Folk Revival - German Americans

Topic: Folk Music Revival
The failure of the Revolution of 1848 in German-speaking central Europe sent refugees to the United States. Historians tend to emphasize the intellectuals who immigrated, but many more came for economic reasons.

By 1900, before the influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, 54% of Cincinnati’s population was German. Migrants sailing on the Hamburg America line debarked at Hoboken, New Jersey (58% German), and headed up the Hudson for the Erie Canal. At the transfer point to Lake Erie, Buffalo, New York, was 43% German. Detroit, Michigan, on the narrows between Lakes Erie and Huron, was 41% German. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Lake Michigan was 70%. Along the Mississippi where the Rock Island railroad crossed the river, Davenport, Iowa, was 62% German. Saint Louis, Missouri, may have been slave country, but it sat on the Mississippi river where the Missouri branched north to good farmlands in the interior. Its population was 45% German. [1] These are the blue areas on the map near the bottom of the rightmost column.

The most important of these locations for camp songs was Ohio where Lynn Rohrbough established his cooperative publishing house in 1929. [2] His immigrant ancestor, John Conrad Rohrbough, had moved from Bavaria in the middle 1700s, and settled in what became Hampshire County, West Virginia. [3] His father, George Elmore Rohrbough, relocated to the Aspen area in Colorado. [4]

In Upper Sandusky, forty-some miles northwest of Rohrbough’s Delaware, Ohio, [5] Germans trickled west from Pennsylvania as soon as the prairie land was opened for settlement. Then came farmers and small tradesmen from every part of the old Holy Roman Empire. The English-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church organized in 1849; the Church of God in 1851; Trinity Reformed Church of the Synod of the Reformed Church that offered German and English Sabbath schools in 1852; the Roman Catholics, with a few Irish among the Germans, in 1857; the United Brethren Church in 1858; Trinity Church of the Evangelical Association, with German and English Sunday schools, in 1860; and the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1868. [6]

The German speakers brought their singing traditions with them. The first singing society in Cincinnati, Ohio, met in a tavern on Thursdays in 1838. It must have been a liedertafel because "The singers seated themselves around a table, and alongside the music book of each stood the quart of beer." [7]

Male choruses from Louisville, Kentucky, and Madison, Indiana, both located on the Ohio river, joined a Cincinnati sängerfest in 1849 with delegations that arrived from Columbus, Saint Louis, and Milwaukee. [8] Its unaccompanied vocal music was a combination of familiar German composers, like Mozart, and ones who wrote for four-part male choruses like Franz Abt [9] and Friedrich Silcher. [10]

Wyandot County organized its first sängerbund, the Upper Sandusky Maennerchor, in 1858. They attended the Buffalo sängerfest in 1860. It lost some younger members during the Civil War, but continued to send groups to sängerfests. By 1884 there was less support for preserving the traditions of their "German-born fathers," but it still met every Sunday and Thursday. [11]

Of the five founding members profiled in the 1884 county history, two were members of the German Lutheran Church. Two emigrated from Saxony in the east, one from Westphalia in the north, one from Württemberg in the southwest, and one from Switzerland. In Europe, one was a physician, one a goldsmith, one a wagon maker, one a mechanic, and one a student. The first to arrive came with his brother in 1849; the rest immigrated between 1850 and 1858. Ewald Brauns organized the "fine instrumental bands which have been the pride of their city so many years." [12]

While individuals who joined German-speaking churches and musical organizations may have maintained old world traditions, others spread their singing traditions when they joined local community institutions like the Masons and Odd Fellows. [13]

Charlotte Vetter’s family moved from Kassel in Hesse to Oberlin, Ohio, [14] where she was born toward the end of the Civil War in 1865. [15] She married Luther Halsey Gulick, whose father and grandfather had been Presbyterian missionaries in Hawaii. [16]

She remembered, for twenty years beginning sometime around 1890, she, her husband, and children "camped on the Thames River" in Connecticut. They were in their mid-twenties when they embarked on their lonely errands into the wilderness. The Gulicks soon "invited friends and relatives to camp nearby. One summer there were seventy-five people about us in family groups." To fill time between meals, they fell back on habits acquired in religious meetings:

"Every morning we all met to sing. Sometimes we gathered around a fire, according to the weather; but unless it rained we met out under the sky, and sang sometimes for hours at a time. Our favorites were some of the immortal old hymns. If I could ask those who made that group what they now remember of those summers with the greatest pleasure, I believe that most would speak of the singing together." [17]

She and several of her in-laws founded private girls’ camps that became models for others. Gulick’s brother, Edward Leeds Gulick, established Aloha Hive in Vermont in 1905. [18] He was a Congregational minister in Groton, Connecticut. [19]

Edward’s wife, the former Harriet Marie Farnsworth, was the sister of the Charles Hubert Farnsworth who founded Hanoum in Vermont in 1909. [20] He collaborated with Cecil Sharp on the collection that introduced "The Keeper" to America, [21] and taught public-school music methods at Teacher’s College, Columbia. [22]

Most important, Vetter Gulick and her husband established Sebago in Maine in 1907 where they experimented with what became the Camp Fire Girls. In 1915, a publicist for the camp told would-be imitators:

"After breakfast in the bungalow all went to the craft house, where every morning they met to sing. The girls sat Turk-fashion on the floor facing Hiiteni [Vetter Gulick] and Alaska [Edith Kempthorne], who had taken her place at the piano. Two carefully selected hymns were

sung, then everyone stood and repeated the Lord’s prayer, after which they sang more hymns and camp songs to their heart’s content. It was difficult to stop singing. Often Hiiteni allowed the singing hour to encroach upon craft-work time." [23]

For them, as for their German ancestors, it was the singing that mattered, not the songs.

End Notes
Some of this material appeared in a different form in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

1. Albert Bernhardt Faust. The German Element in the United States. Boston: Mifflin, volume 1, 1909. 580.

2. Larry Nial Holcomb. "A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service." PhD diss. University of Michigan, 1972. 63.

3. "John Conrad Rohrbough." Ancestry website. His father was Johann Reinhart Rohrbach who lived in Höchstadt. [24] His wife’s parents moved from Basel to Philadelphia to Virginia. [25]

4. "Elmore George Rohrbough." Progressive Men of Western Colorado. Chicago: A. W. Bowen and Company, 1905. 85–86.

5. I lived near Upper Sandusky in the early 1970s and visited the Wyandot County 4-H day camp in 1974.

6. The History of Wyandot County Ohio. Chicago: Leggett, Conaway and Company, 1884. 538–542.

7. Charles Frederic Goss. Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912. Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912. 465. Liedertafil were discussed in the post for 14 April 2019.

8. Goss. 466. Sängerfest were discussed in the post for 14 April 2019. The significance of the Cincinnati festival was discussed by Barbara Lorenzkowski in Sounds of Ethnicity. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2010. 110.

9. Abt moved from Saxony to Zürich where he wrote volkstümliches lied that were "easily mistaken for genuine folksong." [26] The "Foot Traveler" was included in an 1885 school music-book, School Bells. [27] Osbourne McConathy added it to the 1922 revision of the third volume of the Progressive Music Series. [28]

10. Silcher became a musician after meeting Carl Maria von Weber, mentioned in the post for 14 April 2019. Silcher was famous for opposing Wilhelm I of Württemberg in 1824, but today is known for his arrangements of German folk songs. [29]

11. Wyandot County. 548, 551.

12. Wyandot County. John Agerter, 555; Adolphus Billhardt, 570; Ewald Brauns, 572; John K. Engel, 588; John Seider, 647.

13. In Upper Sandusky, Billhardt, Engel, and Seiler were members of the Free and Accepted Masons. Agerter and Engel were members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

14. Katherine Gulick Fricker . "John Vetter." Geni website. 17 April 2016.
15. "Charlotte ‘Lottie’ Emily Gulick (Vetter)." Geni website. 4 December 2016.

16. The immigrant Hendrick van Gulick left Amsterdam for New York in the 1600s. [30] His father, Jan Schalcken van Gulick, was born in Jülich. [31] The duchy of Gülich was an early battleground in the Counter Reformation. The Dutch Republic took control, then the Spanish in 1622. [32]

17. Mrs. Luther Halsey Gulick. "Introduction." In Ethel Rogers. Sebago-Wohelo Camp Fire Girls. Battle Creek, Michigan: Good Health Publishing Company, 1915. 14.

18. Wayne Henry Friedman. "Edward Leeds Gulick, Sr." Geni website. Last updated: 1 December 2016.

19. Frances Gulick Jewett. Luther Halsey Gulick: Missionary in Hawaii, Micronesia, Japan, and China. London: Elliott Stock. Copyrighted by Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society of Boston in 1895. 308.

20. Martha H. Wiencke. "Charles Hubert Farnsworth." Thetford Historical Society website. March 2006. The siblings were born in Turkey to Congregational missionaries.

21. Cecil J. Sharp and Charles H. Farnsworth. Folk-songs, Chanteys, and Singing Games. New York: H. W. Gray, 1909.

22. Wiencke. One of his students was Charles Leonhard, [33] mentioned in the post for 8 July 2018.

23. Rogers. 48. She was using their camp names. Kempthorne was from Australia.
24. "Antoni Reger." Ancestry website.
25. "Catherine Shook." Ancestry website.

26. Edward F. Kravitt. "Franz Abt." Grove Music Online. Edited by L. Macy. Quoted by Wikipedia. "Franz Abt."

27. James Cartwright Macy and L. O. Emerson. School Bells. Cleveland: S. Brainard’s Sons, 1884.

28. Horatio Parker, Osbourne McConathy, Edward Bailey Birge, and W. Otto Miessner. Progressive Music Series. Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company, 1922 edition. Book 3.

29. Wikipedia. "Friedrich Silcher."
30. Gene Daniell. "Hendrick Gulick." Geni website. 16 October 2018.
31. "Jan Schalcken van Gulick." Geni website. 27 October 2017.
32. Wikipedia. "Jülich."

33. George N. Heller. Charles Leonhard. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1995. 40.