Northland Recreation Laboratory

Topic: CRS Version
Four National Social Recreation Institutes were held at Waldenwoods.  The last, in 1934, occurred during the worst of the Depression.  It was decided that, since many were traveling long distances, it was time to hold regional meetings. [1]

Two groups organized local workshops in 1935 that lasted more than a few years.  DeWitt Ellinwood and Ralph Kofoed held the first Leisurecraft and Counseling Camp in Illinois in 1935, with the assistance of David Lindstrom. [2]  The first two were Methodist ministers, who had attended Waldenwoods. [3]  Lindstrom was a rural sociologist for the University of Illinois Agricultural College.  Not much has been written about the training session, but in 1949 it attracted a hundred participants, [4] and still was active in 1987. [5]

The other was begun by Fred Smith, who was the campus minister for the Wesley Foundation in Minneapolis. [6]  Like Lynn Rohrbough, [7] he had been an undergraduate in the years when couples dancing was forbidden.  He entered Boston University the same year as Rohrbough and been involved with the Social Recreation Union. [8]

In planning the one at Camp Ihduhapi, Smith contacted Henry Lewis, who had attended Waldenwoods; William J. Bell, a recreational consultant for the area Presbyterian church, [9] and Horace Jones, a 4-H leader in South Dakota. [10]  He also asked Marietta Strandskov to teach folk dancing. [11]

Strandskov was from Tyler, Minnesota, where a Danish Folk School had been established in 1888 by followers of Frederick Grundtvig. [12]  He led a ritual-based revival within the Lutheran Church, and publicized early Danish culture, including Beowulf, [13]  The first leader was Hans Jorgen Pedersen, [14] who had founded the Danish folk school in Michigan mentioned in the post for 19 September 2021. [15]

The Danish group introduced handcrafts as well as dancing.  More important to Rohrbough was its interest in music.  Strandskov brought Chris Jespersen, who was compiling a song collection for the Danish American Young People’s League. [16]

Rohrbough did not attend the first meeting, [17] but did the one in 1936 [18] when the name was changed to Northland Recreation Laboratory. [19]  He met Jespersen, [20] who allowed him to use “Han Skal Leve” in his Joyful Singing collection. [21]

He also met Jane Keen, who had been recruited by Jones.  Northland Rec wanted everyone who attended to contribute something.  At the first meeting:

“E. O. Harbin [22] was teaching many new folk songs, which everybody wanted included in the notebook.  Chris Jespersen wrote down the melodies and Jane Keen began laboriously making very artistic mimeograph stencils with words and music.” [23]

Rohrbough hired her on a piece-work basis to produce plates for him.  This allowed him to published collections of circle dances that were accompanied by singing.  He published Singing Games of the South in 1938, [24] and two more in 1939. [25]  Her services also made it possible for him to publish his first song Kit in 1938, the Joyful Singing mentioned above and in the post for 19 September 2021.

While Rohrbough made some useful contacts at Northland, Smith recalled that his contribution was negative.  Even though the Lab already had “adopted the philosophy which he expounded and were using materials from his company,” Rohrbough “was critical of much material being used . . . throughout the country.” [26]

By then, Rohrbough had begun another, rival National Cooperative Recreation School in 1936 with his business partner, Carl Hutchinson. [27]  Even so, he used his Northland contacts to hold the second session at Grand View College, [28] the sponsor of Jespersen’s Danish song project.

Recreation leadership workshops had become, if not big business, a competitive business.  The National Recreation Association held a National Recreation School in New York through 1935, [29] and replaced it with one-month institutes that trained 3,800 in 1936. [30]  Augustus Zanzig led meetings in New York and Burlington, Vermont. [31]

Zanzig did not come cheap.  Northland had to pay $15, and recouped some of its costs by booking him elsewhere.  Bob Nolte recalled:

“he was a masterful leader.  He stood up as he played the piano and walked away fro it and back to it as he led.  He seemed to have a store house of new songs. [. . .]  He taught us how to teach and he developed and tested his ideas and theories as he worked with us – a real recreation laboratory.” [32]

One reason he knew so many songs is that he actively was collecting them.  In 1940, the National Recreation Association published Singing America. [33]  With war already raging in Europe, Zanzig could not use the German material he had used with the Concord collections described in the post for 5 September 2021.  He replaced it with music from the United States that was being popularized by Carl Sandburg and John Lomax: songs from cowboys, sailors, and Appalachia. [34]  He added some Stephen Foster lyrics and a few Negro spirituals.  This, combined with the large number of tunes from the United Kingdom, represented 58% of the anthology.

In a major break from other collections, the third largest group, 17%, came from Latin America.  He did not abandon Germany, but most of the nine songs were by well-known composers in the “Hymns and Chorales” section. [35]  The remaining 21% were from Europe, with a preference for France and Bohemia.

Graphics
1.  Alice Olenin and Thomas F. Corcoran.  Hours and Earnings in the United States, 1932-40.  Washington, DC: United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1942.  Chart 3, “Blast Furnaces and Automobiles.”

2.  A photograph of Rohrbough and his wife, Katherine Ferris Rohrbough, appears of the Photos K tab.  His photograph also appears in the posts for 12 September 2021 and 19 September 2021.

End Notes
1.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  “A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service.”  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.  44–45.

2.  E. H. Reginer.  “The Recreation Workshop.”  Extension Service Review 12–13:January 1949.

3.  “Rev. Ellinwood, Wife To Observe 40th Anniversary.”  The Dispatch, Moline, Illinois, 2 September 1960.  10.

“Rev. Ralph K. Kofoed.”  Los Angeles Times, 21 March 2004.

4.  Reginer.

5.  “Recreation Labs/Workshops.”  41 in Folklore Village Christmas Festival, Program, 27–31 December 1987, Mount Horeb, Wisconsin.

6.  Fred Smith.  Quoted by Bob Nolte.  Northland Recreation Lab: A History.  1984.  4.  Copy provided by Heidi Ryan, 21 June 2016.

7.  Rohrbough spent his senior year at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio.  In 1924, the Methodist church lifted its ban on amusement and dancing was allowed on campus. [36]  For more on the church’s attitude toward dancing, see the post for 2 November 2018.

8.  Smith.  3–4.  The SRU is discussed in the post for 12 September 2021.
9.  Nolte.  4.
10.  Nolte.  7.
11.  Nolte.  15.

12.  “Danebod.”  National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form.  30 June 1975.

13.  Wikipedia.  “N. F. S. Grundtvig.”  Grundtvig translated Beowulf, an epic set in sixth century Denmark. [37]

14.  Wikipedia.  “Danebod.”
15.  Pederson is mentioned in note 6 for the post for 19 September 2021.

16.  Nolte.  15.  The collection was: Danish American Young People’s League.  A World of Song.  Des Moines, Iowa: Grand View College; printed by Blair, Nebraska: Lutheran Publishing House, 1941.  Ten booklets in a three-ring binder.  Jespersen is mentioned briefly in the post for 19 September 2021.

17.  Nolte.  14.

18.  Holcomb.  109.  This is deduced from his statement that Rohrbough began working with Keen in 1936.

19.  Holcomb.  86.  The Lab continued to be held at Ihduhapi, which was owned by the Minneapolis YMCA. [38]

20.  Nolte, 14, and Holcomb, 86.

21.  Joyful Singing.  In Handy II.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1938.  This is discussed in the post for 19 September 2021.  In return, Jespersen used 10 of the 22 songs in Joyful Singing in the Danish collection. [39]

22.  Harbin was with the Methodist Episcopal Church South.  He is mentioned in the posts for 9 February 2020 and 12 September 20201.  He continued to attend Northland Rec until he was too frail to travel. [40]

23.  Nolte.  13.

24.  Holcomb.  90.  WorldCat has a copyrighted version from 1939. [41]

25.  Lynn Rohrbough.  American Folk Dances.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1939.  [WorldCat entry.]

Lynn Rohrbough.  Square Dances of the Great Smoky Mountains.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1939.  [WorldCat entry.]

26.  Fred Smith.  Letter to Larry Nial Holcomb, 12 February 1972.  Quoted by Holcomb.  86.  Ellipsis in Holcomb.

27.  Holcomb.  82.  His source was Consumers’ Cooperation 23:125:August 1936.  Hutchinson is mentioned in the posts for 19 September 2021, 3 October 2021, and 10 October 2021.  The cooperative organization lasted a year, before it failed from the difficulties of maintaining an far-flung organization. [42]

28.  Holcomb.  83.  His source was Consumers’ Cooperation 23:124:August 1937.

29.  Richard F. Knapp and Charles E. Hartsoe.  Play for America: The National Recreation Association 1906–1965.  Arlington, Virginia: National Recreation and Park Association, 1979.  ix.

30.  Knapp.  120.

31.  Item.  The Burlington Free Press, Burlington, Vermont, 9 July 1936.  Posted by charlsbillings on 30 January 2018.

32. Nolte.  19.  See the photograph of Zanzig taken at Northland in the post for 5 September 2021.

33.  Augustus D. Zanzig.  Singing America.  Boston: C. C. Birchard and Company, 1940.

34.  The post for 12 May 2019 has more on the repertoire of American folk songs promoted by Sandburg and Lomax.

35.  This probably was the influence of Archibald Thompson Davison, mentioned in note 43 of the post for 5 September 2021.  Davison believed people would sing classical music if they were exposed to it in familiar contexts like text books and glee clubs. [43]

36.  Le Bejou, Ohio Wesleyan yearbook, 1924.  111.
37.  Wikipedia.  “Beowulf.”

38.  “Camp Ihduhapi.”  University of Minnesota, Elmer L. Andersen Library Archives and Special Collections.

39.  Danish American Young People’s League.  Volume VI.  Songs and Folk Songs from Many Lands.

40.  Nolte.  11.

41.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Southern Singing Games.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1939.  [WorldCat entry.]

42.  Holcomb.  66.

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

Waldenwoods Recreation Institutes

Topic: CRS Version
Lynn Rohrbough may have come from a strict Methodist family, but as a young man he was open to new experiences.  You can see the differences in his self-presentation in photographs taken when he was a college senior, reproduced in the post for 12 September 2021, and the one above.

He finally completed his degree at Boston University in 1928, [1] and no longer needed to take transferable credits at Chicago’s Garrett Biblical Institute.  He and his wife, the former Katherine Ferris, were free to live as they wished.  She recalled:

“After four years in Chicago, we decided that it was not the place for two county-bred people or for their two small daughters and set out to find a small town location.  We hit upon Delaware, Ohio, whose Ohio Wesleyan University Lynn had attended as an undergraduate.” [2]

When they first arrived in Delaware in June of 1929, they rented a place in town. [3]  Lynn scheduled his next recreation workshop that year in a city park in Wheeling, West Virginia. [4]  It did not attract enough people to support the usual lecture-discussion program of an institute.  In the face of potential failure, Rohrbough returned to the early sessions of the Social-Recreation Union in Boston.

“Instead of talking about recreation, they decided to demonstrate.  They danced and sang, and it was so much fun they decided to meet the next year at Geneva, Wisconsin.” [5]

Thus, was born the participatory recreation institute.  The Wisconsin one was such a success that the attendees elected a committee to plan future sessions.  Among the members were Chester Graham of the Ashland Folk School in Newago County, Michigan; [6] a representative of the Methodist Episcopal church; [7] two people from city recreation departments, [8] and two from state agricultural extension offices, including Bruce Tom. [9]

It was at this May event that the Rohrboughs discovered folk dancing.  “The most popular activity” was “an English folk dance called ‘Set Running,” taught by Dillard Turner of Yeaddiss, Kentucky.” [10]

Running community dances became their livelihood in the Depression.  The Rohrboughs had been able to get a mortgage on an eighty-acre farm outside Delaware in July of 1930, [11] but their income dropped dramatically.  In 1929, 10,000 individuals subscribed to their Kit recreation service.  With bad times, the membership dropped to a few hundred. [12]

Governments at all levels had become concerned with the welfare of the unemployed, and turned to recreation programs to counter despair.  Roosevelt’s Federal Emergency Relief Administration built recreation facilities. [13]  Augustus Zanzig [14] left the Concord School in 1929 to begin a survey of musical activities in the United States for the Playground and Recreation Association of America.  After it was published in 1932, [15] the renamed National Recreation Association [16] hired him to run recreation workshops throughout the country. [17]

Rohrbough traveled from Ohio down to Texas and out to California during the 1933–1934 winter where he often gave two or three demonstrations a day.  At each stop, he set up displays to sell his publications. [18]  Rohrbough remembered:

“One time we drove from Toronto to San Diego and gave a party at some church or hall nearly every night.  The pay wasn’t so good but we usually had enough to eat, and we collected the most marvelous songs and games.  We took the music and the words down where we found them and later put them into print.” [19]

The 1931 recreation institute was held at Waldenwoods, about fifty miles west of Detroit in Livingston County, Michigan. [20]  This was the first meeting to include European folk songs.  One attendee recalled:

“I think the most practical contribution I received from the Recreation Institute--and one of the richest experiences as well--was the introduction to and increased appreciation of Folk Songs under Mrs. Ramsey’s leadership.  I expect to use some of these songs and make more use of Negro Spirituals.” [21]

Waldenwoods was owned by John Robert Crouse [22] and leased to the Michigan Council on Religious Education. [23]  Crouse made his money from the development of electric power, but became a champion of cooperation over competition.  He first developed Waldenwoods as a conference center, then turned it into a cooperative camp. [24]

Rural marketing cooperatives were being encouraged by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, [25] and this may have been Rohrbough’s first encounter with the movement.  In 1934, he and Carl Hutchinson founded the Recreation Co-operative “to furnish leisure materials and services on a non-profit basis.” [26]  Hutchinson was active in the Ohio Farm Bureau, [27] which was one of the most successful of the farm cooperatives. [28]

The Rohrboughs’ publishing business evolved during this period.  They may have learned more about copyrights when Katherine wrote a book on stunts for a national publisher in 1929. [29]  In 1931, they collaborated on Games We Like Best for another national publisher. [30]  They continued to update Handy, and the 1931 revision is the first to carry a copyright notice in WorldCat. [31]

While they continued to focus on social games, the Rohrboughs [32] issued their first collection of Quadrilles in 1931. [33]  The next year, they published a collection of Play Party Games. [34] After that, they concentrated on games.

Larry Holcomb says Rohrbough continued to reprint parodies like those published by E. O. Harbin [35] until 1932. [36]  He included some folk songs in the Kits, but took most of them from existing collections. [37]  This, of course, was another opportunity for him to learn the intricacies of copyright law.

The Rohrboughs’ taste was being expanded by the people they met.  A 1938 issue of Kit contained twenty-two songs. [38]  One third are from the same area in Europe [39] as the one taught by Ramsey.  Most are from a collection by a Czech Presbyterian pastor in New York, [40] but one is from a Concord School collection. [41]

Another third of the songs in Joyful Singing is from England.  A couple are from a semi-religious collection produced by Walford Davies, [42] who worked for the British Broadcasting Company. [43]  One was from the Concord group, [44] and another was collected by Cecil Sharp. [45]  I was not able to identify the source for the others. [46]

He learned many of the remaining eight from people he met at workshops.  The Social-Recreation Union copyrighted one Danish song, [47] but a woman Rohrbough met in Minnesota provided the other. [48]  Three were from Kentucky, [49] while a Swedish song was from Mrs. Albert Magnuson. [50]  The others were from a Concord collection [51] or unidentifiable. [52]

Rohrbough was not influenced by the community song tradition of World War I or by professional folklorists or by popular music.  Joyful Singing has none of the national songs from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland or ones by Stephen Foster that filled collections by Peter Dykema. [53]  None of the cowboy songs collected by John Lomax appear, [54] nor do any Negro spirituals like those recorded by Victor. [55]

Graphics
1.  Lynn Rohrbough, as young man.  Photograph used by permission of Michael A. Joyner.

2.  A photograph of Rohrbough and his wife, Katherine Ferris Rohrbough, appears of the Photos K tab.  His photograph also appears in the post for 12 September 2021.

End Notes
For more on Lynn Rohrbough see the "Topics and Artists" column at the right.

1.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  “A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service.”  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.  26.

2.  Katherine Ferris Rohrbough.  “Good Times as a Career.”  Wellesley Alumnae Magazine, January 1956.  84.  Quoted by Holcomb.  61.  They had a third daughter in 1930.

3.  Holcomb.  61.
4.  Holcomb.  37.

5.  Fred Smith.  Quoted by Bob Nolte.  Northland Recreation Lab: A History.  1984.  4.   Copy provided by Heidi Ryan, 21 June 2016.  Smith remembered the institute occurred in 1928; Holcomb said it was 1929.

6.  Hans Jorgen Pedersen organized the Ashland Folk School in 1882 [56] for Danish immigrant lumbermen [57] who were supplying the furniture factories in Grand Rapids, Michigan. [58]  It used the ideas of Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig. [59]  Pedersen left in 1888. [60]  The school was revived in 1928 and lasted until 1934. [61] It then moved and is now the Buttermilk Jamboree Folk School. [62]

7.  Owen Greer, Institute and Life Work Secretary.

8.  Chester Bower worked for the Chicago Department of Young People’s Work.  Viola Armstrong was with the Detroit Department of Recreation.

9.  Holcomb.  40.  The other was Zelma Monroe of the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station.  Tom is discussed in the posts for 12 September 2021, 3 October 2021, 10 October 201, and 17 October 2021.

10.  Holcomb.  39–40.
11.  Holcomb.  61.
12.  Holcomb.  32.

13.  Richard F. Knapp and Charles E. Hartsoe.  Play for America: The National Recreation Association 1906–1965.  Arlington, Virginia: National Recreation and Park Association, 1979.  113–115.

14.  Zanzig is discussed in the posts for 5 September 2021, 26 September 2021, and 3 October 2021.

15.  Augustus Delafield Zanzig.  Music in American Life.  London: Oxford University Press, 1932.

16.  A brief history of the National Recreation Association appears in the post for 5 September 2021.

17.  Knapp.  96.
18.  Holcomb.  70.

19.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Quoted by “Who We Were ~ Cooperative Recreation Service.”  World Around Songs website.

20.  Holcomb.  40.

21.  Helen E. Mummery.  “Same Aims as Religious Education.”  Kit 26:11:1931.  Quoted by Holcomb.  41.  The impact of Martha Ramsey is mentioned in the post for 9 February 2020.

22.  “About Us.”  Waldenwoods Banquet and Conference Center website.

23.  Item.  Federal Council Bulletin, September 1930.  22.  The council was an interdenominational group created in 1922 from the merger of several Sunday school associations.  It became part of the National Council of Churches in 1950. [63]

24. “724.  Crouse, John Robert.”  In Thomas Edgerton Powers and William H. McNitt.  Guide to Manuscripts in the Bentley Historical Library.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1976.  55.

25.  In 1913, the Department of Agriculture established the Office of Markets, which began studying “cooperative marketing and purchasing.”  The first cooperative grain elevators followed in 1915. [64]

26.  Holcomb.  65.  His source was a company flyer.
27.  Holcomb.  65.

28.  The Farm Bureau was founded in 1919 to create a group powerful enough to counter the railroads and other business interests who were dictating prices.  In the early years, it worked to lower the costs of seed and equipment. [65]

29.  Katherine Rohrbough.  Successful Stunts.  Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1929.  [WorldCat entry.]  One contributor, Nancy Beach, may have been a relative.  Katherine’s mother was born Nancy Beach. [66]

30.  Lynn Rohrbough and Katherine Rohrbough.  Games We Like Best.  New York: Harper, 1931.  [WorldCat entry.]

31.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Handy II, The Red Book.  Delaware, Ohio: Church Recreation Service, 1931.  [WorldCat entry.]

32.  After 1931, the entries in WorldCat only have his name.  I am assuming they wrote them together, or that he drafted them and she edited them for publication.

33.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Quadrilles.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1931.  [WorldCat entry.]  The publisher’s name may be an anachronism, or it may be a later reprint that kept the original publication date.

34.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Play Party Games.  Delaware, Ohio: Church Recreation Service, 1932.  [WorldCat entry.]

35.  E. O. Harbin.  Paradology, Songs of Fun and Fellowship.  Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1927.  This is discussed in the post for 9 February 2020.

36.  Holcomb.  59.
37.  Holcomb.  60.

38.  Joyful Singing.  1–24 in Handy II.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1938. [67]  Rohrbough reused the title Joyful Singing for a generic collection that customers could modify, so there is no such thing as a definitive version of the anthology.

39.  Ramsey used the term Czech.  Before World War I, the area was known as Bohemia, and afterward was called Czechoslovakia.  Today it includes the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. [68]

40.  “Goodnight Beloved,” “Happy Meeting,” “My Homeland,” and “Timid Maiden” were published by Vincent Pisek. [69]  He was a Czech immigrant who headed the Jan Hus Bohemian Presbyterian Church in New York City.  While he died before Rohrbough could have met him, he had visited Czech communities in the Midwest. [70]  “Goodnight” and “Homeland” were recorded by Victor in 1914. [71]

41.  “Annie, the Miller’s Daughter.”  33–34 in Archibald T. Davison, Thomas Whitney Surette, and Augustus D. Zanzig.  Concord Junior Song and Chorus Book.  Boston: E. C. Schirmer Music Company, 1927.  It is identified as “Slovakian.”

42.  Walford Davies.  The New Fellowship Song Book.  London: Novello, 1931.  It is the credited source for “Green Grow the Rushes.”  It also contains “John Peel.”

43.  Wikipedia.  “Walford Davies.”

44.  “The Keeper.” [72]

45.  “O No, John!”  Cecil J. Sharp.  Folk-Songs from Somerset: Fourth Series.  London: Simpkin and Company, 1911.  It was reprinted by both Davies [73] and the Concord group. [74]

46.  ““Mow the Hay” and Pretty Maid Come Along.”  “Hunting Song” is a round.

47.  “Men of the Soil.”

48.  “Han Skal Leve.” The collection and Chris Jespersen is discussed in the post for 26 September 2021.

49.  “Blackest Crow,” “Down in the Valley,” and “Sister Sally.”
50.  “The Happy Plowman.”

51.  “My Banjo.”  189–190 in 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: E. C. Schirmer Music Company, 1922.  It is identified as “Italian.” 

52.  “Nightingale.”

53.  Dykema and the community song tradition are discussed in the post for 28 April 201.  He is mentioned again in the post for 5 September 2021.

54.  For more on John Lomax and cowboys songs, see the post for 12 May 2019.
55.  See the post for 8 August 2021 for a discussion of spirituals recorded by Victor.

56.  Thorvald Hansen.  “Disaster in Tyler.”  Bridge 11(2):1988.  Reprinted as “Great Danish American Birthday - Hans Jorgen Pedersen.”  National Foundation for Danish America website.

57.  Holcomb 51.
58.  Wikipedia.  “Grant, Michigan.

59.  Harold W. Stubblefield.  “The Danish Folk High School and Its Reception in the United States: 1870s-1930s.”  Roghiemstra website.

60.  Hansen.
61.  Stubblefield.
62  “The Buttermilk Jamboree Folk School.”  Its website.

63.  “Guide to the International Council of Religious Education Records.”  Presbyterian Historical Society website.

64.  Martin A. Abrahamsen.  “Policy Developments.”  207–224 in Agricultural Cooperation.  Edited by Martin Abraham Abrahamsen and Claude L. Scroggs.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957.  209.

65.  Wikipedia.  “American Farm Bureau Federation.”

66.  “James 5.”  5.1.2.6.4.3.6.2 on Karsen Sheppard Studios website, April 2008.  This is part of a larger genealogy of the descendants of Jeffrey Ferris.

67.  Holcomb.  59.  He listed the contents of the collection with the associated country.
68.  Wikipedia.  “Bohemia.”

69.  Vincent Pisek.  Twenty-Two Bohemian Folk-Songs.  1922.

70.  Vincent Trinka.  “Vincent Pisek.”  Find a Grave website, 15 July 2013.  Pisek died in 1930.

71.  Ema Destinnová and Dinh Gilly.  “Good-night.”  Victor C-14755.  23 April 1914.

Ema Destinnová and Dinh Gilly.  “My homeland.”  Victor B-14756.  23 April 1914.

72.  Text in Concord Junior.  Rohrbough credits Folk-Songs and Ballads for School, Home and Camp.  Boston: E. C. Schirmer, 1932.  Schirmer was the Concord’s publisher.

73.  122–124 in Davies.
74.  97–98 in A Book of Songs.
 

Lynn Rohrbough’s First Recreation Institutes

 

 

Topic: CRS Version
Lynn Rohrbough began holding recreation institutes in 1926. [1]  While they were similar to the commercial ventures mentioned in the post for 5 September 2021, they also were deeply steeped in Methodist tradition.

Elmore Lynch Rohrbough was born in 1900 in Aspen Colorado [2] to parents who were such strict Methodists that he did not sing until high school.  In 1913, his father moved the family back to West Virginia, [3] where Rohrboughs had been living since the 1760s. [4]

The Buckhannon high school elected him president of the local Epworth League where he devised contests to attract new members.  Then, he entered the local Methodist college, where his willingness to lead first manifested itself.  He remembered he “made a baton from a broom and with it became the drum major for the West Virginia Wesleyan band.”  He was sent to the summer Epworth League institute. [5]

The Epworth League had been organized in 1889 by Methodist church leaders who merged a number of existing groups. [6]  They wanted a single youth program capable of competing with the YMCA and Christian Endeavor. [7]  The organization began holding national conventions, then turned to smaller institutes dedicated to studying specific topics.

Its first institute was held in Delaware, Ohio, in 1901, [8] then the idea was taken up by the Pittsburgh district. [9]  After a demonstration program in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1906, [10] more districts held them.  By 1914, the League’s Central Office wanted an “Institute within reach of every Epworthian every summer.” [11]

While the avowed purpose of the institutes was earnest, recreation was part of the programs since the one in Des Plaines rented a farmer’s field for volleyball. [12]  Pittsburgh used the Valley Camp the same year. [13]

Rohrbough was so successful in attracting members to the Epworth League that the Pittsburgh conference hired him as a field secretary in 1920. [14]  One woman recalled “his first interest was games of all sorts, suitable for all church gatherings, and he had the ability and personality to put them across and keep young people interested.” [15]

After spending a year working for the Epworth League, Rohrbough transferred to Ohio Wesleyan in Delaware, Ohio, to complete his undergraduate work. [16]  His next job was with the Greensburg, Pennsylvania, YMCA, twenty miles from Pittsburgh. [17]  Since the Y emphasized physical activities, he used local churches to promote social recreation. [18]

A year later, Rohrbough had saved enough money to enter the Methodist theology school at Boston University, and enough of a résumé to be given a job as recreation instructor. [19]  There, for the first time, he was around other people his age who needed ideas for church programs that did not include couples dancing together. [20]

He began holding meetings on Fridays for people to swap ideas. [21]  His roommate remembered most of them “had part-time jobs as recreation leaders with nearby church youth groups.” [22]  That led to mimeographed collections, and then, in 1924, printed units he called Handy.  The sheets could be inserted into pocket-sized, four-ring binders. [23]  Most were devoted to games, but section “S” was “Musical Recreation.” [24]

As the group expanded, it called itself the Social-Recreation Union.  While Rohrbough initiated the activities, he let others run the organization.  Emma Brox was responsible for music.  Harold Case handled indoor activities. [25]  Larry Holcomb noted:

“By delegating authority, he was able to run the organization from the sidelines, as it were without doing all the work or claiming credit for it.  Simultaneously, he was able to provide leadership training opportunities for others”

who would become local church leaders. [26]

In 1925, Rohrbough married the group’s secretary, [27] Katherine Ferris, and they moved to Chicago where he worked for the Bethany Girls Center.  His class credits at the Garrett Biblical Institute were accepted by BU. [28]

They continued the work of the Social-Recreation Union together, and in 1926 began using the name Church Recreation Service. [29]  They charged a dollar fee for members to receive all their publications.  Katherine recalled “the little book was making our living.” [30]

Like good business people, they used some of the funds to promote their work with their first Recreation Institute in the Bethany center. [31]  The purpose was an exchange of ideas by individuals active in recreation.  For their second Bethany conference in 1927, they were able to attract some of the more important people in the field. [32]  Peter Dykema, who was then at Teacher’s College, Columbia, had published Twice 55 Games in 1924. [33]  E. O Harbin had published a collection of games for the Methodist Church South in 1923, [34] and was just releasing a collection of song parodies. [35]

Among the less famous was his former classmate, Harold Case.  He had returned to Kansas where he published A Year of Special Parties for Young People in 1926. [35]  Another was Bruce Tom of the Ohio State Extension Office.  He apparently did not have a book to promote. [37]

Graphics
1.  Lynn Rohrbough during his senior year at Ohio Wesleyan University, 1922.  Copy courtesy of Emily Gattozzi and Eugene Rutigliano, archivists at Ohio Wesleyan University in 2013 and 2020.

2.  A photograph of Rohrbough and his wife, Katherine Ferris Rohrbough, appears of the Photos K tab and the post for 19 September 2021. 

End Notes
For more on Lynn Rohrbough see the "Topics and Artists" column at the right.

1.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  "A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service."  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.  36.

2.  Holcomb.  13.

3.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Letter to Larry Nial Holcomb, 17 February 1972.  Cited by Holcomb.  14.  Some of this information appears in the post for 9 February 2020.

4.  Lewis Bunker Rohrbaugh.  Rohrbach Genealogy.  Philadelphia: Dando-Schaff Printing, 1970.  333.

5. Lynn Rohrbough.  Cited by Holcomb.  15.

6.  Paul Hutchinson.  The Story of the Epworth League.  New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1927.  28–30.  The Epworth League is mentioned briefly in the post for 9 February 2020.

7.  Christian Endeavor was the first nondenominational Protestant youth club.  Mark Senter describes it as a catalyst for the formation of denominational groups. [38]  It is mentioned briefly in the post for 14 February 2021.

8.  Hutchinson.  71.
9.  Hutchinson.  97.
10.  Hutchinson.  98.

11.  Dan B. Brummitt.  The Efficient Epworthian.  Cincinnati, Ohio: The Methodist Book Concern, 1914.  415.

12.  Hutchinson.  98.

13.  Hutchinson.  100.  The growth of institutes in Indiana is discussed in the post for 30 May 2021 on Epworth Forest.

14.  Hutchinson.  15.

15.  Mrs. Paul Randall.  Letter to Larry Nial Holcomb, 7 March 1972.  Quoted by Holcomb.  15.

16.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Quoted by Holcomb.  15–16.
17.  Holcomb.  17.
18.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Cited by Holcomb.  18.
19.  Holcomb.  17.

20.  The Methodist attitude toward dance and play parties is discussed in the post for 2 November 2018, along with an example of a play party.

21.  Holcomb.  20.

22.  W. Arthur Milne, Sr.  Interviewed by Larry Nial Holcomb, 19 November 1971.  Quotation from Holcomb.  21.

23.  Holcomb.  22.  The Roman Catholic Church adopted a similar format in 1970 when changes in the liturgy created a similar kind of demand for new materials.  See the post for 16 August 2020.

24.  Holcomb.  22.
25.  Holcomb.  24.

25.  Holcomb.  23.  Emma Atlee probably was typical of the group.  She had taught in the public schools of Tyrone, Pennsylvania, before going to Boston.  In 1924, she married Daniel Dewey Brox, who was a preacher in Fall River, Massachusetts. [39]

26.  Holcomb.  23.
27.  Holcomb.  24.

28.  Holcomb.  26.  Carrie Stewart Besserer organized the Bethany Girls in 1914 to serve the needs of young women who moved from farms to cities for work.  It attracted the sponsorship of the Presbyterian Church. [40]  The group ran a camp at Winona Lake, Indiana. [41]  In Chicago, it owned a building that provided lodging for fifty. [42]  Holcomb says Rohrbough was director of recreation, and “helped with training programs and parties.”

29.  Holcomb.  26.

30.  Katherine Ferris Rohrbough.  “Good Times as a Career.”  Wellesley Alumnae Magazine, January 1956.  83.  Quoted by Holcomb.  33.

31.  Holcomb.  36.
32.  Holcomb.  37.

33.  Peter W. Dykema.  Twice 55 Games with Music. The Red Book.  Boston: C. C. Birchard and Company, 1924.  He is discussed in the post for 30 August 2018, and is mentioned briefly in the post for 5 September 2021.

34.  E. O. Harbin.  Phunology: A Collection of Tried and Proved Plans for Play, Fellowship, and Profit.  Nashville, Tennessee: Cokesbury Press, 1923.  Elvin Oscar Harbin is discussed in the posts for 9 February 2020, 26 September 2021, and 3 October 2021.

35.  E. O. Harbin.  Paradology, Songs of Fun and Fellowship.  Nashville, Tennessee: Cokesbury Press, 1927.

36.  Harold C. Case.  A Year of Special Parties for Young People.  Wichita, Kansas: Wichita Eagle Press, 1926.  He later became president of Boston University. [43]

37.  Bruce is discussed in the posts for 18 September 2021, 3 October 2021, 10 October 2021, and 17 October 2021.

38.  Mark Houston Senter III.  “The Youth for Christ Movement as an Educational Agency and Its Impact upon Protestant Churches, 1931-1979.”  PhD dissertation.  Loyola University of Chicago, March 1989.  General impact on other church youth programs, 81–84; on Epworth League, 83.

39.  “Miss Emma Atlee Now the Bride of [Rev] Brox.”  Tyrone Daily Herald, Tyrone, Pennsylvania, 20 August 1924.  1.  Digital conversion has “RF.”

40.  “Bethany Girls.”  Vintage Kids Stuff website.

41.  Kaitlin Gruenwald.  “Winona Lake Parks Department Internship.”  Weebly website.  Winona Lake is mentioned in the post for 17 January 2021.

42.  “Overseers of the Poor & Outcast.”  Lake View Historical Chronicles website, 10 June 2011.

43.  “Dr. Harold C. Case, 69, Former President of BU.”  The Boston Globe, 21 February 1972.  30.  Posted by jptravis on 14 January 2020.

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.