Topic: CRS Version
Slaves on the Georgia Piedmont, where Claire Lennon’s ancestors lived, may have lost more of their African religious heritage than did those who lived on the Sea Islands. All four people from Monroe and Meriwether counties, who were interviewed by the Federal Writers Project in the middle 1930s, attended white churches before Emancipation. [1]
Alice Hutcheson recalled in Monroe County that “White folkses went in de mornin’ and Niggers atter dinner.” [2] Lewis Favor remembered in Meriwether County:
“On Sunday all were required to attend the white church in town. They sat in the back of the church as the white minister preached and directed the following text at them: ‘Don’t steal your master’s chickens or his eggs and your backs won’t be whipped.’ In the afternoon of this same day when the colored minister was allowed to preach the slaves heard this text: ‘Obey your masters and your mistresses and your backs won’t be whipped’.” [3]
Both were raised on plantations with relatively few slaves. On a larger plantation in Meriwether County, Charlie King said:
“On Sunday, all the darkies had to go to church. Sometimes the Master had a house on his plantation for preaching, and sometimes the slaves had to go ten or twelve miles to preaching. When they went so far the slaves ‘ole’ Master’s’ mules and wagons.” [4]
Minnie Green was a child at Emancipation. During Reconstruction in Meriwether County, she “‘hired myself out to Miss Mary, and she raised me.’ Minnie played with white children, went to the ‘white folks’ Church, and did not ‘associate with niggers’ until she was grown.” [5] She remembered:
“Every summer they went to the Camp Grounds for two weeks. They took the children, Minnie for nurse, a stove, a cow and everything they needed for that time.” [6]
Green recalled the shock she experienced when she first confronted African-America religion.
“She was nearly grown before she went to a colored church and ‘baptisin’’ and it frightened her to see a person immersed, and come up ‘shoutin’’. Minnie thought they was ‘fightin’ the Preacher’ so she didn’t go back anymore.” [7]
Lennon may have had a similar experience when she moved to Troup County, Georgia. It was still on the Piedmont, but it was on the border with Alabama in the Chattahoochee river drainage (the cream in the map below). Before the Civil War, it was the “fourth wealthiest county in Georgia and its fifth largest slave holding county.” [8]
Carleton Wood said slaves were over 70% of the Troup County population in 1860. [9] They were 57% in neighboring Meriwether County, in the yellow area of the Flint River, and 64% in Monroe County in the Ocmulgee River basin. [10] In Clayton County, where the white Lovejoys lived before the war, the biggest concentration of slaves on a plantation in 1850 was 56. [11] In Troup County, nineteen people owned more in 1860. [12]
After the war, many residents of Antioch, near the Alabama border, moved into “the more prosperous towns of West Point or LaGrange.” [13] By the 1890s, the desire for cotton mills had become “like the measles [. . .] Every town wanted to build a cotton mill.” [14] La Grange was primed when outside investors suggested it organize one. [15]
White tenants moved to mill villages, because they “could not produce cotton at five cents a pound.” [16] In 1913, Arthur Small and Howard Small reported seven large cotton mills [17] and 2,918 farms, of which 20% still were run by owners. [18] Most of the tenants were Blacks. [19]
When whites withdrew from the country, African Americans were free to develop their own traditions. While Lennon indicated she had heard both her mother and two grandmothers sing “Come by Here” in Monroe and Meriwether counties, [20] she wrote Lynn Rohrbough:
“The young-adult experience (the one I wrote about) which touched me most was in Troup Co, in small communities of Louise [21] and Antioch [22] where they had annual ‘Graveyard Meetings’ to clean off cemetery, with dinner, speaking (preaching) in the afternoon and singing. Of course, all this was prior to 1930, and even the rural areas have had such ‘face liftings’ - otherwise I could send you to an exact spot. Now these same churches have piano’s and song books - and they sing ‘song-book songs’ in a more modern way for the most part. The old songs are almost extinct. [23]
Once Lennon was aware “Come by Here” had been published, she began checking to see if others knew her song. She wrote that one Sunday in Asheville, North Carolina’s Berry Temple Chapel, she “was song leader for the fellowship hour and suggested spirituals. When we had done ‘Jacobs Ladder,’ ‘Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley,’ and ‘My Lord, What A Morning,’ I asked how many knew ‘Kum Ba Yah.’ There were 69 present, all adult except 4 young people and 10 children. The only hand that went up was [name]. So without further ado, I said, ‘It goes like this’-and I played the tune on the piano. Before I had played it once through everyone was singing and it was the words that I know. I was amused.” [24]
She also asked discovered “one of our teachers heard it sung in a rural church near her home during the summer. It was ‘raised’ by a very old man she says. She lives in South Carolina.” [25]
Lennon’s lyrics have not survived. It isn’t known if she was playing the tune from a Rohrbough songbook, or one she already knew. The closest one has to her perceptions is her response to Rohrbough’s request for other songs. She answered:
“As for the other songs of my home community there are several old old ones that I like very much. I’ve never seen them in print. I just heard them, and have helped to sing them. At present I cannot recall all the words - I’ll have to contact my sister [26] and some cousins then I’ll write them down for you, and will ask my husband [27] to jot down the tunes. One is ‘Some of These Days’ - perhaps you’ve heard it
‘I’m goin’ down to the river of Jordan (“Jerdan”) 3 times
I’m goin’ down to the river of Jerdan Some of these days’
and the verses go on and on with whatever is troubling the singer.
‘I’m gonna sit at the Welcome Table -’
‘I’m gonna sit down beside King Jesus -’
‘I’m gonna meet my lovin’ Mother (father sister - anyone!)’
‘I’m gonna tell God about my troubles - ’
‘I’m gonna tell God how you treat me - ’
- and so it goes - usually the last verse is to ‘sit down beside King Jesus.’ It’s a nice tune sort of lively - sort of sad.” [28]
Most of the improvised verses describe events after death, with a first stanza that establishes the chronology. The post for 19 May 2019 briefly discussed crossing the river Jordan as a metaphor for dying.
It’s interesting that “Jerdan” is the only word Lennon tries to transcribe as it was pronounced. She dropped the terminal “g” on “loving” and used “gonna” for “going to.” Otherwise, most of the lines use trochees (Xx), but some are more awkward, suggesting that she used standard English words, rather than African-American ones. For instance “tell God” and especially “tell God how” atypically concatenate hard syllables.
Whether or not she associated the themes of this with “Come by Here” is moot. What she does reveal is she knew songs that had the same AAAB format as the CRS version of “Kumbaya,” that they were open-ended, and that particular verses were used to signal the beginning and end of the song, that the first verses (sung in any order) were associated with the song, and they were followed by improvised ones.
Graphics
1. Claire Lennon and Edwardo Balden, 1970s. Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), Asheville, photograph in Special Collections of the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Another photograph of Lennon from her years at the Allen School appears on the Photos K tab.
2. Pfly. “Map of the Chattahoochee River (highlighted) and watershed — in the Apalachicola Basin (ACF Basin).” 5 September 2007. Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Pfly.
End Notes
1. The Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration collected oral histories from former slaves in the 1930s. The ones from Georgia were published in four volumes by the Library of Congress in 1941. [29]
2. Alice Hutcheson. Interviewed by Grace McCune. Edited by Sarah H. Hall and John N. Booth. 229–235 in volume 2. 233. Hutcheson was a singer. She was singing “Lord, I’se a Comin’ Home” when McCune arrived. She provided words for “I’se wukkin’ on de buildin’,” which she said men sang when they rolled logs. She also sang a number of verses of one funeral song, and part of “Oh, Come Angel Band.” Her words were those published by William Bradbury in 1862, rather than the original ones from 1860. [30]
3. Lewis Favor. Interviewed for WPA by E. Driskell. 8 May 1937. 160–163 in volume 1. 162.
4. Charlie King. Interviewed for WPA by Mary A. Crawford. 16 September 1936. 21–24 in volume 3. 23.
5. Minnie Green. Interviewed for WPA by Alberta Minor. 59–60 in volume 2. 59.
6. Green. 2:59.
7. Green. 2:59.
8. Carleton Wood. “Cotton Farming, Mill Villages and Fancy Parterres: The Woven Landscapes of LaGrange, Georgia.” Magnolia 22:3–7:Summer-Fall 2008. 1.
9. Wood. 1.
10. “Population by Counties—1790–1870. Table II.–State of Georgia.” United States Census, 1870, volume 1. 21–22.
11. Joseph H. Moore, and Ancestors Unlimited Inc (Genealogical Society of Clayton County). “Clayton - Henry County, Ga Slave Owner 1850 Census.” US Gen Web website. This is discussed in the post for 18 October 2020.
12. Tom Blake. “Troup County, Georgia. Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules and Surname Matches for African Americans on 1870 Census.” Ancestry website. February 2002.
13. “Antioch Baptist Church of Christ Records.” Troup Archives website.
14. Fuller Callaway. Quoted by Gary Mock. “Fuller E. Callaway.” Wilson College of Textiles website. Callaway became the most prominent mill owner in LaGrange, Georgia.
15. Among the charter members of Dixie Cotton Mills in 1895 were W. N. Weeks of New York, J. T. Cressey of New Hampshire, and Thomas P. Ivey of Atlanta. [33]
16. Callaway. Quoted by Mock. “These men began to move to town as cotton mill operatives. Their position in the country had been so poor, on account of the low price of their product, that it elevated them even to bring them to town to work in a cotton mill, which in itself was a poorly-paid occupation.”
17. A. T. Sweet and Howard C. Small. “Soil Survey of Troup County, Georgia.” 633–653 in Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils, 1912. Edited by Milton Whitney. United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Soils, 1913. 634.
18. Sweet. 637.
19. Sweet. 641.
20. Claire M. Lennon. Letter to Mr. Rohrbough. 19 November 1956. WAS. In both typescript and original handwritten letter. Handwritten version used for quotation. A more complete quotation appears in the post for 18 October 2020. Details on the source of the letter are provided on the Legends 2 tab.
21. Louise was a stop on the Atlanta and West Point Railroad in the northeastern part of Troup County. Men began working a chromate deposit south of town during World War I, [34] but I’ve found nothing that identifies the miners.
22. Antioch was established as a farm market center in the 1830s in an area with notably large trees, and incorporated as a dry town in 1851. [35] The population had shriveled to 58 by 1900. [36]
23. Lennon. In both typescript and original handwritten letter. Handwritten version used.
24. Lennon. The comments were included in Rohrbough’s typed version of her letter, but did not appear in the handwritten letter.
25. Lennon. In both typescript and original handwritten letter. Handwritten version used. Leaders who line-out hymns are said to “raise” them. This will be discussed in a future post.
26. Her sister, Lenore Lovejoy Gridney, is mentioned in the post for 25 October 2020.
27. Her husband, Madison C. Lennon, was a music teacher. He is profiled in the post for 25 October 2020.
28. Lennon. This is in the original handwritten letter, but was not included in the typescript.
29. For more information on the WPA Slave Narratives project, see the post for 23 January 2019.
30. Jefferson Hascall and John William Dadmun. “Angels Bear Me Away.” The Melodeon. Edited by J. W. Dadmun. Boston: J. P. Magee, 1860. 12. William Bradbury published it in 1862. [31] Hymnary notes Bradbury introduced Hutcheson’s phrase “to my immortal home,” in place of Hascall’s “to my own immortal home.” [32]
31. J. Haskell. “The Land of Beulah.” Bradbury’s Golden Shower of S.S. Melodies. Edited by Wm. B. Bradbury. New York: Ivison, Phinney and Company, 1862. 50. “SS” is Sunday school.
32. “Oh, Come, Angel Band.” Hymnary website.
33. Dennis Partridge. “Dixie Cotton Mills.” Georgia Genealogy website. I could find nothing about the three.
34. T. J. Ballard. Investigation of Louise Chromite Deposits Troup County, Ga. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, July 1948. 2.
35. Clifford L. Smith. History of Troup County. Atlanta, Georgia: Foote and Davis Company, 31 December 1933. 62.
36. Wikipedia. “Antioch, Troup County, Georgia.”
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