John Lomax in Texas - Lord, Won’t You Come by Here

Topic: Early Versions - Collectors
John Lomax’s family background was a poor man’s version of Ruby Pickens Tartt’s. His great-grandfather migrated from Yorkshire to the North Carolina piedmont in the 1740s. [1] His grandfather moved to western South Carolina where he prospered on squatted land until the legal owner appeared. The family then struggled, with the children hired out to neighbors. [2]

In 1846, John’s father, James Avery Lomax, moved to Mississippi where he worked for his younger brother Tillman. [3] On the eve of the Civil War, Tillman owned sixteen slaves [4] and James mentioned two. [5] During the war, James was called up with others in their forties, but sent home to make shoes for the army at his tannery. [6] Tillman was drafted, denied the promotion he wanted, and turned to thieving. [7]

James remigrated to the edge of civilized land in Texas in 1869. [8] John left the Texas farm in 1887 for Granbury College, and began teaching in 1888. After that, he alternated between going to progressively better educational institutions and teaching in successively more prestigious schools. [9]

He finally studied folklore at Harvard under George Kittredge, mentioned in the post for 23 January 2019. Lomax had begun learning cowboy and Black folk songs from a hired hand, Nat Blythe, in 1876. [10] In 1910, he published Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. [11] Two years later he was elected president of the American Folklore Society. [12]

Lomax lost his position at the University of Texas in 1917 during a political purge by the governor, and turned to finance. Lomax was working for the Republic Bank of Dallas when the economy crashed in 1929. He apparently lost that job in the early 1930s, and headed to New York to find a publisher to subsidize a proposed collection of American folk music. From there he went to the Library of Congress where Robert Winslow Gordon had established the Archives of American Folk Song. [13]

Like Tartt, Lomax revisited people he already knew or knew of. He collected a version of "Lord, won’t You come by here" from Nancy Humble Griffin, who then was living upstream from his childhood home in Meridian, Texas. She had been raised on a cattle ranch in Austin County, and Lomax was primarily interested in her western songs when he went to her home in 1941. [14]

Griffin’s source is unknown. African Americans had arrived in Austin County in three waves. The first settlers brought slaves with them from Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina. Blacks were 47% of the population in 1860. [15]

The early white settlers were supplemented by German-speaking immigrants beginning in 1838. Many had too little capital to become purchase slaves. [16] Griffin’s immigrant ancestor, Jacob Humble, had left Austria for North Carolina before 1760. Her grandfather moved from there to Louisiana, where her father was born in 1833. [17] Somewhere in Louisiana, her family became connected to that of James Bowie, [18] who died at the Alamo in 1836. Her parents left for Texas soon after she was born in 1855. [19]

During the Civil War, planters from the Deep South moved their slaves beyond the reach of federal law in Texas. [20] Charles Christopher Jackson said the African-American population increased by 47%. More arrived during Reconstruction for opportunities to work small cotton farms. By 1870, they remained 40% of the population. [21]

Griffin’s obituary only mentioned her husband, but did not indicate how they met or where they lived. He was from Gonzalez County, Texas, and may have been the Oliver Smith Griffin from Washington County, Alabama. [22]

It’s possible her father moved the family to the area south of the city of Austin since it was near the Chisholm Trail and cattle roamed the range. It also had a large German-speaking population, and African Americans composed a third of the population in 1880. [23]

Segregation was still the rule. The most likely way a white woman could have heard "Come by Here" would have been at an open camp meeting or Baptist event. She had been baptized as a teenager. Her obituary only noted she

"knew scores of ‘pure’ ballads, and loved to sing them. Nothing, she thought, could take the place of mothers singing to and with their children. ‘Many’s the time,’ she said, ‘it’s kept mine from frettin’ and me from punishin’ them just ’cause I was tired’." [24]

By the time Lomax met her, Griffin was blind and living in Hasse, where her son ran the store and post office. She died there in 1947. [25]

Availability
Nancy Humble Griffin. "Lord, Won’t You Come by Here." Collected by John Lomax in Hasse, Texas, October 1941. Archives of American Folk Song.

End Notes
1. Joseph Lomax. "Genealogical and Historical Sketches of the Lomax Family." Grand Rapids, Michigan: The Rookus Printing House, 1894. 64.

2. "Recollections of J. A. Lomax, as Dictated to W. F. Graves." 142–146 in Joseph Lomax. 142.

3. James Avery Lomax. 143.

4. Jarret Ruminski. The Limits of Loyalty. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017. Chapter 4.

5. James Avery Lomax. 143.
6. James Avery Lomax. 143.
7. Ruminski
8. James Avery Lomax. 144.
9. Wikipedia. "John Lomax."
10. Wikipedia, Lomax.

11. John A. Lomax. Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. New York: Sturgis and Walton, 1910.

12. Wikipedia, Lomax.

13. Wikipedia, Lomax. It’s not clear if the bank name given by Wikipedia was correct, since it said his employer’s bank failed and the Republic Bank survived the banking crisis of 1933.  Gordon is discussed in the post for 3 February 2019.

14. Mrs. Y. W. Holmes. "Ballads for Library of Congress." The Comanche [Texas] Chief, 31 October 1941. Reprinted 28 October 1971:11.

15. Charles Christopher Jackson. "Austin County." Handbook of Texas Online. 9 June 2010; last updated 17 February 2016.

16. Jackson.

17. Ken West. "Humble, Jacob," "Humble, Henry Sr.," and "Humble, Henry Jr." Geocities website. 26 March 2000.

18. The family legend may have come from her father’s full name, Gilbert Thomas Buie Humble. [26] His mother, Jane Davis, was the daughter of John Davis and Mary Bateman. [27] Bowie’s sister Sarah married William Davis. [28] Nothing is known about William; he is not listed as John’s child, and he and Sarah left no known children. I also found nothing about the children of John’s brother. Bowie also had a Black half-brother, James, who was freed. He had sons. [29]

19. Shirley Smith. Quoted by Texansmyheart. "Gilbert Thomas Humble, Sr." Find a Grave. 27 April 2012.

20. James Hamilton was mentioned in the post for 20 January 2019. He had moved his slaves before the war to escape liens by his creditors.

21. Jackson.

22. James Haire. "Griffin." The Haire & Hines Family & Relations. Tribal Pages website. 11 September 2011. Last updated 11 June 2012.

23. Dorcas Huff Baumgartner and Genevieve B. Vollentine. "Gonzalez County." Handbook of Texas Online. 15 June 2010; last updated 3 February 2016.

24. Nancy Humble Griffin. 1947 obituary. Ancestry website. Uploaded by Linda Mathis, 23 April 1999.

25. Griffin, obituary.

26. Ken West. "Manning, Malinda." Geocities website. 26 March 2000. She was Gilbert’s wife and Nancy’s mother.

27. Chris Chance. "John Davis Jr (1760 - 1810)." Wikitree. 9 January 2015. Last updated, 20 June 2016. On Jane, John, and drilldowns on John’s brothers and uncles.

28. Arthur Bowie. "Sarah Bowie" and "William Davis." Book of Bowie website.
29. "James Bowie, (Free Man of Color)." Gini website. 4 January 2015.