Augustus Delafield Zanzig

 Topic: CRS Version
John Blocher learned “Kumbaya” from Kathryn Thompson Good when they were preparing a songbook for the Indianola camp in Columbus, Ohio. [1]  Her family told him she probably heard it at a Buckeye Recreation Workshop. [2]

The Buckeye workshop was an annual meeting that lasted a week, and, in the early 1950s, met in Urbana, Ohio. [3]  Its roots go back to the early days of teacher education, before states established normal schools.  The Land Ordinance of 1785 had decreed one section of every township in the Northwest Territory should be used to finance public schools. [4]  The appearance of those buildings came with settlement.

In Ohio, many early teachers were men who could not otherwise support themselves. [5]  At first, they merely were expected to be of good character.  Eventually, parents demanded more.  In 1825 the legislature added the stipulation that teachers demonstrate some knowledge of “reading, writing, and arithmetic.” [6]

The colleges then in existence primarily were interested in educating ministers.  Those individuals, who had some educations, ran private schools in communities large enough to support them.  For instance, a private boarding school opened in Aurora, New York, in 1800.  By the time Salem Town became principal of Cayuga Academy in 1829, he had a master’s degree from Middlebury College. [7]

Teachers themselves provided the solution with short institutes. [8]  Henry Barnard introduced the concept in Connecticut in 1839. [9]  The success led to imitations, and, in 1843, Jacob Denman used the term “institute” for the first time for a two-week session in Ithaca, New York.  Town was one of his three instructors. [10]  Two years later, Town led the first institute in Ohio. [11]  Two years after that, in 1847, eleven Ohio counties held institutes, including Delaware County. [12]

Normal schools emerged as the preferred form of state school for training teachers.  The first was organized in Concord, Vermont, in 1823, and the second in 1839 in Lexington, Massachusetts. [13]  Despite their utility, states were slow to organize them.  In Ohio, Robert Overman said opposition came from private schools and from politicians who did not want the state involved in education. [14]  By 1900, only thirty-five of the forty-four states had public institutions. [15]

One commercial group who began sponsoring institutes was textbook publishers.  Luther Whiting Mason began a National Summer School of Music in 1884 in Lexington, Massachusetts. [16]  He had developed his pedagogical approach when he was in Germany in 1870.  His books used German melodies [17] with appropriate poems.  Most of the lyrics dealt with nature or religion. [18]

Mason’s school expanded to Chicago in 1903, and was taken over by his publisher, Ginn.  Silver, Burdette began its own American Institute of Normal Methods at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in 1889. [19]  The original locations were rail hubs.  The move to a resort followed the development of Methodist educational retreats like Ocean Grove in New Jersey (1869) [20] and Chautauqua in New York (1875).

In 1920, a young man or woman still could cobble together enough of an education from institutes and normal-school short courses to become certified without earning a college degree.  The posts for 25 October 2020 and 24 January 2021 describe the efforts of Claire Lovejoy and Harry Kroll to become teachers in the South.

In the North, Augustus Zanzig was teaching music in New York’s Ethical Culture School in 1915 [21].  When he was born in 1891, [22] his father was a cigar dealer living in Manhattan; by 1910 he was working for the city water department. [23]  Zanzig never wrote a biographical sketch.  Thus, I have no information on where he learned to play piano and learned the rudiments of music.  In 1910, when he was nineteen, he was one of sixteen “non-matriculated students” taking classes in Columbia College’s School of Music. [24]

The Ethical Culture School had begun in 1878 as a free kindergarten for poor children.  By 1900, it had evolved into a private school for the well-to-do. [25]  While he was teaching there, Zanzig spent the summers of 1914 and 1915 taking classes at the University of Wisconsin. [26]  Apart from the reputation of Peter Dykema, [27] he may have gone to Madison through some family connection.  His paternal grandparents had migrated from Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1854 and settled in New York. [28]  However, 76% of the Zanzigs who emigrated landed in Wisconsin. [29]

Louis Lynn noted that institutes ingratiated themselves in Louisiana by holding evening “musical and literary entertainment” programs for their communities. [30]  Zanzig took a class in staging such community pageants when he was at Wisconsin, and played the role of Chief Winnebago in one. [31]  He, apparently, was taking classes at Teachers College, Columbia, in the winter of 1917 when he worked on a pageant dramatizing “American Ideals.”  This time, he improvised the piano music for the “Spirit of Humor.” [32]

The outbreak of World War I created new opportunities.  The Army had learned from sending troops to the Mexican border in 1916 that prostitutes and venereal disease soon followed. [33]  To avoid that problem with its war bases, it encouraged private groups to create entertainment venues near its camps.  The YMCA was the most active, but the Playground and Recreation Association of America also became involved. [34]  It had been organized by Luther Halsey Gulick in 1906, [35] and run its own institutes to train recreation leaders. [36]

Zanzig went to Camp Sherman in 1918. [37]  While he was in Chillicothe, Ohio, he married Bertha Elizabeth Hard. [38]  He was then twenty-seven years old.  He returned to the Ethical Culture School [39], and took more classes at Columbia in 1920 and 1921. [40]

Soon after, he spent a year teaching in a Rochester, New York, high school [41] before enrolling at Harvard as a “Sp” student in 1921. [42]  I think this means he was in a summer program.  While there, he must have come to the attention of Archibald Davison, who conducted the college’s glee club. [43]  He already had shown an ability to perform and play piano in earlier classes.  The next summer he joined Davison at the Concord Summer School of Music in Massachusetts.

Thomas Whitney Surette had begun the Concord institute in 1915 to propagate his ideas for teaching music in schools.  Soon his students were “requesting books to use in their own elementary music classes.” [44]  In 1922, Zanzig wrote the teacher’s guide [45] and collaborated with Surette and Davison on the collection for grades four to six. [46]  He later helped produce the collection for grades seven to nine. [47]

Surette’s music collections are similar to the ones produced by Mason.  The one for grade school features poems set to folk tunes, while the junior high collection includes longer pieces by European composers.  Katharine Davis wrote many of the lyrics, [48] while Zanzig arranged twelve of the melodies.

Despite the demonization of immigrants in World War I, most of the tunes in the two books are European.  The largest numbers come from the United Kingdom (30%) [49] and Germany (29%).  Only 14 of the 391 I counted [50] are from the United States, and four of these are “Negro Spirituals.”

At this point, the young man who may or may not have had a college degree was set.  Like Varner Chance years later, [51] he earned a living by patching together income from a number of sources.  He was director of music for Brookline Public School [52] while teaching a half-credit course in methods at Harvard [53] and spending his summers in Concord.  In addition, at least in 1922, was working with Boston’s South End Music School settlement house. [54]

Graphics
Augustus D. Zanzig at Northland Recreation Laboratory.  In Bob Nolte.  Northland Recreation Lab: A History.  1984.  Copy provided by Heidi Ryan, 21 June 2016.

End Notes
More information on Zanzig appears in the posts for 21 January 2018, 19 September 2021, 26 September 2021, and 3 October 2021.

1.  John Blocher, Jr.  Email, 28 April 2016.  “Tommy introduced us to Kumbaya.  She and I assembled the Camp Song Book, Indianola Sings.”

2.  John Blocher, Jr.  Email, 30 June 2016, with comments from Good’s family.
3.  John Fark.  Email, 1 November 2020.
4.  Wikipedia.  “Land Ordinance of 1785.”

5.  Alston Ellis. “Ungraded Schools.”  80–105 in A History of Education in the State of Ohio.  Edited by Emerson E. White and Thomas W. Harvey.  Columbus, Ohio: Gazette Printing House, 1976.  86.

6.  Ellis.  96.

7.  Temple Rice Hollcroft.  A Brief History of Aurora, NY.  Revised by The Aurora Committee For The American Bicentennial.  Ovid, New York: W. E. Morrison and Company, 1976.

8.  Thomas W Harvey.  “Teachers’ Institutes.”  313–329 in White.  316–317.

9.  James W. Fraser.  Preparing America’s Teachers: A History.  New York: Teachers College Press, 2007.  61–62.

10.  J. Cayce Morrison.  “Professional Leadership through the Teachers’ Conferences.”  New York State Education, September 1927.  Reprinted by The Virginia Teacher, October 1927.

11.  Harvey.  316.
12.  Harvey.  317.  Lynn Rohrbough lived in Delaware, Ohio.
13.  Wikipedia.  “Normal School.”

14.  James Robert Overman.  The History of Bowling Green State University.  Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Press, 1967.  8.

15.  Christine A. Ogren.  The American State Normal School.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.  2.

16.  Edward Bailey Birge.  History of Public School Music in the United States.  Washington, DC: Music Educators National Conference, 1939 edition.  134.

17.  Of the 148 songs in the Second Music Reader, 14% are German and 29% are anonymous. [55]  The third reader introduces harmony and its 55 songs are longer; 23% are German and 72% are anonymous. [56]

18.  Of the 148 songs in the Second Music Reader, 25% deal with nature and 10% are religious. [55]  Of the 55 songs in the third reader, 44% deal with nature and 36% are religious. [56]

19.  Birge.  134.
20.  Ocean Grove is discussed in the post for 17 January 2021.
21.  University of Wisconsin.  Bulletin 725, summer session 1915.  14.

22.  Barbara Zanzig.  “Augustus Delafield Zanzig.”  Zanzig, Zanzich and Related Names website, last updated 21 February 2021.

23.  Barbara Zanzig.  “Augustus Zanzig.”  Zanzig, Zanzich and Related Names website, last updated 21 February 2021.

24.  Columbia University.  Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Columbia College.  1910–1911.

25.  Wikipedia.  “Ethical Culture Fieldston School.”

26.  The Wisconsin Archeologist July 1914.  91.  Dykema’s class was in community festival work.

University of Wisconsin, 1915.

27.  Dykema is discussed in the post for 28 April 2018.

28.  Barbara Zanzig.  “August Zanzig.”  Zanzig, Zanzich and Related Names website, last updated 21 February 2021.

29.  “Where Is the Zanzig Family From?”  Ancestry website.
30.  Lynn.  5.

31. Wisconsin Archaeologist.  “Mr. Augustus D. Zanzig carried the role of Winnebago chief with great credit to himself.”

32.  Allan Abbot.  “A Pageant of National Ideals.”  Teachers College Record 18:261–286:1917.

33.  Richard F. Knapp and Charles E. Hartsoe.  Play for America: The National Recreation Association 1906–1965.  Arlington, Virginia: National Recreation and Park Association, 1979.  66.  It began as the Playground Association of America, but changed its name in 1911.  Today it is the National Recreation Association.

34.  Knapp.  67.

35.  Knapp.  30.  Luther Halsey Gulick was the child of Presbyterian missionaries to Hawaii.  He became an advocate of “muscular Christianity” after physical activities at the Sargeant School of Physical Training helped him handle his heart problems.  He worked for the YMCA from 1886 to 1900, when he left to work for public schools in New York City.  The Russel Sage Foundation hired him in 1908.  It was while he worked for them that he helped establish the Playground Association of America, and helped organize the Boy Scouts in 1910.  He and his wife, Charlotte Vetter Gulick, established the Camp Fire Girls as the female equivalent. [57]

36.  Knapp.  52.
37.  Item.  Music Educators Journal, January 1918.  3.
38.  Barbara Zanzig, Augustus Delafield Zanzig.
39.  Music Educators National Conference.  Yearbook 1920.  22.
40.  “Directory of Students.”  Columbia University.  Catalogue.  1920–1921.
41.  The Detroit Educational Bulletin.  1921 program.  19.
42.  Item.  Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 19 March 1925.  740.

43.  Archibald Thompson Davison earned a degree in music from Harvard in 1909, and in 1912 became the coach of the glee club, then an appendage of the Banjo and Mandolin Clubs. [58]  By 1915, when he helped edit Fifty Rote Songs, for Grades I, II and III, he was working with Surette at Concord. [59]  In 1920, the glee club became an independent organization.  In that position, he contributed “to the revival of choral singing, setting an example to the many college Glee Clubs that discarded their mandolins and took up Palestrina, Bach and Vaughn Williams.” [60]

44.  M. Potter.  “Finding Aid for Thomas Whitney Surette and Concord Summer School of Music Collection, 1846-1981.”  Concord Library Special Collections website, 2 December 2014.

45.  Augustus D. Zanzig.  The Concord Teachers’ Guide; A Manual for All Grades.  Boston: E. C. Schirmer Music Company, 1922.

46.  Archibald T. Davison, Thomas Whitney Surette, and Augustus D Zanzig.  A Book of Songs for Unison and Part Singing for Grades IV, V, and VI.  Boston: Schirmer Music Company, 1922.

47.  Archibald T. Davison, Thomas Whitney Surette, and Augustus D. Zanzig.  Concord Junior Song and Chorus Book.  Boston: E. C. Schirmer Music Company, 1927.

48.  Katherine Kennicott Davis wrote the words to 49 of 234 songs in the grade school book.  She graduated from Wellesley in 1914, and stayed to teach while studying at the New England Conservatory. [61]  She taught high school in Philadelphia, and spent her summers at the Concord Academy between 1921 and 1923. [62] That was when she must have contributed lyrics to the 1924 Concord book for grades 4–6.  Later, she studied in Paris, and became a serious composer.  Today, she is known for writing “The Little Drummer Boy” in 1941. [63]

49.  England 60%, Scotland 25%, Ireland 8%, Wales 7%.
50.  I did not include the rounds.

51.  As mentioned in the post for 21 March 2021, Varner Chance worked a number of jobs simultaneously, even though he had a master’s degree.

52.  Item.  Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 19 March 1925.  740.

53.  “SM14.  The Teaching of Music in Schools.”  Harvard University Official Register 19(8):48:1922.  “This course is accepted as a half-course for the degree of A.A. as well as for graduate degree.”

54.  Augustus D. Zanzig.  “Music Settlement Schools.”  Music Teachers National Association, Proceedings 62–66:1922.  63.

55.  Luther Whiting Mason.  Second Music Reader.  Boston: Ginn, Heath, and Company, 1870; 1882 edition.

56.  Luther Whiting Mason.  Third Music Reader.  Boston: Ginn, Heath, and Company, 1871; 1882 edition.

57.  “Luther Gulick.” Play and Playground Encyclopedia website.

58.  William A. Weber.  “Archibald T. Davison: Faith in Good Music.”  The Crimson, Harvard University, 17 February 1961.

59.  Thomas Whitney Surette and Archibald T Davison.  Fifty Rote Songs, for Grades I, II and III.  Boston: Boston Music Company, 1915.  [WorldCat entry.]

60.  Weber.
61.  Wikipedia.  “Katherine Kennicott Davis.”

62.  C. Michael Hawn.  “History of Hymns: ‘Let All Things Now Living’.”  The United Methodist Church Discipleship Ministries website, 20 November 2014.

63.  Wikipedia, Davis.