Topic: Early Versions
Madelyn Sheppard published the first commercial version of “Come by Here” in 1926 while she was spending her summers playing piano for Dixon’s Mills’ Union Camp Meeting in southern Marengo County, Alabama.
Marengo County was directly east of Sumter County, where Ruby Pickens Tartt collected a version of “Come by Here” in 1938. Marengo’s lower boundary extended farther south than Sumter, so it abutted the western side of Wilcox County, where Robert Sonkin collected a version from an isolated African-American community in 1941. [1]
Dixon’s Mills’ camp meeting was a tamer affair than Cane Ridge in 1801. Then the preaching was continuous, sometimes with several men speaking at the same time in different places. [2] William Capers remembered he attended his first camp meeting in South Carolina the next summer at a place about thirty miles upriver from the coast. [3]
“There were two stands for preaching, at a distance of about two hundred yards apart; and sometimes there was preaching at one, sometimes at the other, and sometimes at both simultaneously. This was evidently a bad arrangement; for I remember seeing the people running hastily from one place to the other, as some sudden gush of feeling venting itself aloud, and perhaps with strange bodily exercises, called their attention off. As to the times of preaching, I think there were not any stated hours, but it was left to circumstances; sometimes oftener, sometimes more seldom.” [4]
Things changed by 1806. More people attended, but the “the strange and unaccountable bodily exercises” no longer appeared. [5] Still, the sixteen-year old recalled “the suddenness with which sinners of every description were awakened, and the overwhelming force of their convictions; bearing them instantly down to their knees, if not to the ground, crying for mercy.” [6]
Marengo County was settled later; its first Methodist circuit was organized in 1826. [7] Two years later a Methodist society was formed in Spring Hill, [8] about 12 miles southeast of the port of Demopolis. A year later it organized the Mount Zion camp meeting, where sessions were held “annually for many years, and they were attended with great religious power and achieved grand results.” [9]
Anson West notes permanent camp grounds became more common in Alabama after 1832, and more rigorous schedules established. “Preaching, exhorting, praying, singing, and assembling penitents in the altar for prayer and instruction were common to all Camp-meetings,” with preaching four times a day. [10]
Francis Lieber made the same generalization about the camp meeting he visited in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1834 where he “listened to their singing, exhorting, praying and violent preaching.” [11] A few days previous he had “met a stage-coach full of methodists. You must know, that when assembled in any number, they are much inclined to sing their hymns, wherever they may be.” [12]
The original purpose of camp meetings was conversion. However, when members continued to attend, like Capers’ family, they served instead as opportunities for regeneration. Over time, permanent locations like Zion Hill were procured that evolved into summer outings.
Children of the converted, like Phoebe Palmer, mentioned in the post for 7 December 2017, were placed in anomalous positions where they were, by birth, Methodists but, by experience, were not. Her answer was an emphasis on the second blessing mentioned by John Wesley that came after initiation. She used the word “Holiness” to describe this invigorated Methodist life.
Her fame initially came from word-of-mouth in New York City, where she lived, then through her writings like The Way of Holiness. [13] In 1840, her husband withdrew from his homeopathic practice, and the two began preaching at camp meetings in the northeast. [14]
The nascent Holiness movement was snuffed by the Civil War. In 1867, Methodist leaders in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York responded to the malaise that followed the end of hostilities with a call for a camp meeting devoted exclusively to promoting Palmer’s Holiness doctrine in Vineland, New Jersey. [15]
The success of the Vineland meeting led to the organization of the National Camp Meeting Association, [16] which held its second conclave in Manheim, Pennsylvania. Reports of attendees who fell in swoons night after night rivaled those from Cane Ridge and ensured the success of the Holiness movement. [17] It eventually reached Cuba in southwestern Sumter County with the formation of the white Church of God Holiness Church in 1886. [18]
Receiving the second blessing was, like conversion, a one-time experience. The next step for Methodists was proving they were worthy of God’s gifts by leading lives as free from sin as possible. Some of the same men who organized the Vineyard meeting promoted a resort at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, [19] in 1869 where families could spend vacations without worrying that their children would meet undesirable people or be exposed to drinking, dancing, smoking, or gambling. [20]
All summer the resort held religious services, with two weeks devoted to a camp meeting where preaching occurred at 10 am, 2:30 pm, and 7:30 pm. [21] The Palmers began holding daily meetings in 1878 [22] at 9 am. [23]
Ocean Grove was six miles south of “the famous and palatial summer resort at Long Branch” [24] with a rail stop and turnpike that ran past Ocean Grove. [25] Association members began lobbying the New York railroad in 1871, and finally got an extension built in 1875. [26]
Railroads were quick to exploit the traffic on excursion trains. [27] As mentioned in the post for 15 March 2020, trains were supporting African-American camp meetings around New Bern, North Carolina, in 1879. One may even have been a sponsor of the large meeting in the Eastman, Georgia, lumber camp in 1882. [28]
In 1873, J. D. Adams reported an incident like the one experienced by Lieber. He recalled:
“Last Monday morning we entered the cars at Long Branch—the people from the two classes of influence, Long Branch and Ocean Grove, met. In a little while a lady in a forward seat began to sing, ‘Jesus, lover of my soul.’ I was curious; thought perhaps she was a little out of place there—But, to my surprise, first from one, then another, the strain was caught up all through the coach, and Ocean Grove poured the gospel of song over the gay revelers of Long Branch.” [29]
Music at Ocean Grove was dominated by ministers who sang and wrote gospel songs, [30] the new music form [31] that treated text and tune as a coherent unit. [32] This allowed the adoption of more complex popular-music elements like the verse-chorus structure and lilting, rhythmic melodies with dotted-notes. [33]
The new gospel songs spread through songbooks [34] and urban revivals led by Dwight L. Moody, and his song leader, Ira D. Sankey. [35] While he was a Congregationalist, Moody replaced the “God of Wrath and Judgement” with one of “love and mercy.” [36] He later became involved with the premillennialists [37] and opened an alternative to Holiness resorts with a conference center in his hometown of Northfield, Massachusetts, to encourage Bible study. [38]
Presbyterians still believed people were converted by exposure to the Bible, not by camp meetings. In 1894, a Presbyterian leader in Chicago bought an existing amusement park in Kosciusko County, Indiana, and turned it into a Bible study center on the renamed Winona Lake. It attracted Billy Sunday, who moved there in 1911 with his song leader, Homer Rodeheaver. [39]
Indiana Methodists developed their own resort community after World War I in Kosciusko County to the northeast of Winona Lake. [40] The Epworth Forest organization sold more than 400 lots and built a hotel in 1923 for visitors to its camp meeting. [41] This is the place where Varner Chance began working in 1946. [42]
End Notes
1. See the post for 10 February 2019 for more on Rehoboth Oak Grove Church version collected by Robert Sonkin near Gee Bend, Alabama.
2. For more information on Cane Ridge, see the post for 8 November 2020.
3. Capers said it “was held on McGirt’s branch, below the point where the Statesburg and
Darlington road crosses it.” [43] McGirt’s Swamp is in Williamsburg County, and a tributary of the Black River. [44] Statesburg is upriver in Sumter County, in an area drained by the Black River. [45] The distance between the Williamsburg County seat, Kingstree, and the mouth of the Black River at Georgetown is 36.85 miles. [46]
4. William Capers. “Recollections of Myself.” Reprinted by William M. Wrightman. Life of William Capers, D. D. Nashville: Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South, 1902. 52–53. Capers rose to bishop within the Methodist Church, and wrote the church’s Catechism used with slaves in 1833. [47]
5. Capers. 53.
6. Capers. 54.
7. Anson West. A History of Methodism in Alabama. Nashville, Tennessee: Methodist Episcopal Church South Publishing House, 1893. 334.
8. Ruth Allen. “Old Spring Hill Methodist Church.” 42 in The Heritage of Marengo County, Alabama. Edited by Ruth S. Allen and Becky A. Willis. Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000.
9. West. 336.
10. West. 560.
11. Francis Lieber. Letters to a Gentleman in Germany, Written after a Trip from Philadelphia to Niagara. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1834. 315. This was mentioned in the post for 11 November 2020.
12. Lieber. 309.
13. Mrs. P. Palmer. The Way of Holiness. New York: Piercy and Reed, 1843.
14. “Phoebe Palmer.” Salvation Army Women’s Ministries website.
15. Melvin E. Dieter. The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1996 edition. 86.
16. Charles H. Lippy. “The Camp Meeting in Transition: The Character and Legacy of the Late Nineteenth Century.” Methodist History 34:1–17:October 1995. 5.
17. William Kostlevy. “Christian Perfectionism in Pennsylvania Dutch Country: The 1868 Manheim Camp Meeting of the National Holiness Association.” 1997. United Methodist Church, Central Pennsylvania Conference Historical Society. The Chronicle 9:25–35:Spring 1998. 29–30.
18. The Cuba church is discussed in the post for 15 November 2020.
19. Charles A. Parker. “A Study of the Preaching at the Ocean Grove, New Jersey, Camp Meeting, 1870-1900.” PhD dissertation. Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, August 1959. 35. “Numbered among the charter members of the Ocean Grove Association, for instance, were William B. Osborne, John S. Inskip, and Alfred Cookman, all of the National Association.”
20. Wikipedia. “Ocean Grove, New Jersey.”
21 Parker. 36.
22. “The National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Christian Holiness.” Seeing4truth website.
23. Parker. 51.
24. Parker. 42.
25. Parker. 47.
26. Morris S. Daniels. The Story of Ocean Grove. New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1919. 177–178.
27. Parker. 47–48. Daniels suggested the day-trip excursions “accompanied by bands of music, as was then the custom, frequently arrived at times of public worship, greatly disturbing the services; then, besides, they frequently made a picnic ground of the Auditorium, scattering the remnants of their picnic lunches over the seats and straw. The coming of the mere pleasure-seekers, therefore, impelled only by curiosity, and who did not remain long enough to be impressed by their surroundings, was not encouraged.” [48]
28. The Eastman camp meeting is discussed in the post for 3 February 2019.
29. J. D. Adams. “Solomon by the Sea-Side.” 172 in E. H. Stokes. Ocean Grove, Its Origin and Progress. Philadelphia: Haddock and Son, 1874. Quoted by Patricia Woodard. “Musical Life at Ocean Grove, New Jersey: The First Fifty Years, 1869-1919.” Methodist History 44:67–79:January 2006. 68.
30. Woodard.
31. The term “gospel song” was introduced by Philip Bliss in Gospel Songs published by John Church of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1874. [49] The songs preceded the label: among the ones included are “Almost Persuaded,” “Let the Lower Lights be Burning,” “Shall We Gather at the River,” “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” and “The Ninety and Nine.” It still contained some older psalm and hymn tunes with meter indications.
32. Moody told Sankey that “he could not sing himself, and therefore had to depend upon all kinds of people to lead his service of song, and that sometimes when he had talked to a crowd of people, and was about to ‘pull the net,’ some one would strike up a long meter hymn to a short meter tune, and thereby upset the whole meeting.” [50] The use of long and short meter with hymn singing is discussed in the post for 23 August 2017.
33. Wikipedia. “Gospel Song (19th Century).”
34. Bliss's Gospel Songs has four-parts printed on two staves with the words between the staves. It could be used by a pianist.
35. Wikipedia, Gospel Song.
36. James Sallee. A History of Evangelistic Hymnody. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1978. 56.
37. “Dwight L. Moody.” Encyclopædia Britannica website. 20 July 1998; last updated 1 February 2020.
38. “Dwight L. Moody.” Christianity Today website.
39. “The History of The Village at Winona.” Its website. Solomon Dickey was the prime mover behind the Winona Assembly and Summer School Association.
40. Epworth Forest is in Tippecanoe Township. Winona Lake is in Wayne Township.
41. “Epworth Forest.” United Methodist Churches of Indiana website. 18 October 2019.
42. William B. Freeland. Epworth Forest. North Indiana Conference of The Methodist Church, 1949. 1--51 in Freeland and Orrin Manifold. Epworth Forest: The First Fifty Years. Winona Lake, Indiana: Light and Life Press, 1974. 49. Chance is discussed in the post for 21 March 2021.
43. Capers. 53.
44. “2,253 Acres Added to Pee Dee Land Trust Protection.” SC Now website. 20 January 2012; last updated 27 December 2012.
45. Wikipedia. “Stateburg, South Carolina” and “Sumter County, South Carolina.”
46. Calculation by Distance-Cities website.
47. William Capers. Catechism for the Use of the Methodist Missions. Charleston: Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1853 edition; first published in 1833. Margaret Washington Creel brought this to my attention in “A Peculiar People.” New York: New York University Press, 1988.
48. Daniels. 178.
49. Wikipedia, Gospel Song.
50. Ira D. Sankey. My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907. 20.
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