivist in Judson’s Bowling Library. Drake wrote the book Perry County for the Images of America series, authored the Uniontown section of Perry County Heritage—Volume II, co-authored Do What the Spirit Says Do: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Struggle in Perry County, Alabama, and contributed to The Heritage of Perry County, Alabama.
To encourage the younger generation to follow in Eleanor’s footsteps, The Eleanor C. Drake Scholarship Fund has been established. Every year a high school student in each one of Perry County’s schools will be awarded a scholarship for writing a winning essay on some aspect of Perry County history. Essays will be submitted to Perry County Historical and Preservation Society for judging. We are excited to read the gems of local history that our young people may present.
If you would like to add to this scholarship fund, please send donations to PCH&PS, PO Box 257, Marion, AL 36756.
