Some Delayed Posts

I still am working on the history of “Come by Here” and “Kumbaya.”  My posts are delayed because a close friend has been ill and needing care.  Items will be posted as I have time to complete them.

War's End

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
Wars rarely end as scheduled with peace plans in place.  They stop when something unexpected occurs on the battlefield.

Sherman took Columbia, South Carolina, on February 17, 1865, while Charleston was taken that day by Quincy Adams Gillmore. [1]  Eight days later, on February 25, Allen K. Noyes took control of Georgetown at the lower end of the Waccamaw River.  On March 1, Colored units were stationed there. [2]

As troops moved north with Sherman, they informed slaves or slave owners.  Georgia Horry recalled that “Mr. Carmichael sent by the state.  Go to Brookgreen, Longwood, Watsaw.  Tell everting surrender.  Go to any located place.” [3]

Up country, where the Wards had taken their slaves, Ellen Godfrey told Genevieve Willcox Chandler: “Yankee officer come. ‘Where Mahams Ward and John J. Woodward?  Come to tell ’em take dese people out the dirt camp!” [4]

In many places, the immediate response of freed people was to break into the food stores and appropriate clothing and other plantation property.

Ward’s slaves were not near their plantations.  Godfrey recalled their problem was returning home.  “Put we in flat.  Carry back!  Put food and chillum in flat.  We been walk.” [5]  Going up “Three flat carry two hundred head o’ people and all they things.” [6]  On the return, “Three flat gone round wid all the vittles.” [7]

At night they camped where women cooked food for the next day.  By then it was December, with “snow on ground.” [8] Cook fires provided heat.

She remembered it was “easier coming home.  Current helped.  Going up against the current, only poles and cant hooks—tedious going.” [9]

All was not well, for at least one person died on the journey.  “Mother Molly die on flat.  Bury she right to Longwood grave-yard.” [10]

If one only read the accounts of white women like Elizabeth Blyth Weston, niece of Robert Francis Withers Allston, [11] freed slaves were uncontrollable.  She wrote Allston’s wife on 17 March 1865 that Robert’s third cousin, Martha Pyatt, [12] “went at once to George Town leaving everything Toney having not a change of clothes for her infant and I hear has not a servant.  Her house was given up to the Negroes at once.” [13]  Her plantations were north and south of Ward’s Brook Green. [14]

Weston added that Joshua John Ward’s sister “is anxious to go to Poplar Hill but her people refuse to move her.” [15]   Catherine Jones Ward had married Joseph Percival La Bruce, who died in 1827. [16]  One of their sons, Joshua Ward La Bruce, owned land on Sandy Island, [17] which lay across the Waccamaw River from Turkey Hill, The Oaks, Brook Green, and Richmond Hill.

Even Ben Horry recalled that, “after Freedom,” the wife of Joshua, son of Joshua John Ward, “Miss Bessie gone to she house in Charleston.” [18]

More objectively, revenge was more measured and according to African-based views of justice.

Ben recalls one driver at Brook Green manipulated job assignments to force himself on women.

“If one them drive want you (want big frame gal like you Lillie!) They give you task you CAN’T DO.  You getting this beating not for you task—for you flesh!” [19]

He continued: “The worst thing I members was the colored oberseer.  He was the one straight from Africa.  He the boss over all the mens and womens and if omans don’t do all he say, he lay task on ’em they ain’t able to do.  My mother won’t do all he say.  When he say, ‘You go barn and stay till I come,’ she ain’t do dem.  So he have it in for my mother and lay task on ’em she ain’t able to do.  Then for punishment my mother is take to the barn and strapped down on thing called the Pony.  Hands spread like this and strapped to the floor and all two both feet been tie like this.  And she been give twenty five to fifty lashes till the blood flow.” [20]

It is not clear if this slave actually was born in Africa.  The United States Census for 1860 only reported foreign birthplaces for free Blacks.  The legal trans-Atlantic slave trade ended in 1808, fifty-two years before the beginning of the Civil War.  The overseer could have been imported illegally, or plantation-born slaves may have used the term “African” as a pejorative for individuals who did not conform to the mores of local slave communities.

Ben’s relative, Miss Georgie, remembered the overseer’s name was Paris, and that he betrayed his owners to the Yankees. [21]  The Wards had buried their valuables [22] and “he go and show Yankee all dem ting!” [23]

She added:

“Ole Miss git order to have him kill and don’t harm none!  She ain’t one to see him tru all that thousand head o’ nigger for get ‘em.” [24]

Chandler noted that she had been “told that the cruel negro overseer was shot down after Freedom–blood still on ground (according to Uncle Ben) because he led Yankees to where silver, etc., was buried.” [25]  She added this was one incident she heard “from other old livers.” [26]

However, Ben did not connect it with theft.  He still recalled the wrong done his parents.  His mother was a “natural nuss for white people” [28] and Ben’s father was the driver. [29]  Still, “MY OWN DADDY DERE couldn’t move!  Couldn’t venture dat ober-sheer!  Everybody can’t go to boss folks!  Some kin talk it to Miss Bess.  Everybody don’t see Miss Bess.  Kin see the blood of dat over-sheer fuss year atter Freedom; and he blood there today!” [30]

End Notes
1.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  416.

2.  Rogers.  418–419.

3.  Georgie, statement provided by Ben Horry.  2:236–238 in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves – South Carolina Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  2:237.

4.  Ellen Godfrey, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  2:118–127 in Slave Narratives.  2:121.  Godfrey was a slave on Longwood, owned by Maham Ward.  John J. Woodward may be Maham’s brother Joshua Ward.  Their father, Joshua John Ward, owned many plantations when he died in 1853.  Union soldiers got their information from slaves.  The family is discussed in the posts for 6 August 2023 and 10 September 2023.

5.  Godfrey.  2:121.
6.  Godfrey.  2:122.
7.  Godfrey.  2:121.
8.  Godfrey.  2:121.
9.  Godfrey.  2:121.
10.  Godfrey.  2:121.

11.  Robert Francis Withers Allston is discussed in the post for 6 August 2023.

12.  Martha Pyatt was the third cousin of Robert.  He was the grandson of John Allston’s son William; she was the granddaughter of John’s son Josias. [30]

13.  Elizabeth.  Letter to Adele Petigru Alston, widow of Robert Francis Withers Allston, 17 March 1865.  Reprinted by J. H. Easterby.  The South Carolina Rice Plantation as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston.  Chicago: University of Chicago, 1945; republished by University of South Carolina, 2004.  206.

14.  On the eve of the Civil War, Pyatt owned 213 slaves on three plantations.  Turkey Hill and Oatland were south of The Oaks, which was immediate south of Joshua Ward’s Brook Green.  Richmond Hill was farther north on the Waccamaw. [31]

15.  Elizabeth.  Quoted by Easterby.  207.

16.  Saratoga.  “Catherine Jones ‘Mamma’ Ward LaBruce.”  Find a Grave website, 5 September 2008.

17.  “Oak Hill Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

18.  Ben Horry, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  2:219–236 in Slave Narratives.  2:234.  He is mentioned in the posts for 6 August 2023 and 10 September 2023.

19.  Ben Horry.  2:223.  Lillie Knox, who was present at the interview, worked for Chandler.  For more on Knox, see the post for 25 December 2022.

20.  Ben Horry.  2:228.

21.  Georgie.  2:236.  For more on their relationship, see the post for 10 September 2023.

22.  Ben Horry.  2:225.
23.  Georgie.  2:236.
24.  Georgie.  2:236.
25.  Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  2:225 in Slave Narratives.
26.  Chandler.  2:225.
27.  Ben Horry.  2:224.

28.  Ben Horry.  2:226.  There may have been a rivalry underlying this incident.  On plantations, overseers directed drivers who directed other slaves.  Paris may have been jealous of Horry’s father, or Horry’s father may not have been as submissive as Paris would have liked.

29.  Ben Horry.  2:224.

30.  Robert Walden Coggeshall.  Ancestors and Kin.  Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988.  172.

31.  Charles Joyner.  Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.  Map on page 17, which is “based on map compiled by Henry A. M. Smith, May, 1923, in SCHM, 14 (1913), ff. p. 74.”  SCHM is the South Carolina Historical Magazine.

Harry Harter - Koom Ba Yah SSA

Topic: Choral Arrangements
Harry Harter published a revision of his 1958 arrangement of “Koom Ba Yah” for women’s voices in 1960.  The key modifications are those required for the different vocal ranges of sopranos in a female group and tenors in a mixed-gender ensemble.  The highest note on the first page [1] for the SABT tenors is a D.  In the SSA arrangement, the same note for the first sopranos is an E.

The parts for male voices are the most changed: women have no equivalent voices to basses.  Their melodic line is taken over by the second sopranos while the altos follow the tenor’s basic line.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: first soprano in one section
Vocal Group: first and second sopranos, alto
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
Music: Harry H. Harter
Text: based on an African Negro Spiritual
Dedication: “To the Maryville College Choir and Mabel”

© Copyright MCMLVIII, MCMLX, SHAWNEE PRESS, Inc., Delaware Water Gap, Pa.

First collected in the U. S. by Cooperative Recreation Service, Inc., Delaware, Ohio.

Notes on Lyrics
Same as SATB arrangements discussed in post for 24 September 2023.

Notes on Music
Generally the same as SATB arrangement discussed in post for 24 September 2023, with the following modifications.

Key Signature: four flats changes to no sharps or flats, then to three flats and a return to no sharps or flags

Harmonic Structure: when all three groups are singing, first sopranos generally carry the melody and second sopranos sing reverse lines with the altos repeating “koom ba yah, mah Lawd”

Notes on Performance
Cover: long African mask of face in center
Color Scheme: black ink on white paper

Audience Perceptions
A 1962 review in the Choral Journal told readers it is “an effective setting of an African Negro Spiritual.  Makes use of piano accompaniment plus a passage for solo voice or a few solo voices.” [2]

Notes on Audience
The Fontbonne Chorus of the all-girls’ Roman Catholic college in Clayton, Missouri, performed Harter’s arrangement in 1962.  “Koom Ba Yah” was the opening number.  It was described as an “African Spiritual.”

Notes on Performers
Harry Harold Harter grew up in San Jose, California, where he graduated from San Jose State College.  While a student, he began working as a tenor and arranger for The King’s Men quartet. [3]  The group had been formed in 1929, and worked for Paul Whiteman between 1934 and 1937.  When Harter joined them, they had just begun working for Fibber McGee and Molly on NBC radio. [4]

Presumably after graduation he served as a chaplain’s assistant in the Air Force from 1943 to 1946. [5]  He earned a master’s in music from the University of Nebraska in 1947, [6] and began working at Maryville College the next year. [7]

Like Varner Chance and other musicians teaching in academic schools, he probably was forced to take on other jobs to supplement a low salary. [8]  He directed the New Providence Presbyterian Church choir [9] and sold arrangements to a number of publishers beside Shawnee. [10]  Beyond income, these compositions may have been accepted as publications before he earned a PhD in sacred music from Union Theological Seminary in 1961. [11]

Although Maryville College was sponsored by the Presbyterian Church (USA), [12] Harter and his wife were members of St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Maryville. [13]

Availability
Sheet Music: Harry Harter.  “Koom Ba Yah.”  Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania: Shawnee Press, Inc., 1960 edition for SSA.

Concert: Harry Harter, arranger.  “Koom Ba Yah.”  Fontbonne Chorus, Clayton, Missouri, 23 March 1962.  Reported by the school newspaper, The Font, on 26 February 1962.

End Notes
1.  The copy of the SABT arrangement of “Koom Ba Yah” that I purchased on the internet is missing pages 3–6.

2.  George Gansz.  “Choral Reviews.”  Choral Journal 2(4):15:1 March 1962.

3.  Keni Lanagan.  “College Mourns Loss of Dr. Harry Harter.”  Maryville College press release, 11 August 2004.

4.  “All the King’s Men.”  Radio Life, 10 July 1940; reprinted by Return with Us Now, 19 (9):5–6:April 1994.

5.  Lanagan.
6.  “Harry Harold Harter.”  134 in Chilhowean, Maryville College yearbook, 1977.
7.  Lanagan.
8.  Varner Chance is discussed in the posts for 21 March 2021 ande 28 March 2021.
9.  Lanagan.
10.  Obituary.  McCammon-Ammons-Click Funeral Home, Marysville, Tennessee, 2004.
11.  Lanagan.
12.  “Maryville College.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 30 September 2023.
13.  Lanagan.

Kumbaya Copyrights

Topic: Choral Arrangements
Fred Waring’s Shawnee Press was the first music publisher to challenge Lynn Rohrbough’s publication of “Kumbaya.”  The exact chronology is lost; only some letters between Rohrbough and Shawnee representatives remain, and they appear to come toward the end of the correspondence.

Rohrbough’s company, Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS), first published “Kum Ba Yah” in a songbook prepared in 1955 [1] by Kathryn Thompson Good and John Blocher, Jr., for Indianola, a Columbus, Ohio, Methodist family camp.  Blocher did the transcription from Good’s singing. [2]

No copyright was registered, and no ownership notice was appended.  The law dictated that copyright owners print a notice under a song in every publication to maintain a copyright.  As seen in the reproduction of Indianola Sings posted on 29 May 2022, this did not occur.

The lawyer for later owners of CRS told them that, under the law in effect in 1955, “the printing of one book (one copy) with out proper Copyright notice can lose you the copyright.”  He added that “some folks judged a little less strictly than others, but certainly if more than one whole printing has gone out with songs uncredited, he feels that there is no question; the song has fallen in to the public domain.” [3]

Instead, Rohrbough included “Come By Here: Kum Ba Yah,” without an ownership notice, in a Song Sampler published in January 1956 that was distributed to “200 organizations in every state and to correspondents in 60 overseas countries.”  He informed recipients that “bulk lots are available to organizations for mailing lists, in conferences, and try-outs.” [4]

Rohrbough believed the next publication of “Kum Ba Yah” was in a collection compiled in February and March 1956 for the North East Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church.  Bliss Wiant, one of the editors, created a four-part arrangement that did carry a copyright notice.

This only asserted ownership of the arrangement, and did not cover the original song.  A copy is included in the post for 2 October 2022, and I have yet to see another publication reproduce this particular version.

Shawnee published a version of “Koom Ba Yah” in 1958 by Harry Harter.  The sheet music carried a notice at the bottom of the first page.

Shawnee’s editors apparently learned about the CRS version soon after it released Harter’s arrangement.  It must have contacted the company about copyright infringement because Rohrbough included the following credit in a 1958 songbook produced for Lake Poinsett: [5]

Meantime, Shawnee was publishing another version of “Koom Ba Yah” in 1959 by Livingston Gearhart for boys’ vocal ensembles.  The book carried a notice on the title page, which was intended to cover all the songs in it. [6]

Rohrbough may then have written back to Shawnee to assert his prior publication of “Kumbaya.”  This is where the evidence begins.  In the first letter saved in a CRS file on the song, the company’s editor wrote Rohrbough on 13 February 1959:

“Our contributor, Hr. Harter maintains that he learned the song directly from an African missionary, who said it was widely sung  in Africa.  Its popularity there is further attested to by the fact that one of our editorial assistants learned it at a church camp from another African missionary.  It would appear that this song may be a true folk song, which can be collected any number of times from authentic but different sources - namely the folk themselves.  Our understanding of such songs is that they can be published by anyone who gets them from an original source, and does not use another publishers’ printed version for a source.  (In this instance, Hr. Harter was under the impression that he was the first person to write down the song, so was unaware of the existence of a printed source.)” [7]

At this point, Rohrbough did not seem to be aware that “Kumbaya” was an original publication of CRS.  Indeed, he seems to have fully accepted the history of the song that was presented by Larry Eisenberg at Davidson College in 1957. [8]  This is where Peter Seeger heard the song, and he subsequently spread the legend about an African missionary. [9]

On 16 February 1959, Rohrbough wrote: “Of course this song was widely known by missionaries.  Probably it is only a question of who first published it.” [10]

However, Rohrbough noted: “The fact that your contributor followed the spelling “Koom” in our footnote would indicate that your missionary friend had seen our printed copy. [11]

Shawnee’s lawyer then contacted Harter, and wrote back on 14 May 1959: “Our contributor, Harry Harter learned of the spiritual in 1957 from an African missionary.  However, we have determined that the missionary actually first heard the selection in a recreational laboratory workshop in Minnesota about 1954 but the missionary also had the understanding that Rosa Page Welch heard the work while travelling in Africa and brought the song to America.  Tracking that down, we have determined that Rosa Page Welch actually first heard the work at the World Christian Student conference at Athens, Ohio about 1956 when an African student led the conference in singing it.” [12]

Rohrbough responded on 4 June 1959 that “we did the Northland Songs for the Rec. Lab. at St. Paul.” [13]  When I contacted members of the Northland Recreation Laboratory, they indicated Rohrbough had not attended their annual workshops since 1936. [14]  The group published collections from workshops, and there was no evidence that the song ever was sung there in the middle-1950s.  One member, however, did remember learning the song at the annual conference of the Methodist Church, which was held in 1956 in Minneapolis. [15]  That may be the source for Harter’s reference to Minnesota.

Rohrbough also described the Student Volunteer Movement meeting in Athens, Ohio, and Welch’s role as a song leader. [16]

At this point, Shawnee’s lawyer realized that Harter was an unreliable source and that oral tradition had engulfed the song.  He wrote Rohrbough: “we are agreeable to making acknowledgment in our reprints of KOOM BA YAH to your organization as first collectors of this spiritual in the U. S. and in consideration of your position as said first collector of the selection we would pay you a nominal fee of $1.00 with the understanding that in making such acknowledgment to you we do so without prejudice to our copyright in KOOM BA YAH.” [17]

Shawnee was able to publish Harter’s version for women’s voices later that year. [18]  The following credits appeared at the bottom of the page.

None of these notices can be used to establish chronology.  In Gentlemen Songsters, Shawnee claimed their copyright was in 1959, but in the Harter sheet music it claimed 1958.  CRS used 1957 for Poinsett.

The Poinsett note was used for a reprint of the Young Women’s Christian Associations’ Sing Along that originally had been published in 1957.  CRS simply used the current plate. [19]

Rohrbough did not reprint the reference to Shawnee Press again in his songbooks.  The closest he came in 1962 was to follow Shawnee’s hint about sources and list the first dates for Wiant’s arrangement of “Kum Ba Yah” and Van Richards’ “Come by Here.”  The latter, published in 1958, is discussed in the post for 15 January 2023.

Graphics
1.  “Kum Ba Yah.”  31 in Hymns of Universal Praise, edited for North East Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church by Bliss Wiant and Carlton Young.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1956.

2.  Harry Harter.  “Koom Ba Yah.”  Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania: Shawnee Press, Inc., 1958 edition for SATB.

3.  “Kum Ba Yah.”  50 in Lake Poinsett Fellowship Songs.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service Cooperative Song Service, revised 1958.

4.  “Koom Ba Yah.”  59–61 in Gentlemen Songsters, edited by Livingston Gearhart.  Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania: Shawnee Press, Inc., 1959.

5.  Harry Harter.  “Koom Ba Yah.”  Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania: Shawnee Press, Inc., 1960.

6.  “Kum Ba Yah.”  11 in Songs to Keep, edited by Augustus Zanzig.  Delaware, Ohio: Informal Music Service.  © 1962, Cooperative Recreation Service, Inc., Delaware, O.

End Notes
Bruce Greene, owner of World Around Songs, has sent the surviving papers, songbooks, and other documents of CRS to the Library of Congress, who now has the originals.  I kept scans of all the papers in the company’s “Kumbaya” folder, which Mr. Greene lent to me in 2016.

1.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Letter to Shawnee Press, 16 February 1959.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene.

2.  Patricia Averill with John Blocher, Jr.  “‘Kumbaya’ and Dramatizations of an Etiological Legend.”  Voices 46:26–32:Spring–Summer 2020.  Copy available from Academia.edu.

3.  Letter from one owner of World Around Songs to another, 3 May 1979.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene.

4.  Song Sampler number 1, January 1956.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1956.  B.  The post for 31 July 2022 reproduces the Song Sampler variant.

5.  Lake Poinsett is discussed in the post for 9 July 2023.
6.  Gearhart’s is discussed in the post for 8 October 2023.

7.  Shawnee Press editor.  Letter to Lynn Rohrbough, 13 February 1959.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene.

8.  For more on the event at Davidson College, see the post for 16 October 2022.
9.  Averill and Blocher.

10.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Letter to Shawnee Press editor, 16 February 1959.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene.

11.  Rohrbough, 16 February 1959.

12.  Shawnee Press lawyer to Lynn Rohrbough, 14 May 1959.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene.

13.  Lynn Rohrbough, letter to Shawnee Press lawyer, 4 June 1959.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene.

14.  For more on Northland Recreation Workshop, see the post for 26 September 2021.
15.  For more on the Methodist conference, see the post for 9 October 2022.

16.  Rohrbough, 4 June 1959.  The post for 31 July 2022, has more on the Athens meeting.

17.  Shawnee Press lawyer.
18.  Harter’s arrangement is discussed in the post for 29 October 2023.
19.  Sing Along is discussed in the post for 11 December 2022.

Livingston Gearhart - Koom Ba Yah

Topic: Choral Arrangements
Following the publication of Harry Harter’s SATB arrangement of “Koom Ba Yah” in 1958, Fred Waring published a version for boys’ choirs the next year.  It appeared in Gentlemen Songsters, a choral collection edited by Livingston Gearhart.

The arrangement was the first published one to use vocal melodic and rhythmic parts.  The upper voices sang the tune in unison while the lower ones repeated “koom by yah” in a dotted-quarter-note/eighth note/quarter-note pattern.  The first two notes were the same, and the third was a step lower.  The second part of the arrangement used two melodies.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: two parts
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: vocal part

Credits
Headnote: African Spiritual
Footnote: “Koom ba ya,” is derived from the words “Come by here.”
Title Page: © Copyright MCMLIX by Shawnee Press, Inc., Delaware Water Gap, Pa.

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: dialect for “mah,” “Lawd”; drops terminal G’s

Verses: those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) – kumbaya, prayin’, cryin’, singin’

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lawd, Savior
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: 4-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: Savior for Lord in last line

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: fast, quarter note = ca 138

Rhythm: introduction is “very short; brittle”; first section rhythm part is “hushed, but strongly percussive”; second section is “subtito”

Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Dynamics: first section soft (“pp”), second section loud (“f”), ending soft (“pp”)
Basic Structure: two sections
Singing Style: one syllable to one note; “savior” used in place of “Lord” in final line

Harmonic Structure: verses 1 and 2 use one melodic line for upper voices and rhythmic repetition of “koom ba yah” for lower voices; verses 3 and 4 use two melodic lines

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano alternates two-note right-hand chords with two-note left-hand chords

Ending: last note held by vocal parts as accompaniment gets progressively softer

Notes on Performance
Cover: four male figures with staffs of music across their bodies

Color Scheme: cover is vanilla with taupe and black printing; black ink on white paper inside

Notes on Audience
Gentlemen Songsters used “spirited rhythmic drive” to attract and keep “the interest of men and boys.”  The arrangements were “tested by the Fred Waring Music Workshop and in a high school boys chorus.” [1]

At least one school is known to have performed Gearhart’s arrangement in 1962: the Essex District High School in Ontario, Canada.

Notes on Performers
The publisher of Gentlemen Songsters, Fred Waring, was best known in 1959 as the director of the Fred Waring Singers, who appeared on television from 1948 to 1954. [2]  Partly in response to choir directors wanting to learn from him and use his arrangements, he organized his own workshops. [3]  From those he discovered what worked with youth, and began publishing arrangements through his Shawnee Press. [4]

Livingston Gearhart, who made the arrangements in the collection, had a long and sometimes complicated relationship with Waring.  He was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1916.  His mother, the former Lillian Hawley, was a trained pianist.  Gearhart learned piano, violin, and oboe as a child, and sang in church choirs.  At Curtis Institute, he began with oboe in 1935, then changed to piano. [5]

While he was studying in Paris he met Virginia Clotfelter.  They toured as the piano duet Gearhart and Morley, and married in 1940.  They began working with Fred Waring in 1943, and he began making arrangements for Waring. [6]

Gearhart made his first foray into music methods with Clarinet Sessions in 1945. [7]  The arrangements were made by him and Dan Cassal, whom he knew from oboe classes at Curtis. [8]  Waring was the publisher.

The following year Shawnee issued Gearhart’s most popular arrangement, “Dry Bones.” [9]  It was described as a “rhythmic spiritual” for “percussion, two bass voice, piano, and string break.” [10]  Waring’s Pennsylvanians recorded a version for Decca in 1947 that featured the men singing in unison with percussive sounds at the end of phrases. [11]  The arrangement still is in print, and several versions are available of YouTube.

In 1954, Gearhart and Morley divorced and she married Waring.  He moved to the University of Buffalo where he taught music until he retired in 1985. [12]  The break was not complete because he continued to do work for Shawnee Press like Gentlemen Songsters.

After his death in 1996, his widow, the former Pamela Gerhart, gave his papers to the University of Buffalo.  The finding aid recalled that “as an author and teacher, Gearhart delighted in composing lively, stimulating music for young singers and instrumentalists.” [13]

Availability
Book:  “Koom Ba Yah.”  59–61 in Gentlemen Songsters, edited by Livingston Gearhart.  Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania: Shawnee Press, Inc., 1959.

Concert:  “Koom-ba-yah.”  Essex District High School, Essex, Ontario, Boys’ Glee Club.  Reported in 1962 school yearbook, Argus, edited by Sharon Greenwood.  Helmut Keil contributed “Boys’ Glee Club” on page 56.

End Notes
1.  Gentlemen Songsters.  Inside cover.
2.  “Fred Waring.”  Wikipedia website.

3.  Virginia Waring.  Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.  222–223.

4.  Fred Waring and Shawnee Press is discussed in the post for 28 March 2021.

5.  “Livingston Gearhart Papers 1933-1997, 1933-1997.”  State University of New York at Buffalo Music Library finding aid.  Available on Empire Archival Discovery website.

6.  Gearhart papers.

7.  Don Cassel and Livingston Gearhart.  Clarinet Sessions.  East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania: Shawnee Press, 1945.

8.  Laila Storch.  Marcel Tabuteau.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.  191.

9.  Livingston Gearhart.  “Dry Bones: A Rhythmic Spiritual.”  New York: Shawnee Press, 1946.

10.  WorldCat entry for “Dry Bones.”

11.  Fred Waring And His Pennsylvanians.  “Dry Bones / Ole Moses Put Pharaoh In His Place.”  Decca – 23948.  Issued 1947. [Discogs entry.]

12.  Gearhart papers.
13.  Gearhart papers.

Harry Harter - Koom Ba Yah SATB

Topic: Choral Arrangements
“Kum Ba Yah” was moving beyond music sung by groups for their own pleasure to a performance piece by 1958 when Fred Waring published a choral arrangement by Harry Harter.  It was the first one to use key changes for variation.

Harter emphasized harmony at a slow tempo.  Three groups sang the “kumbaya” verse four times.  None carried the melody, but each had part of it at one time.  After changing from one sharp  to [missing page] the sopranos sang “someone’s a-cryin’” as a descant.

After moving to two sharps, the same high voices sang “someone’s a singin’.”  The first time on one note, the second time with a descending contour, and the third alternating between two tones.

“Someone’s a-prayin’” coincided with a change to five sharps.  It ended with “So, Savior, Savior” rather than the “Oh, Lord” that slid from one note to another.

Performers
Sheet Music
Vocal Soloist: soprano in one section
Vocal Group: soprano, alto, tenor, bass
Instrumental Accompaniment: optional piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Edward Becheras Choir
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: all male group singing arrangement for mixed voices
Vocal Director: Nelson Kwei
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
Cover: African Spiritual
Dedication: “To the Maryville College Choir and Mabel”
Footnote: African dialect meaning: “Come by here.”

© Copyright MCMLVIII by SHAWNEE PRESS, Inc., Delaware Water Gap, Pa.

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: dialect for “mah”; drops terminal G’s

Verses: kumbaya verse repeated with allusions to those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS)

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord, Savior
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: uses “Savior, Savior” in last line

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS; appears most often in alto part

Time Signature: none specified, 4/4 implied
Tempo: largamente, quarter notes = 42; gets progressively slower
Rhythm: same as CRS version

Key Signature: one sharp changes to [missing page], then to two sharps and ends with five sharps

Dynamics: varies between soft (“p”) and normal (“mf,” “mp”)

Basic Structure: two sections with key change marking division

Singing Style: one syllable to one note; two syllables for “Lord” one time

Length: 3:15

Harmonic Structure: Emphasis is on harmony with group repeating the “kumbaya” verse; the upper voices begin to sing verses as a descant in second half

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano marks rhythm with four-part chords; Edward Becheras Choir sang a capella

Ending: slows tempo

Notes on Performance
Sheet music
Cover: long African mask of face in center
Color Scheme: black ink on white paper

Edward Becheras Choir
Occasion: 2016 concert
Location: stage with wooden surround
Microphones: none visible
Clothing: Black suits, white shirts, black ties

Notes on Movement
Edward Becheras Choir
Stand with feet apart on risers

Audience Perceptions
A sheet music footnote explains the title is an “African dialect meaning: ‘Come by Here’.”  The Fort Wayne Bible College interpreted “come by here” to mean one was “inviting Christ into the home.” [1]

The Music Educators Journal told readers that “Koom Ba Yah” was “an authentic African spiritual with unique appeal.” [2]

Notes on Audience
The Music Educators Journal mentioned Harter’s arrangement in February 1959, which was early enough for it be purchased for the 1959-1960 school year.  The first references I’ve found to performances are before “Kumbaya” was popularized by Joan Baez in late 1962. [3]

The arrangement must have been popular because Shawnee Press republished it for young men in 1959 and for women’s groups in 1960.  These are discussed in posts for 8 October 2023 and 29 October 2023.

Notes on Performers
Fort Wayne Bible College was founded by the Mennonite Brethren Church in 1904. [4]  The church became the United Missionary Church in 1948. [5]

Ballard, Washington, grew around a shipbuilding company that attracted Scandinavian immigrants.  It was absorbed by Seattle in 1907, [6] but kept its local high school [7] and ethnic heritage. [8]

The Edward Becheras Choir is associated with the all-boys’ Catholic High School in Singapore, which was founded by Becheras in 1935. [9]  He was born in France and trained at the Sepulchins’ Major Seminary in his native Viviers before affiliating with the Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris. [10]  In 1950, the Marist Brothers took over the school’s administration and added classes for younger boys. [11]

Nelson Kwei, director of the school’s choir, was raised in Singapore and earned a master’s degree in choral conducting from the Royal Academy of Music in London. [12]  The choir won its first major award under Kwei in 1999.  It since has become known for have students young enough to sing the parts normally reserved for female voices. [13]

Harter is discussed in the post for 29 October 2023.

Availability
Sheet Music:  Harry Harter.  “Koom Ba Yah.”  Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania: Shawnee Press, Inc., 1958 edition for SATB.  The copy I purchased was missing pages 3-7

Concert: “Koom Ba Yah.”  Fort Wayne Bible College A Capella Choir, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1961.  Reported by the school newspaper, the Fort Wayne Bible College Vision, in January-February 1961.

Concert: “Koom Ba Yah.”  Ballard High School Concert Choir, Seattle, Washington, 28 February 1962.  Reported by The Ballard News on 28 February 1962 on page 1.

Concert: Harter, arranger.  “Koom ba yah.”  Big Twelve Festival Chorus and Orchestra, Champaign High School Champaign, Illinois, 31 March 1962.  Recorded by Century Custom Recording Service of Saugus, California. [WorldCat entry.]

Concert: Catholic High School Edward Becheras Choir, Singapore.  “Koom Ba Yah.”  Uploaded to YouTube website on 22 June 2016 by alex30059.

Graphics
Cover for Shawnee Press sheet music.

End Notes
1.  “A Capella Choir Tour Planned.”  Fort Wayne Bible College Vision, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 9(1):1:January-February 1961.

2.  Item.  Music Educators Journal 45(4):February-March 1959.
3.  Joan Baez’s recording is discussed in the post for 9 October 2017.
4.  “Taylor University.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 23 September 2023.
5.  “Missionary Church.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 23 September 2023.
6.  “Ballard, Seattle.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 23 September 2023.
7.  “Ballard High School (Seattle).”  Wikipedia website; accessed 23 September 2023.
8.  Wikipedia, “Ballard.”
9.  “Catholic High School, Singapore.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 23 September 2023.

10.  “Father Edouard Becheras, MEP.”  History of the Catholic Church in Singapore website.

11. Wikipedia, “Catholic High School.”
12.  “Nelson Kwei.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 23, September 2023.
13.  “Catholic High School Edward Becheras Choir.”  VY Maps website.

Waccamaw Civil War

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The Civil War on South Carolina’s Waccamaw Neck accelerated the unification of plantation cultures into a local one that had been occurring whenever slaves from one locale met those from another. [1]  It began as soon as the state seceded from the Union on December 20, 1861. [2]

On December 30, South Carolina’s governor asked the area to erect “batteries to protect and defend the entrance to Winyah Bay and Santee River.” [3]  Welcome Bees told Genevieve Willcox Chandler that he had “gone to make a battery to Little River and to Charleston and to Florence.” [4]  The carpenter lived at Oatland, which was owned by Martha Allston Pyatt [5] and was located south of Brook Green on the Waccamaw River. [6]

At the same time, the governor was asking for military volunteers. [7]  The state’s Tenth Regiment elected Arthur Middleton Manigault its colonel. [8]  The company defending the Waccamaw Neck was commanded by Thomas West Daggett [9]  Below him was Captain Joshua Ward.  His younger brother, Mayham Ward. was first lieutenant and his youngest brother, Benjamin Huger Ward, was second lieutenant. [10]

Georgie remembered that her father, Define Horry, “have to go.  Have to go ditch and all and tend his subshun.” [11]  As mentioned in the post for 10 September 2023, Georgie appears to be the sister of Ben Horry, who lived on Joshua Ward’s Brook Green plantation.

Late in 1861, on November 11, Union forces took control of Port Royal, including Saint Helena Island in southern South Carolina.  Management of the abandoned plantations and slaves was given over to missionaries from the North, like Laura Matilda Towne and Harriet Ware. [12]

Once the United States navy had a Southern port, it began patrolling the coast.  In December, it stationed two vessels off the mouth of Winyah Bay. [13]  Manigault warned planters in January, 1862, they should prepare to move their slaves inland with provisions for a year. [14]

The need to act became acute on April 14 when Robert E. Lee ordered the movement of South Carolina’s regiments [15] to Richmond to defend the Confederacy. [16]  Manigault left Winyah Bay on March 28, leaving Ward’s local troops to defend the area [17]  As soon as the troops were gone, slaves began fleeing to Union ships. [18]

Willcox did not interview any slaves who fled, for the obvious reason they did not return after the war’s end.  Gabe Lance recalled: “Some my people run away from Sandy Islant.  Go Oaks sea-shore and Magnolia Beach and take row-boat and gone out and join with the Yankee.  Dem crowd never didn’t come back.” [19]

The Oaks [20] was the home of Hagar Brown’s parents.  At nearby Brook Green, Georgie said “Time o’ the war the colored people hear ‘bout Yankee.  Not a one eber understand to run way and go to Yankee boat from WE plantation.” [21]

On May 22, Union boats sailed ten miles up the Waccamaw River where they seized rice and accepted slaves. [22]  They learned more about the plantations and the loyalties of the owners from those who fled. [23]  On June 30, they sailed thirty miles up the river, [24] on July 21 destroyed salt works run by Joshua Ward, and on July 29 targeted the plantation of John D. Magill, who was reported to be an “unkind” master. [25]  By the end of the month, the Navy had 1,700 run-away slaves. [26]

After the first foray in May, 1862, the Union commander reported: “The rebels are just now very much frightened, and are leaving their plantations in every direction, driving their slaves before them to the pine woods.” [27]

Horry told Chandler that: “Two Yankee gun boats come up Waccamaw River!  Come by us Plantation.  One stop to Sandy Island, Montarena landing.  One gone Watsaw (Wachesaw landing).  Old Marsh Josh and all the white buckra gone to Marlboro county to hide from Yankee.  Gon up Waccamaw river and up Pee Dee river, to Marlboro county, in a boat by name Pilot Boy.  Take Colonel Ward and all the Cap’n to hide from gun boat til peace declare.” [28]

Once they had time, planters moved their slaves on flat boats down the Waccamaw to the bay, then up the Pee Dee river.  Sabe Rutledge, who lived on the Ark Plantation [29] north of Murrells Inlet, told Chandler: “Flat boat full up gone down Waccamaw.  Uncle Andrew Aunt the one got his eye shot out (by patrollers) took ’em to camp on North Island.  Never so much a button and pin in my life!  Small-pox in camp.  Had to leave ’em.” [30]

Horry recalled Ward had agents “take all the people from Brookgreen and Springfield—and carry dem to Marlboro” county. [31]  Similarly, Georgie recalled: “They put you in the flat and put you over there.  When they tink Yankee comin’ you take to Sandhole Crick for hide.”  She added: “De Ward didn’t lose nothin’.  They move out the plantation.  Col. Ward took ’em in a flat to Mulbro.” [32]

Ellen Godfrey, who lived on Ward’s Longwood plantation, said it was “Flat ’em up to Marlboro!  (All the slaves)  Ten days or two weeks going.  PeeDee bridge, stop!  Go in gentlemen barn!  Turn duh bridge.  Been dere a week.  Had to go and look the louse on we.  Three hundred head o’ people been dere.  Couldn’t pull we clothes off.  (On flat.)  Boat named Riprey.  Woman confine on boat.” [33]

Hagar Brown was born during the journey.  “Ma say they on flat going to islant (island), see cloud, pray God send rain!” [34]  Her cousin-in-law, Louisa Brown, gave more details: “My husband mother have baby on the flat going to Marion and he Auntie Cinda have a baby on that flat.” [35]

Chandler asked about the trip, but not about life in makeshift camps.  Godfrey did tell her: “Get to Marlboro where they gwine.  Put in wagon.  Carry to the street.  Major Drake Plantation.” [36]  She added, they had a “dirt camp to hide we from Yankee.  Have a Street Row of house.”  She indicated she continued to weave there. [37]

Marlboro County is on the border between South and North Carolina. [38]  Zachariah Alford Drake [39] had land near the Scots settlement of Blenheim where he raised corn, mules, sheep, and hogs. [40]

The movement of slaves, with their owners and overseers, into Marlboro County probably benefitted the landowners whose sons, like Zachariah Jordan Drake, [41] were among the thousand men sent to the front. [42]  Slaves owned by Joshua Ward and Thomas Pinckney Alston [43] had to have stayed there for more than two years, from the time of flight until Union troops liberated them on their march north at war’s end.

One guesses the displaced slaves learned more skills because they had to have had to grow their own food in a different environment.  One suspects slaves from different plantations owned by Ward mingled more, which would have contributed to the developing common culture.

While the slaves were sequestered in Marlboro County, Murrells Inlet was converted into a port by blockaders who were kept from Charleston and the mouth of the Winyah Bay.  They attracted more attention from the Union navy. [44]

By late November of 1864, Joshua Ward had resigned from the Confederate Army and moved to England.  Mayham was left in command of the local troops. [45]  He soon joined his wife and children in the North. [46]

End Notes
1.  This is discussed in the posts for 3 September 2023 and 10 September 2023.

2.  “South Carolina in the American Civil War.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 14 September 2023.

3.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County, South Carolina, Historical Society, 2002.  388.

4.  Welcome Bees, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  1–10 in Coming Through: Voices of a South Carolina Gullah Community from WPA Oral Histories Collected by Genevieve W. Chandler, edited by Kincaid Mills, Genevieve C. Peterkin, and Aaron McCollough.  Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008.  8.

5.  Coming Through.  1.

6.  Charles Joyner.  Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.  Map on page 17.

7.  Rogers.  387, 389, 391.
8.  Rogers.  390–391.
9.  Rogers.  389.

10.  Rogers.  392.  Rogers assumed the “Wards provided the necessary equipment and provisions.”

11.  Georgie, statement provided by Ben Horry.  2:236–238 in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves – South Carolina Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  2:236.

12.  Saint Helena Island is mentioned in the posts for 20 September 2018, 25 September 2018, and 27 September 2018.

13.  Rogers.  394.
14.  Rogers.  396.
15.  “Robert E. Lee, Day-by-Day.”  Lee Family Archive website.

16.  Benjamin F. Cooling.  “The Civil War; 1862.”  184–208 in American Military History.  Washington, DC: United States Army, Center of Military History, 1989.  221.

17.  Rogers.  397.
18.  Rogers.  399.

19.  Gabe Lance, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  274–275 in Coming Through.  275.

20.  The Oaks is discussed in the posts for 23 July 2023 and 30 July 2023.
21.  Georgie.  2:237.
22.  Rogers.  400.
23.  Rogers.  398–399, 402.
24.  Rogers.  401.
25.  Rogers.  402.
26.  Rogers.  399.
27.  George A. Prentiss, quoted by Rogers.  402–403.

28.  Ben Horry, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chander.  2:219–236 in Slave Narratives.  2:227.

29.  Slave Narratives.  4:49.

30.  Sabe Rutledge, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  4:59–70 in Slave Narratives.  4:51.  North Island is in Winyah Bay. [47]

31.  Horry.  2:233–234.
32.  Georgie.  2:237.

33.  Ellen Godfrey, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chander.  2:118–127 in Slave Narratives.  2:119.

34.  Hagar Brown, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  In Slave Narratives, volume 1, no pages in on-line edition.

35.  Louisa Brown, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  In Slave Narratives, volume 1, no pages in on-line edition.

36.  Godfrey.  2:119.
37.  Godfrey.  2:120.

38.  “Marlboro County, South Carolina.”  Wikipedia website.

39.  KesterDV.  “MAJ Zachariah Alford Drake.”  Find a Grave website, 8 June 2013.  His wife, Sophia Alford, was the mother of Agenora Drake, who married James Alexander Peterkin. [48]  Their son, William George Peterkin, married Chandler’s daughter. [49]  Zachariah’s second wife was Susan A. Peterkin.

40.  J. A. W. Thomas.  A History of Marlboro County with Traditions and Sketches of Numerous Families.  Atlanta, Georgia: The Foote and Davies Company, 1897.  192.

41.  KesterDV.  “CPT Zachariah Jordan Drake.”  Find a Grave website, 9 June 2013.

42.  William Light Kinney, Jr.  “Marlboro County.”  South Carolina Encyclopedia website, 8 June 2016; last updated 11 August 2022.

43.  Jose Allston, mentioned in the post for 6 August 2023, lived on The Oaks plantation around 1854.  When he died in 1855, it reverted to his maternal grandfather, William Algernon Allston.  He died in 1860 and The Oaks fell to his half-brother, Thomas Pinckney Allston. [50]

44.  Rogers.  408, 410.
45.  Rogers.  414.
46.  Rogers.  426.
47.  Rogers.  Map on inside back cover.

48.  Herman Ruple Durr.  “Agenora Drake Peterkin.”  Find a Grave website, 12 July 2009.

49.  Herman Ruple Durr.  “William George Peterkin Sr.”  Find a Grave website, 12 July 2009.

50.  James L. Michie.  The Oaks Plantation Revealed: An Archaeological Survey of the Home of Joseph and Theodosia Burr Alston, Brookgreen Gardens, Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina: Waccamaw Center for Historical and Cultural Studies, 1993.  12.

Waccamaw Slave Life

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The quality of life of slaves on the Waccamaw Neck depended, in part, on the prosperity of their masters.  They were more likely to be sold when their owners died or were in debt.  Indebtedness, in turn, was related to both personal character and international markets.  Men had problems when prices for rice fell.

According to Peter Coclanis, prices were relatively stable from the late 1810s through the early 1830s, with a severe dip in the middle 1830s. [1]  Planters had limited resources: the supply of available land was limited by the action of the tides.  Once individuals had converted all their swamps into rice fields, there was no more.  Likewise, once the trans-Atlantic slave trade closed, the only source for new labor was internal increases.

The one element planters could control was the quality of their seed.  As mentioned in the post for 6 August 2023, Joshua John Ward planted 400 acres of his Carolina Gold in 1842, and all his fields in 1843.  The larger grains gave him an edge over his neighbors, until 1844 when he made the seed available to them.  From that time, the prices paid for South Carolina rice rose according to Coclanis.

Rather than invest his profits in a grander house or social life in Charleston, as many of his contemporaries did, Ward purchased their plantations.  By 1850, he owned six along the Waccamaw River: his original Brook Green; Prospect Hill [2] and Alderly [3] which he acquired from the family of Benjamin Huger; Orzanita which came from John Izard Middleton, Jr.; [4] Longwood [5] and Springfield. [6]

Little has been published about Ward, beyond his ownership of plantations and the fact his estate owned 1,130 slaves in 1860. [7]  It is not known how many slaves came with each plantation, or how many were on any one.  Ward owned other land that would have used captive labor.

What we do know about slave life on Ward’s land comes from Ben Horry, [8] whose father was a driver at Brook Green.  He was born in 1854, [9] a year after Ward died [10] and his son, Joshua Ward, inherited the plantation.

The Wards used the standard form of labor organization on their plantations with drivers answerable to overseers.  Joshua John was using an overseer at Brook Green even before he began buying plantations. [11]  One reason his son used overseers was he spent his summers on the French Broad in the mountains to avoid malaria. [12]

Horry had few good words for the overseers.  He described them as the “worst kind of ‘White trash’—respected less by negroes than by whites.” [13]

Apart from class, he attributed their behavior to economic insecurity.  “White oberseer a little different for one reason!  White obersheer want to hols hid job.  Nigger obersheer don’t care too much.  He know he going stay on plantation anyhow.” [14]  He added, “Them things different when my father been make the head man.” [15]

While slaves lived in quarters on particular plantations, Horry suggested the younger Ward moved slaves from place to place as needed.  Horry recalled: “Left Brookgreen go Watsaw; left Watsaw done Longwood.  Plant ALL DEM plantation.  I work there.  Cut rice there.” [16]  This did not disrupt families, and contributed to the culture that shared along the Waccamaw that was suggested in the post for 3 September 2023.

Horry told Genevieve Willcox Chandler about three tasks he remembered.  Depending on the season, he was expected to break up or mash half an acre in a day, dig ten compasses, or cut rice on half an acre. [17]  These all were jobs that required physical strength, rather than special knowledge.  He also recalled the way some drivers manipulated the task system.  “If one them driver want you [. . .] they give you task you CAN’T DO.  You getting this beating not for you task—for you flesh.” [18]

No one was spared.  Horry’s mother was a nurse.  He remembered seeing a long gash on her. [19]  “I stay there look wid DESE HERE (eyes)!  Want to know one thing—MY OWN DADDY DERE couldn’t move!  Couldn’t venture dat over-sheer!  (Colored overseer)  Everybody can’t go to boss folks! [. . .]  Some kin talk it to Miss Bess.  Everybody don’t see Miss Bess.” [20]

Some of Horry’s father’s status on Brook Green came from his musical talents.  He and his two brothers “were Colonel Ward’s musicanier.  Make music for his dater and the white folks to dance.  Great fiddlers, drummers.  Each one could play fiddle, beat drum, blow fife.  All three were treat with the same education.” [21]

It sometimes is difficult to place Horry’s memories into a chronological framework.  Joshua John was called the Colonel, and so Horry would not have known about the dance first hand.  Georgie, who appears to have been Horry’s sister, echoed what became family tradition.  She recalled her Daddy “wuz a kind of musicianer for the Ward fambly. [22]

What is clear from Horry’s recollections is that slave children not only were taught to work at a young age, but to perform.  Joshua and Bess Ward returned from their summer in the mountains with fabric for new clothes for the slaves.

“Sund’y come we have to go to the Big House for Marse Josh to see how the clothes fit.  And him and Miss Bess made us run races to see who run the fastest.  That the happiest time I members when I wuz a boy to Brookgreen.” [23]

End Notes
1.  Peter A. Coclanis.  “Distant Thunder: The Creation of a World Market in Rice and the Transformations It Wrought.”  The American Historical Review 98(4):1050–1078:October 1993.  Charts on pages 1073 and 1075.

2.  “Prospect Hill Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

3.  “Alderly Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

4.  “Oryzantia Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

5.  “Longwood Plantation – Murrells Inlet – Horry County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

6.  Description of “Journal of Joshua John Ward plantations, 1831-1869.”  South Carolina Historical Society website.

7.  Tom Blake.  “Georgetown County, South Carolina: Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules and Surname Matches for African Americans on 1870 Census.”  Ancestry website.

8.  Ben Horry, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  219–236 in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves – South Carolina Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  2:226.

9.  Coming Through: Voices of a South Carolina Gullah Community from WPA Oral Histories Collected by Genevieve W. Chandler, edited by Kincaid Mills, Genevieve C. Peterkin, and Aaron McCollough.  Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008.  88.

10.  Patti Yourko Burns.  “Col Joshua John Ward.”  Find a Grave website, 27 March 2009; last updated by Daniel L.

11.  See post for 6 August 2023 on the role of his overseer in selecting Carolina Gold rice.

12.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:224.
13.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:224.
14.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:224.
15.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:228.

16.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:223.  Wacheshaw and Longwood were enough north that the rice may have ripened a few days later than on plantations farther south along the river.

17.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:223.
18.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:223.
19.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:223.

20.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:224.  Joshua Ward was married to Elizabeth Ryan Mortimer. [24]

21.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:226.  The post for 6 August 2023 includes a description of a dance sponsored by Joshua John Ward where the elder Horry may have played.

22.  Georgie.  2:236–238 in Slave Narratives.  2:237.  Provided by Ben Horry.
23.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:227.
24.  “Joshua Ward.”  Mormon’s Family Search website.

Assembling Slave Communities on the Waccamaw

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
Land and slaves were treated as items that could be inherited or sold separately.  While the status of slaves as chattel was inherent in the slave trade, its legal basis was established in 1677 when a representative of the Royal African Company [1] sued a Barbados planter for unpaid debts.

The planter, Penny, argued slaves were equivalent to villeins in Medieval English law who were tied to land and could not be separated from it.  The court sided with the merchant, Thomas Butts. [2]

Thus, when Benjamin Allston made a will before his death in 1811, he gave his working plantation to his oldest son, Joseph Waties, [3] and Matanzas [4] to his other sons, Robert Francis Withers and William Washington.  His wife, Charlotte Anne, moved there with the two young boys to manage the land, and repay her husband’s debts in 1819. [5]

Separately, Benjamin allocated 18 slaves to particular heirs, and decreed the other 126 should be divided between his heirs, who included his wife, three sons, and three daughters. [6]  This left Joseph with a plantation with insufficient manpower, and forced all but 107 of the Waverly slaves to be moved to new locations.

Waverly’s land originally was part of a grant made by George I to Thomas Hepworth in 1711. [7]  It lay north of the Hobcow Barony claimed by one of the colony’s proprietor’s, John Carteret, [8] and south of the one given to a landgrave, Robert Daniel, the same year. [9]  Like the other land grants it was a reward for services.  Hepworth was a lawyer who had served as clerk to the House of Commons Assembly. [10]

Hepworth’s son sold an undeveloped tract on Wahocca Bluff to Percival Pawley in 1737.  He was the son of the Percival mentioned in the post for 8 January 2023 who bought the land from the owner of Daniel’s claim, Thomas Smith.  He, in turn, sold it to his brother George in 1743. [11]  George was the one developed the Wachoker Plantation. [12]  At that time, most of the slaves were coming from modern Sénégal-Gambia and Sierra Leone. [13]

George and Mary’s son William died in 1776, and the land was divided into two plantations for his daughters.  The one who inherited Washington’s Valley was married to Josias William Allston, [14] the grandson of the Josias Alston who moved to North Carolina. [15]  All that’s known bout about the daughter who received Montpelier is that she married her sister’s brother. [16]

Nothing is known about the condition of the plantations or their slaves after the British ravaged so much during the American Revolution.  William’s son-in-law could have done little to rebuild Montpelier, since the slave trade was closed until 1801.  Then, slaves began coming from Kongo, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast of modern Ghana. [17]

Benjamin Allston bought Montpelier in 1807 and renamed it Waverly. [18]  That was the year the slave trade closed again, and any new slaves either were purchased from neighbors or were offspring of existing slave women.

His other plantation, Matanzas, was on the Peedee river and apparently had been purchased as speculation. [19]  It not only was undeveloped but mortgaged. [20]  His widow hired some of her sons’ slaves out to others. [21]  This exposed them to slaves from other plantations.

When William died in 1823, Robert and Joseph each inherited half his share of Matanzas. [22]  No mention is made of the fate of his slaves.  Some may have been taken back to Waverly by Joseph.

Robert’s mother died in 1824, and he received seven of her slaves. [23]  The disposition of the others is not mentioned.  If any went to her daughters, then they may have rejoined ones moved from Waverly in 1819.

To begin developing Matanzas as a plantation, Robert purchased nine more slaves from his mother’s estate who joined the 33 slaves living on the Peedee land.  Then, in 1828, he bought 34 individuals from the estate of Robert Francis Withers. [24]  This doubled the population of his slave quarters with people who may have had different traditions.  Whether the group adapted or changed the community ethos depended on whether it contained strong or charismatic individuals.

In 1836, Robert sold eight of the Waverly slaves to Joseph’s wife, Mary Allan. [25]  They returned to Matanzas, when she could not pay him.  This probably was related to Joseph’s death in 1837.  He was in debt, and Robert sold fifty-one slaves who left Waverly for other plantations. [26]

The sales of slaves when owners died was not unusual in rice country when men died young.  Benjamin was 43, William was 19, and Joseph 36. [27]

The separation of slaves and land, and the early deaths of plantation owners created a situation that was different from that found in Georgia where Pierce Butler’s slaves were kept on his island plantation for several generations, and created their own Gullah dialect. [28]  Likewise, William Francis Allen found slaves on different plantations on Saint Helena Island during the Civil War each had distinctive ways of speaking. [29]

Along the Waccamaw Neck a more generalized culture could develop.  When Robert started planting on Matanzas, he began with slaves who shared the culture of the slave quarters on Waverly.  When he purchased slaves elsewhere, those men and women were forced to adapt to the existing mores of the Peedee land.

Likewise, when he sold Joseph’s slaves, the Waverly culture was both dispersed with each individual, and altered by mingling on new plantations.  However, those buyers were local men.  Robert made clear, he wasn’t trying to get the highest prices, but was trying to keep “rice” slaves in the area, so people who grew rice did not have to pay higher “cotton” slave prices. [30]  As a consequence, he did most of his trades within his area. [31]

This created an environment where the local patterns of speech became standardized within the region.  Likewise, religious practices would have undergone the same sort of sifting and selection to create something with unique traits along the Waccamaw river.  When slaves returned to Waverly, even for short periods, they brought with them slightly modified variants of the home plantation’s culture.

The trend toward homogenization was abetted by overseers, who often spent little time at any one plantation, but moved from one to another, taking their expectations of slave behavior with them.  Harold Easterby found the names of seven men who served at Waverly, [32] and eight at Manzanos. [33]  Some were dismissed for their cruelty; [34] at least one was described as a bad man at another plantation where he worked. [35]

Like many planters, Robert prided himself for not selling any of his slaves, until the Civil War.  However, Easterby noted he did try to sell some to his sister-in-law and later sold four to the miller at Waverly in the 1850s. [36]  Robert overlooked the disruptions he caused by buying slaves from other plantations.

End Notes
1.  The Royal African Company was controlled by Charles I through his brother James.  It had been established as the Royal Adventurers into Africa in 1660, [37] and was reorganized in 1672 as the RAC.  Five of the owners also were proprietors of South Carolina: John Berkeley, George Carteret, John Colleton, Anthony Ashley Cooper, and William Craven. [38]  The company is mentioned in post for 10 January 2019.

2.  Holly Brewer.  “‘Twelve Judges in Scarlet’ The Seventeenth-Century Contest over a Common Law of Slavery for England and its Empire.”  Penn Legal History Consortium, 3 October 2012.  Republished on Social Science Research Network website.  Only last names appeared in legal records.  Brewer was able to identify Butts, but there were several possible Penny planters on Barbados.

3.  J. H. Easterby.  The South Carolina Rice Plantation as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston.  Chicago: University of Chicago, 1945.  New edition issued by University of South Carolina of Columbia in 2004.  19.

4.  I am using names used at the time; Matanzas was renamed Chicora Woods in 1853. [39]

5.  Easterby.  19–20.  As mentioned in the post for 6 August 2023, Charlotte Ann Allston was an Allston cousin before she married an Allston.

6.  Easterby.  28.

7.  Susan A. Scheno.  “Ricefields: Our Historical Legacy.”  Ricefields website.  7.  None of the individuals who could have mentioned “Come by Here” to Genevieve Willcox Chandler was associated with Waverly.  I am using it as an example of a Waccamaw Neck plantation because its slave population is well documented.

8.  Henry A. M. Smith.  “The Baronies of South Carolina.  Part X. Hobcow Barony.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 14(2):61-80:April 1913.  62.

9.  Daniel’s purchase and his quick resale to another landgrave, Thomas Smith, are discussed in the post for 8 January 2023.

10.  Walter B. Edgar and N. Louise Bailey.  Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1977.  2:313–314.

11.  Scheno.  7.

12.  Robert Walden Coggeshall.  Ancestors and Kin.  Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988.  153.

13.  This information is from the post for 10 March 2019.
14.  Scheno.  8.

15.  Josias Alston was the son of John Allston and grandson of the immigrant John Allston. [40]  He inherited Turkey Hill, which he sold in 1772 to his cousin Joseph Allston, the son of his father’s brother William. [41]  Rowena Nyland said that “the reason Josias sold his inheritance is unknown.  He relocated in the Little River area on the North/South Carolina border on lands which his will suggests he obtained from Joseph Allston.” [42]

16.  Scheno.  8.
17.  This information is from the post for 10 March 2019.
18.  Scheno.  8.
19.  Easterby.  19–20.
20.  Easterby.  20.
21.  Easterby.  19.
22.  Easterby.  28.
23.  Easterby.  28.
24.  Easterby.  28.

25.  Easterby.  29.  She was the sister of Robert M. Allan, a Charleston cotton factor. [43]

26.  Easterby.  29.

27.  Coggeshall.  172–173.  Ages are calculated from birth and death dates and may be off by a year.

28.  Lillian F. Sinclair.  “My Recollections of Darien in the Late Seventies and Eighties.  66–68 in Buddy Sullivan.  High Water on the Bar.  Darien, Georgia: Darien Development Authority, 2009.  67.  “These Butler Negroes were a race apart.  The never, until years after the war, mingled with other Negroes.  They were not allowed to do so by Pierce Butler and, after his death, kept to their tradition.  They had a peculiar lingo which one had to be familiar with before one could understand it.”

29.  William Francis Allen.  “Introduction.”  The Slave Songs of the United States.  Edited by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison.  New York: A. Simpson and Company, 1867.  xxiv.  “The different plantations have their own peculiarities, and adepts profess to be able to determine by speech of a negro what part of the island he belongs to, or even, in some cases, his plantation.  I can myself vouch for the marked peculiarities of one plantation from which I had scholars, and which are hardly more than a mile distant from another which lacked these peculiarities.”

30.  Easterby.  30.

31.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  329.

32.  Easterby.  23–26.  Mr. Sessions, John Oliver, Gabriel L. Ellis, George C. Gotea, Benjamin A. Tillman, G. Savage Smith, and Thomas Hemingway.

33.  Easterby.  23–26.  Neighbor, James Hull, Daniel P. Avant, Thomas Sanders, Gabriel L. Ellis, J. A. Hemingway, William B. Millican, and Jessse Belflowers.

34.  Easterby.  24–25.  Avant and Ellis.
35.  Easterby.  25.  Ellis.
36.  Easterby.  29.
37.  Hugh Thomas.  The Slave Trade.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.  198.
38.  Thomas.  201.
39.  Easterby.  19–20.
40.  Coggeshall.  172.

41.  Rowena Nyland.  “Historical Analysis of the Willbrook, Oatland, and Turkey Hill Plantations.”  14–60 in Archaeological and Historical Examinations of Three Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Rice Plantations on the Waccamaw Neck, edited by Michael Trinkley.  Columbia, South Carolina: Chicora Foundation, May 1993.  30–31.

42.  Nyland.  32.
43.  Easterby.  66.

Camp Farthest Out - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The American Camping Association (ACA) included “Kum Ba Yah” in a songbook edited in 1958 by Walter Anderson. [1]  By then, the song already had begun seeping into summer camp repertoires through youth groups like the Girl Scouts, [2] YWCA, [3] and 4-H. [4]  It also had begun spreading through religious networks [5] and into the folk-music revival movement. [6]

By 1960, when it was included in a songbook published for the Camp Farthest Out movement, “Kumbaya” was moving into the repertoire of churches that sought personal contact with Christ.  A Presbyterian, Glenn Clark, founded the group in 1930 [7] as an alternative to what he saw as the sterile emphasis by the dominant denominations on passive lectures rather than active prayer. [8]

While most of the day in his camps was devoted to discussions, the parts he thought were the most conducive to producing meaningful religious experiences were spent in producing art and in movement as ways to “losing our self-consciousness in a sense of oneness with God.” [9]

Clark discovered the importance of music at his first camp session on Lake Koronis in Minnesota when Glen Harding began leading songs.  He wrote:

“Strange we had not thought of having a song leader present!  And Glenn was a revelation to us of what a true song leader ‘born of the spirit’ could be.  Of all the forms of spiritual and aesthetic co-ordination, this most wonderful means of all, the method of song, had been left out of the picture.” [10]

During the music hour, he noted “some songs preach and some songs teach, some songs pray.”  Clark wanted “every song period” to be “a complete religious experience in itself.” [11]

The movement expanded from 22 camps in 1950 to 40 in 1960. [12]  This was when the organization determined it needed a songbook for use in its camps.  Richard Shull became the editor.  He was raised in the Church of the Brethren, but had worked with Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists. [13]

These Brethren had their roots in Germany, and appeared in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1723 as the German Baptist Brethren.  Because they believe in full immersion, adult baptism, they were derided as Dunkards. The group held love feasts, encouraged simplicity in clothing, and healed by laying on of hands. [14]

Shull may have heard “Kumbaya” anywhere.  He credited Hymns of Universal Praise, but it was not that version.  Bliss Wiant and Carlton Young had provided four-part harmony. [15]  While most tunes in CFO Songs had such forms, “Kum Ba Yah” was one of 17 that had a single melodic line.  Wiant and Young had used three CRS verses; Shull used the four from the original CRS publication.  This was simply the copyright Lynn Rohrbough, the owner of CRS, chose to provide Shull.

The Farthest Out collection contained 225 songs plus “How Great Thou Art” as an advertisement from Manna Music.  Only 15 were secular, and, of those, four were secular songs given religious interpretations.  For instance, Shull suggested substituting “father” for “river in the Girl Scouts’ “Peace, I Ask of Thee.” [16]

The religious songs included 18 identified as Negro spirituals.  The rest reflected no particular religious tradition: a couple were old hymns like “Amazing Grace” and some, like “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” came out of the late nineteenth-century gospel music tradition.  The largest topics in the index were Aspiration, Christ, Dedication, God’s Care, and Trust.

Performers
Vocal Group: single melodic line
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
From HYMNS OF UNIVERSAL PRAISE.

Copyright 1956 by Cooperative Recreation Service, Inc.  Used by permission.

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: none
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying

Verses: those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) – kumbaya, praying, crying, singing

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: 4-verse song
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final Lord
Ending: none

Notes on Performance
Cover: music staff with Christmas ornaments for stars
Color Scheme: blue-green cover with black ink
Plate: general size and style of hymnal with four-part harmony for most songs

Audience Perceptions
The footnote said: “‘Kum Ba Yah’ means ‘Come by Here’.”

The topical index suggested its themes were “God’s Care” and “Social Concern.”

Notes on Audience
The songbook was printed four times between 1960 and 1965, the date of my copy

Notes on Performers
Camp Farthest Out did not sponsor residential camps.  Only one in Maryland was and is a member of the ACA. [17]  Instead, the organization offered sessions of various lengths where people could escape from the routine and spend time in prayer. [18]  In this way it may be a continuation of the Scots’ holy fairs described by Leigh Schmidt. [19]  As mentioned in the post for 8 November 2020, Schmidt believed these were the precursors to the Cane Ridge revival in Bourbon County, Kentucky, in 1801.

No direct link exists between Clark and Cane Ridge, and he may simply have reinvented a particular type of religious retreat.  He was raised in Des Moines, Iowa, and educated at Grinnell College. [20]  The Congregational school then was involved with the social gospel movement. [21]

However, one of Clark’s immigrant ancestors, Archibald W. Glenn, moved from Ireland to Nicholas County, Kentucky, sometime before he died in 1826. [22]  Nicholas was the home of Daniel Boone and lay directly northeast of Bourbon County. [23]

William Russell Shull’s immigrant ancestor, Peter Scholl, was born in Germany in 1704, [24] and his son, Frederick Scholl, was born in New Jersey in 1734.  He died in Pennsylvania, [25] where the family stayed until members began moving west in the 1830s.  Shull himself was born in Macoupin County, Illinois, [26] and spent the years after World War I serving Brethren churches in Indiana and Illinois.  At one on 22 May 1921 at the Clear Creek Church, “Catherine Forney led the song services.”  The love feast was held in August. [27]

He married Ruth Marjorie Hanson in 1922.  Sometime before 1950, they divorced [28] and he married Eva Henson, who was either the widow or ex-wife of a man named Brown. [29]  This may be the reason Shull became involved with religious denominations outside the Brethren.

Eva taught math at Hyde Park High School in Chicago [30] until she retired in 1968. [31]  She and Shull moved to Timbercrest, a retirement community run by the Brethren in North Manchester, Indiana.  After she died in 1971, Russell published Letters to Eva in Heaven. [32]

Shull married Mildred Morgan in 1972, and she survived him when he died in 1985.  Before she moved to Timbercrest, she had taught chemistry in Ottawa Township, Illinois.  Her family requested memorial contributions be made to the church’s Heifer Project, [33] which Rohrbough had supported in the 1950s. [34]

Shull had two daughters with his first wife.  One happened to be living twenty miles from my hometown when she died in 2019.  Her obituary said she “loved music and encouraged her children in their musical pursuits.” [35]

Availability
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  163 in CFO Songs, edit by Eva and Russell Shull.  Chicago, Illinois: Camp and Retreat Songs, 1960.

End Notes
1.  For more on the ACA songbook, see the post for 4 June 2023.

2.  For more on the Girl Scouts, see the posts for 27 November 2022 and 4 December 2022.

3.  For more on the YWCA, see the post for 11 December 2022.
4.  For more on 4-H, see the post for 18 December 2022.

5.  For more on the spread of “Kumbaya” in my part of Michigan, see the post for 13 August 2023.

6.  For more the folk revival movement, see the posts on Tony Saletan for 23 March 2023 and Pete Seeger for 20 August 2023.

7.  “History of CFO.”  Page on CFO of North American website.

8.  Glenn Clark.  “The Camp Farthest Out.”  197-208 in A Man’s Reach.  New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949.  197.

9.  Ruth Raymond.  Quoted by Clark.  200.
10.  Clark.  204.
11.  Clark.  207.
12.  “History of CFO.”

13.  Entry on Amazon website for William Russell Shull.  The Universe Still Sings: With Notes on Creative Writing.  Durham, North Carolina: Religion and Health Press, 1957.

14.  “Church of the Brethren.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 27 August 2023.
15.  Hymns of Universal Praise is discussed in the post for 2 October 2022.

16.  CFO Songs.  215.  “Peace of the River” was written by Glendora Gosling and Viola Wood at a Girl Scout training session held on a Kentucky river boat [36].  Janet Tobitt published it in Sing Me Your Song O in 1941.  CRS included it in Songs of Many Nations in 1944.

17.  Entry for Farthest Out, Inc.  98 in National Directory of Accredited Camps for Boys and Girls.  Martinsville, Indiana: American Camping Association, 14th edition, 1974.

“Camp Farthest Out Inc.”  ACA Camps website.  It is a day camp.

18.  Mark Hicks.  “Camps Farthest Out/Journey Farthest Out.”  Hicks’ Truth Unity website, 23 April 2023.

19.  Leigh Eric Schmidt.  Holy Fairs.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.
20.  “Founder | Glenn Clark.” CFO International website.
21.  “Grinnell College.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 27 August 2023.

22.  Brenda Goldy.  “Pvt Archibald W. Glenn Sr.”  Find a Grave website, 12 April 2008; last updated by Andree Swanson.  He was the father of the wife of Glen’s great-grandfather.

23.  “Nicholas County, Kentucky.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 27 August 2023.
24.  “Peter Scholl.”  Geni website; last updated 25 November 2014.

25.  Charles Sheldon Simcox, Jr.  “Frederick Scholl.”  Geni website; last updated 14 December 2014.

26.  Gibson ‘Gibby’ Brack.  “William Russell Schull (Shull).”  Geni website; last updated 13 July 2022.

27.  Items in The Gospel Messenger.  Elgin, Illinois: Brethren Publishing House, volume 70, 1921.

28.  “Ruth Marjorie Hanson.”  Mormon’s Family Search website.  Ruth died in 1987.

29.  “Mabel Irene Brown SEAMAN (born HENSON), 1897 - 1962.”  My Heritage website.

30.  Aitchpe yearbook, Hyde Park High School, Chicago, Illinois, 1951.  23.

31.  “Mrs. William Shull.”  Chicago Tribune 28 April 1971.  Reprinted by Bonnie Dagen.  “SHULL Obituaries from Chicago area.”  Genealogy website, 1 June 2004.

32.  William Russell Shull.  Letters to Eva in Heaven.  Saint Paul, Minnesota: Macalester Park Publishing Company, 1972.

33.  OPPSheryl.  “Mildred Morgan Shull.”  Find a Grave website, 16 February 2010.
34.  For more on Rohbough and the Brethren project, see the post for 395.

35.  “Iris Zieger, 1924 - 2019.”  Jackson Citizen Patriot, Jackson, Michigan, 7 October 2019.

36.  Eleanor L. Thomas.  Girl Scout Pocket Songbook.  New York: Girls Scouts of the U.S.A., 1956.  7.  The opening line is “Peace I ask of thee of river.”

University Settlement Camp - Kumbaya

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Indianola, a Methodist family-camp based in Columbus, Ohio, included “Kumbaya” in a March, 1955, songbook published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) of Delaware, Ohio.  John Blocher, Jr., transcribed it from the singing of Kathryn Thompson Good.  In May of that year, it was sung at the annual meeting of the Buckeye Recreation Workshop attended by Good in Urbana, Ohio. [1]  This introduced the song to 4-H leaders.

In January of 1956, the owner of CRS, Lynn Rohrbough, advertized the song’s availability to his customers in a Song Sampler. [2]  Before the Sampler’s formal release, copies of the pamphlet probably were distributed at a meeting of the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM) in Athens, Ohio, over the Christmas holidays.  Rosa Page Welch and Frederick Hilborn Talbot recalled singing “Kumbaya” there. [3]

Rohrbough remembered one of the first songbooks to include “Kum Ba Yah” was Hymns of Universal Praise, which was compiled in February and March of 1956 for the North East Ohio conference of the Methodist Church by Bliss Wiant and Carlton Young. [4]  In May, “Kumbaya” was sung at the youth night of the church’s general conference in Minneapolis.  The post for 9 October 2022 theorized that it was introduced by someone in the Ohio Wesleyan University choir, which was in town that evening.  The school is in Delaware, Ohio, and Wiant was serving in the local church.

Agents of Rohrbough introduced the song to secular, youth-group leaders in 1957.  Max Exner included “Kum Ba Yah” in a songster he edited for Iowa 4-H groups, [5] while Augustus Zanzig probably was responsible for its inclusion in Chansons de Notre Chalet.  That latter was edited by Marion Roberts for the International Girl Guides, and distributed in this country by the Girl Scouts. [6]  Soon after, Zanzig suggest the YWCA use it in Sing Along. [7]  Their books took the song into girls’ summer resident camps.

These movements were not accomplished through the printed word alone.  Wiant had been a missionary in China and likely attended the SVM meeting, where he may have observed the participants’ reaction to the song. [8]  Similarly, Zanzig was at the 1956 meeting of the Buckeye workshop and probably included a transcription in the meeting notes at the request of attendees. [9]

The post for last week (13 August 2023) detailed how the song began percolating through the veins of the Methodist church.  I noted some church leader may have learned it at a meeting or from a songbook, and then introduced it in a Methodist Youth Fellowship leadership-training session attended by a teacher in my hometown.  He lead it at a Sunday evening MYF meeting in the fall of 1958 or spring of 1959.  Members of MYF were singing it on the high-school band bus in the fall of 1969, where I learned it.  By then it was at least three removes from a CRS source and the form had changed from a four-verse song to an open-ended one with verse-burden format.

“Kumbaya” crossed a cultural boundary in the spring of 1957 when Tony Saletan performed it at the Swarthmore College Folk Festival.  He probably learned it from Rohrbough or Zanzig when he was making recordings for CRS. [10]  Joe Hickerson and others heard it in Philadelphia when they were forming the Folksmiths.  The octet taught it that summer in camps in New England. [11]

Pete Seeger also heard it that spring at Davidson College in North Carolina where a friend of Rohrbough’s, Larry Eisenberg, taught it a conference designed to encourage racial understanding.  People in the audience let Eisenberg know the song did not come from Angola, as he supposed, but was African American. [12]  This news, and Eisenberg’s subsequent contact with Thora Dudley, led Rohrbough to change the headnote for the song in CRS publications. [13]

Meantime, Seeger began singing it at concerts and released a recording of “Kumbaya” in December 1958. [14]  The 1960 songbook for the University Settlement Camp obviously came from him.  The camp was near Beacon, New York, where Seeger lived.  Norman Steele remembers that he

“attended the camp 2 summers for 2 weeks in the fifties.  Pete lived in the camp and sang every night It was an incredible experience.” [15]

The version in the camp’s 1960 songbook classed it as a lullaby.  The Weavers had treated it that way on their 1958 recording, [16] but they had written their own verses that used “nana” for “my Lord.”  USC included Seeger’s “someone’s sleeping” verse in place of the “crying” one.  The book only provided words and guitar chords, so it is impossible to know how it actually was sung.

Performers
Not known

Credits
None; classed as a lullaby

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no comment
Verses: kumbaya, sleeping, singing, praying
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form: four-verse song
Unique Features: borrowed from Pete Seeger

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: music not provided
Guitar Chords: D G A7

Notes on Performance
Cover: none on my copy
Plate: mimeographed from typed master

Notes on Audience
University Settlement House, located on New York City’s lower east side, began sending children of Jewish immigrants to summer camps in Connecticut and New Jersey around 1900.  In 1910, Eliza Woolsey Howland gave her husband’s estate to the organization. [17]  By 1928, more than a thousand children went to the camp in Beacon. [18]  Some returned, but many were one-time campers who had no shared music repertoire.  Those who led songs would have had to devise ways to interest children who may have had no exposure to group singing.  Seeger’s group singing techniques were ideal for these situations.

In 1945, the settlement house added a work camp for adolescents who spent their time doing camp chores. [19]  While the ethnic backgrounds of the children in the camp changed with that of the lower east side from Jews to Blacks and Puerto Ricansin the 1950s, the ones who came to the work camp often were children of Jews who once lived in the neighborhood. [20]  Their interests in music were different than those of children.

The work camp songbook used the categories of men like Carl Sandburg and John Lomax, discussed in the posts for 5 May 2019 and 12 May 2019, but substituted contemporary commercial, folk-music revival songs for traditional ones.  “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore” [21] was included in the Work Songs, while “Sloop John B” was in the Sea Shanties section. [22]  Other songs were grouped by genres like Ballads, Blues, and Rounds.  The only religious songs for a group that included many Jews were Spirituals.

Notes on Performers
The New York City settlement house was inspired by Tonybee House in London, which encouraged young men from Oxford and Cambridge to “share ‘the culture of the university with those who needed it most’.” [23]  Stanton Coit visited Tonybee House in London in 1886, and then opened the Lily Pleasure Club for boys on Forsyth Street. [24]

The initial work was through clubs for youth that resembled the groups that preceded the Boy Scouts in this country.  In 1887, Coit added a kindergarten and organized the effort as the Neighborhood Guild. [25]  By 1891, the guild’s activities outpaced its financial resources, and it formed the University Settlement Society on Delancey Street with the president of Columbia University as its head. [26]

Once given a formal structure, the University Settlement expanded its reach, and changed its emphasis to match the needs of the neighborhood and the evolving theories of social work.  The organization survives on Eldridge Street, but it closed the Beacon camp in 1989 when it no longer could afford to maintain the site.  After an experiment with the New York City schools in the 1990s, [27] the grounds were sold to New York State Department of Parks and Recreation in 2008. [28]

Availability
Songbook: University Settlement Work Camp.  “Kumbaya.”  28 in U. S. C. AT COUNCIL.  Beacon, New York: 1960.  Copy provided by camp in 1975.

End Notes
1.  For more on Blocher, Good, and Indianola Sings, see the post for 29 May 2022.
2.  For more on the Sampler, see the post for 6 October 2019.
3.  For more on the SVM meeting, see the post for 31 July 2022.
4.  For more on Wiant and Hymns of Universal Praise, see the post for 2 October 2022.
5.  For more on Exner, see the post for 18 December 2022.

6.  For more on Chansons de Notre Chalet, see the posts for 27 November 2022 and 4 December 2022.

7.  For more on the YWCA’s Sing Along, see the post for 11 December 2022.
8.  See the post for 2 October 2022.
9.  See the post for 24 July 2022.
10.  For more on Saletan, see the post for26 March 2023.

11.  For more on the Folksmiths, see the posts for 2 April 2023, 9 April 2023, and 16 April 2023.

12.  For more on the Davidson College event, see the post for 16 October 2022.

13.  For more on Thora Dudley, see the posts for 23 October 2022 and 30 October 2022.

14.  For more on Seeger’s activities, see the post for 16 October 2022.

15.  Norman Steele.  Comment posted on 23 April 2020 to “University Settlement of New York City.”  Social Welfare Library website.

16.  For more on The Weavers’ version, see the post for 3 October 2017.

17.  Jeffrey Scheuer.  Legacy of Light: University Settlement’s First Century.  1960.  Reprinted in Legacy of Light.  University Settlement: 1886–2011.  New York: University Settlement, 2012.  22–94.

18.  Scheuer.  75.
19.  Scheuer.  103.

20.  Ellen Kirschner.  “University Settlement Camp and the Jewish Presence in Beacon.”  Beacon Hebrew Alliance website, 23 August 2021.  She attended the work camp in 1967.  She recalled: “When I was at camp, nearly every evening, Pete joined us for ‘Council,’ the daily all-camp gathering and after-dinner sing.  That’s where I learned the songs of the Civil Rights Movement and Seeger favorites like ‘Union Maid’ and ‘Abiyoyo.’  If USC had an anthem in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was ‘This Little Light of Mine’.”

21.  For more on “Michael,” see the post for 26 March 2023.

22.  “The Wreck of the John B” was recorded in 1950 by The Weavers. [29]  It was based on a text published by Sandburg, [30] and revised by Lee Hays of the Weavers. [31]  The Kingston Trio recorded it in 1958 for the same album that contained “Tom Dooley.” [32]

23.  H. J. Hegner.  “Scientific Value of the Social Settlements.”  American Journal of Sociology 3:171–182:July 1897.  Quoted by Scheuer.  47.

24.  Scheuer.  56.
25.  Scheuer.  58.
26.  Scheuer.  59.

27.  Karen Maserjian Shan.  “University Settlement Faces a New Future.”  Beacon Dispatch website, posted by Michael Daecher on 5 March 2006.

28.  Kirschner.

29.  “The Roving Kind / (The Wreck Of The) John B.”  Decca recording 9-27332, released December 1950 [Discogs entry].

30.  “Sloop John B.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 19 August 2023.
31.  Discogs, The Weavers.

32.  The Kingston Trio.  “Sloop John B.”  The Kingston Trio.  Decca recording T-996, released 1958.  The credit was to Sandburg and Hays [Discogs entry].