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.”
Sunday, August 27, 2023
Camp Farthest Out - Kum Ba Yah
Sunday, August 20, 2023
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].
Sunday, August 13, 2023
Albion High School Band - Kumbaya
Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Lynn Rohrbough was expanding the reach of Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) in the middle 1950’s. While he was experimenting with recordings [1] and his agents were contacting secular youth groups, [2] “Kumbaya” was spreading through the arteries of the Methodist Church.
It is difficult to document the flow because CRS songbooks were ephemeral, and few survive. Of those, few have dates. One exception is the one produced for Lake Poinsett in 1958, which was discussed in the post for 9 July 2023.
One never knows what is actually sung from a songbook, and within that group, what is remembered. Asking people involves unraveling memories, which can be tricky. One woman, who lived about an hour north of my hometown, said:
“I am thinking that I first sang ‘Kumbaya’ in the early 50’s at the Sunday evening Youth Fellowship meetings of the Dowling Methodist Church.” [3]
She graduated from high school in 1957, so the early 50’s may have been 1956 or 1957. Since the song was not publicized by CRS until 1956, she could not have learned it earlier.
A high-school classmate of mine wrote:
“My memories seem to flow together, one setting mixes in with others, so don’t trust anything I say about this as being accurate, although I’ve tried to find some time markers. I remember singing Kumbaya around the fire at Lake Louise. I was only there one year, in the summer of 1960, and after high school I was never in a setting where it was sung, so I doubt that I have it mixed up with some other large gathering around a fire. [Name] was an MYF leader when we were in 9th grade, and I have a picture of him leading us in the song. He left to teach in another school system the next year, so it was no later than that, the 1958-1959 school year. I don’t remember if it was he who introduced the song or someone else. I don’t have a memory of singing it in Jr. High MYF, but that may be my faulty memory.” [4]
MYF was the Methodist Youth Fellowship. As my friend recalled, members were sent to Lake Louise between their sophomore and junior years in high school. It was similar to Epworth Forest’s Senior Institutes mentioned the post for 30 May 2021. The only other person I talked to about the camp remembers just the baseball games.
I learned it on the band bus. Like my friend, I cannot be precise. I was in the senior band from ninth grade, 1958, to 1962. Each year we took two trips, one to band day at Michigan State University, and another to an away game. My junior year the father of one of the football players paid for us to attend every away game.
Games were played at night in Michigan. When we boarded the school buses for the return trip home, we were cold and tired. After heat filled the bus, and some became drowsy, we began singing slow songs like “Kumbaya” and “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.” We could not have sung the latter until 1961, the fall of our senior year, because it only became popular in the fall of 1961. [5]
I do not recall if we were singing my freshman year, but I know it was an established tradition by my junior year, the fall of 1960. I remember I sat next to a friend that year who wanted to talk, and I was a bit annoyed because I could npt join the singing. I know it was that year because I was a majorette and he was the drum major. He did not return the next year, and someone else was the drum major.
I mention these trivial details because they are the sort of secondary evidence individuals marshal when they are trying to reconstruct their memories of past events.
Based on that, I assume we were singing by my sophomore year. I sent emails to some of my classmates on the bus. Only one responded, and she did not recall singing. She was Black, and her comment revealed another aspect of the sociology of our high-school class.
There were two buses, and people wanted to get on the one with one’s friends or, perhaps more accurately, the ones one wanted to be associated with. Her comment suggests the African Americans in the band deliberately chose the bus that did not have the “cool white kids.” It may have been self-segregation or simple logistics. If the one group took many of the seats on the one bus, that left the other available for them.
If the singing was not initiated by the Black members of the band, then, I thought, it had to be someone who had gone to camp or was in a church group. Our high school was small, and I knew the religious affiliation of many of the people in the band. The largest number, who were in a social position to initiate the singing when I was a sophomore, were both Methodists and in Camp Fire Girls.
We did not sing it at either the day camp or the resident camp sponsored by the Camp Fire Girls. The director of the local day camp confirmed by recollection. She told me:
“I loved that” but “I don’t think I ever sang it at our day camp.” [6]
Her husband was on the faculty of the local Methodist college, and I assume she sang it at some of the church’s weekly fellowship meetings for adults.
The woman from Dowling remembered singing it at Kitanniwa, the summer resident CFG camp that people from my hometown attended. As mentioned in the post for 21 January 2018, she recalled it from the 1960s, and then it was a counselors’ song, not a campers’ one.
The process of elimination led me to ask someone who was not in the band, but I knew still was active in the Methodist church if she remembered the song from MYF. That led to the correspondence quoted above.
Our version no longer was the four-verse song publicized by CRS. We repeated the “kumbaya” verse after every “someone’s xxx” verse as a burden. While we probably sang the standard verses, they were not sung in any particular order. My recollection is that someone started a verse and we began at the same time, but waited to hear the verb to join in on the “ing.” This led to the possibility that verses were improvised to prolong the singing.
We probably only sang the melody, but because our voices were not trained to precise notes, the sound in our ears, while we were singing, was what I call timbraic harmony. This is the effect of voices with different qualities singing together.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: adolescent, mainly female, members of the marching band
Vocal Director: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
None
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: probably equal emphasis on syllables
Verses: standard verses in any order, with ad libbed ones sometimes
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: open-ended
Verse Repetition Pattern: “kumbaya” as burden
Ending: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one note to one syllable except for final “Lord”
Harmony: timbraic
Notes on Performance
Occasion: return trips from football games at night
Location: school bus
Microphones: none
Clothing: band uniforms worn for the game
Notes on Movement
Girls generally sat together, scattered the length of the bus. The bus was warm, and people were relaxing from the cold.
Notes on Performers
I have not been able to contact the teacher, and so have not included his name.
His family was from West Virginia, [7] and he graduated from Hillsdale College in 1958, where he played football. The young white man was tapped for Omicron Delta Kappa, [8] an honorary that included athletes. [9] The school was founded by Free Will Baptists, but began allowing other congregants to attend in 1907. It did not begin taking strong conservative stances until 1963. [10]
As my friend recalls, the new college graduate taught arithmetic and social studies in our school, which spanned grades seven to twelve. He also coached junior varsity football and seventh-eighth grade basketball. [11]
He worked in other schools until he received a masters’ degree in 1963 from Michigan State University. [12] He was on the Hillsdale faculty from 1967 to 1972, then returned to teaching. Later, he moved to northern Michigan where he worked for the state prison system. [13]
I assume he learned “Kumbaya” at some sort of workshop for MYF leaders.
Availability
None
End Notes
1. Larry Nial Holcomb. A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service. PhD dissertation. University of Michigan, 1972. 143-149. Tony Saletan’s participation in the CRS recordings is mentioned in the post for 26 March 2023.
2. See the posts for 27 November 2022 through 18 December 2022 that discusses the work of Max Exner and Augustus D. Zanzig in the 1950s.
3. Email, 3 March 2016.
4. Email, 11 May 2016.
5. “Michael” is discussed in the posts for 29 January 2023 and 26 March 2023.
6. Lucille Parker Munk. Interview, fall 1974.
7. Find a Grave website entry for his father.
8. LinkedIn website entry.
9. “Omicron Delta Kappa.” Wikipedia website, accessed 3 May 2023.
10. “Hillsdale College.” Wikipedia website, accessed 3 May 2023.
11. The Breeze, Albion High School, Albion, Michigan, yearbook, 1959.
12. LinkedIn website entry.
13. Hillsdale Chargers website.
Sunday, August 6, 2023
Brook Green Legends
Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The likely reason for the expansion of The Oaks plantation, mentioned in the post for 30 July 2023, was the introduction of a new variety of rice that increased productivity and profits. Carolina Gold was developed on Brook Green, the plantation immediately north of The Oaks. The land had been purchased in 1730 from the Pawleys by William Allston, one son of the immigrant John. [1] It was inherited by his son, William Junior, and his grandson, Benjamin Junior.
Subsequent ownership details were lost when Georgetown County, South Carolina, papers were destroyed during the Civil War. [2] The incontestable facts are Benjamin did not own Brook Green when he died in 1809, [3] Joshua John Ward was born on the plantation in 1800, [4] and Robert Francis Withers Allston was born there in 1801. [5]
Legends flourish in the absence of facts. Susan Lowndes Allston believes her great-grandfather Benjamin [6] lost the land when he signed a note for a friend. The noble man refused to evade payment because he was a minor when he signed. Susan summarized the family hagiography: “‘I was old enough to know what I was doing.’ So the place went, and Benjamin lived elsewhere.” [7]
She believed the property was purchased “by the Withers brothers, Francis and Robert” [8] and that they rented the fields to Ward, and earlier to his father Joshua Ward, and that they did not buy the plantation until 1847 when Francis died. [9]
Alberta Lachicotte, whose great-grandfather [10] purchased the plantation [11] where Benjamin died, [12] believed the Withers purchased another property from Benjamin in 1800. [13] She also thought both it and Brook Green then were called Springfield, and that Ward’s son was responsible for the Brook Green name. [14] He purchased Springfield in 1847, but maintained it as a separate plantation. [15]
Susan thought Benjamin’s wife and Robert Wither’s wife were cousins. [16] Benjamin’s wife, Charlotte Ann, was the daughter of the first William Allston and sister of the first Joseph of The Oaks. Another of Benjamin and Charlotte’s sons was named Joseph Waties Allston. [17] Two of Charlotte’s sisters married sons of William Waties, Junior. [18]
It may be Charlotte’s family worked together to find an appropriate buyer for Brook Green, and may even have bargained to allow the family to stay in their home until they could arrange a move. Charlotte’s sister Mary’s son, John Waites, married a woman named Ann. [19] She likely was Nancy Maham who married a John Waties in 1784. [20] Nancy was the daughter of the Hezekiah Mahem, mentioned in the posts for 13 November 2022 and 20 November 2022.
Hezekiah’s sister Elizabeth married John Cooke. [21] Their daughter, Elizabeth Cooke, married Charles Weston, [22] the son of Plowden Weston by his first wife. [23] Plowden owned a plantation north of Brook Green. [24]
Hezekiah’s niece and Nancy Maham Watie’s cousin Elizabeth Cooke married Joshua Ward, after Weston died. Joshua John’s great-grandson believed Joshua was a successful indigo planter. [25] George Rogers thought the Wards were merchants and lawyers in Charleston. [26] It is believed Joshua John acquired Brook Green by 1825. [27]
In 1838, Ward’s overseer, James C. Thompson, noticed part of a rice head that was larger than any other he had seen. Ward saved the seed, and planted it the next year on the margins of an old field where it was nearly destroyed by standing water and rats. The following year, he and Thompson planted the seed they’d been able to salvage in a large tub in Thompson’s yard, only to have a slave leave the gate open and a hog eat most of the crop. They transplanted the survivors, and most of the rice was sterile. [28]
In 1840, they took what had survived the hog and rot, and planted half an acre. The next year, Ward planted 21 acres at Brook Green, which his factor sold above the market price. In 1842, Ward tried 400 acres, and the following year planted nothing but the new large grain. [29]
In 1844, Ward made Carolina Gold available commercially. [30] From then until the civil war, the Brook Green rice “commanded the highest price of any rice on the world market in Paris and London.” [31]
Although, Ward was responsible for the wealth of the Waccamaw neck, he still was treated as a bit of an interloper. Popular historians prefer to discuss a painter, Washington Allston, who lived briefly at Brook Green [32] and inherited Springfield. [33] To give Ward respectability, George Rogers named the guests who attended a party he held when his daughter married. They included Allstons, LaBruces, and Westons. [34]
More important is the memoir of J. Motte Alston, a grandson of Benjamin’s father’s uncle William. [35] He recalled: “the party was kept up till the ‘wee sma hours’. A regular old-fashioned country dance to the music of sundry country fiddlers.” [36] One of the musicians, most likely, was the father of Ben Horry, who was interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler in the 1930s. [37]
End Notes
1. The first two generations of Allstons are discussed in the post for 23 July 2023.
2. Susan Lowndes Allston. Brookgreen Waccamaw in the Carolina Low Country. Charleston, South Carolina: Nelsons’ Southern Printing and Publishing Company, 1956. 24.
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. 12.
4. “Joshua John Ward.” Wikipedia website.
5. Daniel C. Littlefield. “New Introduction.” ix-xxviii in Easterby. ix.
6. “Susan Lowndes Allston Collection.” Georgetown, South Carolina, County Library website.
7. Susan Lowndes Allston. 22.
8. Susan Lowndes Allston. 24.
9. Susan Lowndes Allston. 27.
10. Alberta was the daughter of Arthur Herbert Lachicotte, who was the son of Francis William Lachicotte. [38] Francis was the son of Philip Rossignol Lachucotte. He fled Santo Domingo in 1792, and worked for an engine and boiler works. He later ran the rice mill at Dean Hall and, in 1857, the one at Brook Green. [39]
11. George C. Rogers. The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002. 469. The plantation was Waverly.
12. Rogers. 19.
13. Alberta Morel Lachicotte. Georgetown Rice Plantations. Georgetown, South Carolina: Georgetown County Historical Society, 1993 revised edition. 55.
14. Lachicotte. 58.
15. Lachicotte. 57.
16. Susan Lowndes Allston. 27.
17. Robert Walden Coggeshall. Ancestors and Kin. Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988. 173.
18. H. D. Bull. “The Waties Family of South Carolina.” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 45(1):12-22:January 1944. 15.
19. Bull. 17.
20. Nancy Maham is mentioned in the post for 20 November 2022.
21. John J. Simons III. “The Early Families of the South Carolina Low County.” RootsWeb website.
22. “Samuel Mortimer Ward, Jr.” History of South Carolina, edited by Yates Snowden and H. G. Cutler. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1920. 4:289.
23. Gurney Thompson. “Plowden Weston (abt. 1738 - abt. 1827).” Wiki Tree website, 5 September 2018; last updated 5 May 2023.
24. “Weston Family Papers.” Robert Scott Small Library, Special Collections, College of Charleston website.
25. “Samuel Mortimer Ward, Jr.” 289.
26. Rogers. 259.
27. Kathy Kelly, John Califf, and Julie Burr. “Brookgreen Gardens.” National Registry of History Places Inventory -- Nomination Form, 4 February 1978. 3.
28. Joshua John Ward. Letter to Robert Francis Withers Allston, 16 November 1843. The Proceedings of the Agricultural Convention and the State Agricultural Society of South Carolina from 1839-1846 inclusive. Columbia: Summers and Carroll for the State Agricultural Society of South Carolina, 1846. 56-57. The letter has been reprinted in many places including by Robert Francis Withers Alston, [40] Susan Lowndes Allston, [41] and the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. [42]
29. Ward.
30. Ward. He claimed his 1838 seed was descended from that planted by his great-uncle in 1785, and mentioned in the post for 20 November 2022.
31. Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. The Rice Paper, November 2009.
32. Washington Allston was the step-brother of Benjamin. [43] Susan Lowndes Allston devotes pages 18-19 and 23-24 to the painter. She discusses Joseph and Theodosia at The Oaks on page 21.
,
33. Lachicotte. 56. She discusses the painter on pages 55-56. Her discussion of The Oaks, on pages 59-61, only mentions Joseph and Theodosia. Lachicotte devotes one paragraph to Joshua John Ward on page 58.
34. Rogers. 269.
35. Jacob Motte Alston was the son of Thomas Pinckney Alston, [44] shown in the chart in the post for 30 July 2023. As noted there, Thomas was the son of Billy Alston and his second wife, Mary Brewton Motte, and the grandson of William Allston. William’s brother John was Benjamin’s grandfather. [45]
36. Jacob Motte Alston. Rice Planter and Sportsman: The Recollections of J. Motte Alston, 1821-1909, edited by Arney R. Childs. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1953. 105. Quoted by Rogers. 269.
37. Ben Horry is discussed in the post for 10 September 2023.
38. “Arthur Herbert Lachicotte.” Mormon’s Family Search website.
39. Rogers. 469.
40. Robert Allston. "A Memoir of the Introduction and Planting of Rice in South Carolina," 1843, reprinted in several other publications, including James Dunwoody, The Industrial Resources, Etc., of the Southern and Western States, volume 2, 1852.
41. Susan Lowndes Allston. 29-30.
42. Carolina Gold Rice Foundation.
43. Coggeshall. 172.
44. “Jacob Motte Alston.” Ancestry website.
45. Coggeshall. 172-174.