Ida Robinson Sedberry

Topic: Early Versions
John Robinson’s sister, Ida, was born in 1874, and married William Sedberry in 1895. [1]  If last names are an indicator, his grandfather was brought from Tennessee by William Rush Sedberry in the winter of 1852–1853. [2]

Rush was born in North Carolina, and moved to Maury County [3] in central Tennessee where he married in 1844. [4]  By 1850, he owned six slaves. [5]  William’s grandfather, Captain Sedberry, and his wife, Polly, are thought to have had two sons by then, Elias Bob, born in 1832, and Clark, born in 1848. [6]  Given the gap between birth dates, there may have been other children, perhaps girls, who were sold or faded into obscurity when they married.

William’s father, Samuel, was born in 1853, apparently just before the move. [7]  He married Martha Barnes, a woman born in Texas. [8]  Rush and Sam Barnes were trustees for Bosque County’s Clifton College where it was organized in 1860. [9]

Sedberry, like John Robinson, was a cook.  When John married in 1906, Ida played the wedding march in the Meridian, Texas, Cumberland Presbyterian church.  Ida and “Basey” held the reception in Alvardao, Texas. [10]  It sat on two railroad lines. [11]

In 1911, Sedberry went by himself to Lubbock to work for the Merrill Hotel, but found the town so hostile, he returned to Waxahachie. [12]  That city was just east of Alvarado, on the same rail lines. [13]

Lubbock was a rail stop on the Llano Estacado, [14] which was founded by men like John Lomax’s father [15] who wanted a “white man’s country” that was not “polluted by a lot of worthless” Blacks. [16]

Farmers had begun growing cotton after the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad came through in 1909. [17]  They depended on Spanish-speaking migratory workers to pick the crops and leave. [18]

This changed in 1919, when demands from World War I led to an expansion of agriculture.  The cotton crop was too large for the existing labor supply, and too valuable to leave in the fields. [19]  In November, “a hundred cotton pickers, mostly Negroes, had arrived in Lubbock.  They were lured to the area by a rumor of high wages.” [20]

Robert Foster noted many stayed “by default; they could do no better than stay and tolerate the anti-Negro sentiment.” [21]  A community began developing along Avenue A, with businesses that served African Americans.  By 1920, there was a café with an adjacent pool hall [22] and a Masonic lodge. [23]  They served the same functions for different groups of mobile men as the Poro Society had among the Mende. [24]

Sedberry returned in 1921 to work for the Merrill Hotel. [25]  Ida joined him in 1923. [26]  Sometime after that, in 1923 or 1924, he had his own café, but apparently continued to work at the hotel. [27]  John’s wife, Ella, remembered Sedberry “was the first black man who had a car” and that he owned his own bakery. [28]

Sedberry bought a lot for a Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1928, then began raising money for the building. [29]  The congregation was formed in 1933. [30]  John and Ella moved to Lubbock in 1930 while the church was being birthed. [31]

Ida joined John and Ella when they sang “Lord, will you come by here?” for Lomax in 1937.  At the same session, two of Ida’s children, Charles and Maude, recorded two religious songs with Juanita Pollard. [32]  They indicated the third generation of Robinson musicians did not eschew dance music, so long as it had a sacred text. [33]

“I’m on the battlefield for my Lord” was recorded in 1929 by Rev. D. C. Rice and His Sanctified Congregation. [34]  A female soloist sang the verses, and the group joined her on the choruses. [35]  The accompanying instruments, a piano, trumpet, trombone, bass, drums, and triangle, borrowed from contemporary jazz. [36]

“I woke up this mawnin’ with my mind set on Jesus” was more recent.  It had been recorded in 1936 by Roosevelt Graves. [37]  His sang the verses, while his brother, Uaroy, either sang with him, started a beat behind, or made comments.  The blues accompaniment included a guitar and a rhythm instrument. [38]

Charles’ son, Ida’s grandson, carried on the family tradition.  As mentioned in the post for 18 April 2021, he played at John’s funeral in 1952.

William died in 1960, [39] and Ida became the Ruling Elder of the church.  When she passed in 1968, her honorary pallbearers included members of the Heroines of Jericho, [40] a woman’s organization within the Masons. [41]

Graphics
Her photograph appears on the Photos C tab.

End Notes
John Robinson’s wife Ella gave copies of photographs and family papers to the Archives of the Bosque County Historical Commission, Meridian, Texas.  Copies were provided by Bill Calhoon, Manager of Bosque County Collection.

1.  David Sifford.  “Ida Robinson Sedberry.”  Find a Grave website.  2 November 2003.

2.  Ralph O. Bass. “Sedberry Family.”  666 in Bosque County: Land and People.  Edited by Nell Gillam Jensen.  Meridian, Texas: Bosque County History Book Committee, 1985.  “Rush and Caroline brought a number of slaves with them to Bosque County, and many of the descendants carry the name Sedberry today.”

3.  “Sedberry, William Rush (1823–1863).”  Handbook of Texas Online website.
4.  Bass.
5.  William Rush Sedberry, Texas Online.
6.  “‘Captain’ Sedberry.”  Ancestry website.
7.  Captain Sedberry.  Samuel’s last name was spelled “Sadberry.”
8.  “William M. Sedberry.”  Ancestry website.

9.  William C. Pool.  A History of Bosque County Texas.  San Marcos, Texas: San Marcos Record Press, 1954.  64.

10.  Ella Hampton Robinson.  “Eulogy of the late Elder J. M. Robinson by EHR.”  Typed document in Ella Robinson collection.

11.  David Minor.  “Alvarado, TX.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.

12.  Robert L. Foster.  “Black Lubbock: a History of Negroes in Lubbock, Texas, to 1940.”  Master of Arts thesis.  Texas Tech University, December 1974.  38.  His source was Charles Sedberry.  Interview, 8 April 1969.

13.  Margaret L. Felty.  “Waxahachie, TX.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.
14.  Wikipedia.  “Lubbock Texas.”
15. Lomax was quoted in the post for 4 April 2021.

16.  Editorial in Lubbock Avalanche, Lubbock, Texas, 20 January 1910.  Quoted by Foster.  33.

17.  Foster.  27.  The actual railroad, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway, was a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company. [42]

18.  Foster.  30.
19.  Foster.  32.

20.  Foster.  36.  On 13 November 1919, the editor of the Lubbock [Texas] Avalanche wrote: “with the present conditions they have to be endured, so that the great crops of our country can be gathered and sold.  They are here now, hundreds of them, and from the number of wagon loads of cotton coming into town daily, they are gathering the ‘fleecy dough.’”  This was the same year, John Robinson’s crop failed and he and Ella had to pick cotton in the fall for cash. [43]

21.  Foster.  36.
22.  Foster.  42.
23.  Foster.  44.  His source was Ms. Waymon Henry.  Interview, 29 March 1969.

24.  The role of the Poro in a society disrupted by the slave trade is discussed in the post for 31 March 2019.  Betty M. Kuyk discussed Igbo influences in “The African Derivation of Black Fraternal Orders in the United States.”  Comparative Studies in Society and History 25:559–592:1983.

25.  Almo Sedberry, Ida’s son.  Quoted by Katie Parks.  Remember When?: A History of African Americans in Lubbock, Texas.  Lubbock: Texas Tech University, 1999.  39.  He said the rest of the family picked cotton until they got jobs at the hotel.

26.  “Mrs. Sedberry’s Rites Wednesday.”  Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Lubbock, Texas, 24 June 1968.  39.  Posted online by debrahale55.  24 February 2020.

27.  Foster.  42.  His source was Charles Sedberry.  Interview, 8 April 1969.

28.  Ella Hampton Robinson.  Quoted by Simone Wichers Voss.  “Roots: Bosque County-Style.”  Meridian Tribune, Meridian, Texas, 26 February 2014.  7B.

29.  Foster.  69–70.  His sources were:

Charles Sedberry.  Interview, 8 April 1969.

Messiah United Presbyterian Church.  Program Celebrating the 37th Anniversary, July 5, 1928-July 5, 1965.   Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

30.  “Rev. Walker To Be Installed As Messiah Pastor.”  Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Lubbock, Texas, 27 September 1964.  49.

31.  Ella Hampton Robinson, eulogy.

32.  The list of recordings is from the Library of Congress website.  Pollard read “Man Who Gave Us Christmas” at the Messiah Presbyterian church’s Silver Tree and Silver Offering on 13 December 1939.  Program in Ella Robinson collection.  Maude Marie Sedberry, 1902–1975, married someone named Hamilton.  Charles Ray Sedberry, 1900–1985, [44] worked as a cook at the same hospital John worked from 1926 to 1970. [45]

33.  The post for 18 April 2021 quotes John describing reels as “devil’s music.”

34.  Rev. D. C. Rice and His Sanctified Congregation.  “I’m in the Battlefield for my Lord.”  Vocalion 1262.  Chicago, 22 February 1929.  78 rpm. [46]

35.  The song entered the commercial folk-music revival when Harry Smith issued his Anthology of American Folk Music in 1952 on Folkways as FP 251, FP 252, and FP 253.  In addition to a reissue of that boxed-set by the Smithsonian Institution as SFW4090, Rice’s recording has been reissued by Document Records on Rev D. C. Rice (1928-1930).  Document DOCD-5071.  2002.

Thomas Dorsey published an arrangement in 1946 that credited Sylvania Bell and E. V. Banks. [47]  Estelle Viola McKinley Banks copyrighted the version in 1946.  Her application indicated she wrote the music, Sylvana Bell wrote the lyrics, and Thomas A. Dorsey made the arrangement. [48] After that, it entered the African-American gospel music repertoire.

36.  Jeff Place.  “Annotations.”  Liner notes for Anthology of American Folk Music.  Washington DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1997.

37.  Roosevelt Graves And Brother.  “Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind On Jesus).”  Perfect 6-11-74.  Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 1936.  78 rpm, shellac. [49]

38.  Graves’ recording has been reissued by Document Records on Blind Roosevelt Graves (1929-1936).  Document DOCD 5105.  1992.  Robert Wesby revised it as “woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom” [50] in 1962. [51]

39.  David Sifford.  “William Sedberry.”  Find a Grave website.  2 November 2003.
40.  Ida Robinson Sedberry, obituary.

41.  “Is the Order of the Eastern Star the oldest American Masonic organization for women?”  Scottish Rite Masons website.  “The degree was almost destroyed during the anti-Masonic period, but it is still worked by Prince Hall Royal Arch Masons and their relatives.”

42.  George C. Werner.  “Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.

43.  See post for 18 April 2021.
44.  “William M. Sedberry,” Ancestry website.

45.  Charles R. Sedberry.  Interviewed by Bobby Weaver.  31 January 1979.  Texas Tech University, Southwest Collections website.

46.  Place.

47.  Sylvania Bell and E. V. Banks.  “I’m on the Battle-field for My Lord.”  Chicago: Thos A. Dorsey, 1946.  Listed in index to “Luvenia A. George Collection.”  Indiana University website.

48.  E. Banks.  “I am on the battle-field for my Lord.”  2 March 1946.  United States Copyright Office.  Catalog of Copyright Entries.  Third Series.  January-June 1950.  14.

49.  Discogs entry, and liner notes to Document Records reissue by Ken Romanowski.
50.  Wikipedia.  “Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom).”

51.  “Woke Up This Morning With My Mind on Freedom.”  The Traditional Ballad Index.  California State University-Fresno website.  Version 4.5.

John, Ella, and Ida Robinson - Lord, Will You Come by Here

 

Topic: Early Versions
John Lomax recorded a version of “Come by Here” in 1937 from a man raised in Meridian, Texas, the county seat of Bosque County where Lomax lived as a child. [1]  The owners of both of John Robinson’s parents were men moving to Texas under clouded conditions.

Robinson’s grandmother, Priscilla, was born in Alabama about 1819. [2]  Her owner, Ridley Robinson, was taking her, her four sons, and some cattle to California when he died in a fight with a Mexican in Bosque County in 1860. [3]  His motives are unknown.  If he were taking just cattle with a couple hands, one may guess he was hoping to profit from the provisions trade in mining areas.

The alternative is that he was rushing to move his assets from the South before war began.  In 1860, John’s father Peter was 34 years old and his uncle John was 16.  Zachiariah was the youngest, and Jack’s birth date is unknown. [4]

Seven years earlier, in 1853, the owner of John’s mother, Mariah, gave her to his daughter when she married.  Her husband was living in Bosque County at the time, and Josephine, Mariah, and Mariah’s aunt and uncle followed him west. [5]  The slaves were seized in New Orleans because “our massa, Massa Bob Young, he a cotton buyer and he done left Georgia without payin’ a cotton debt and dey holds us for dat.” [6]

Josephine’s father, Warren Jordan Hill, was the son of Theophilus Hill who received a headright grant for 15 people in Georgia in the late 1790s.  The count included himself, his wife, five children, and eight slaves, who would have been acquired when the Atlantic slave trade was legal.  He died in 1829 with 42 slaves. [7]  Warren may have been given some by his father, or acquired Josephine’s mother from domestic sellers in Georgia.

Ridley’s death didn’t free his slaves.  They were taken to Meridian where a court-appointed administrator hired them out on one-year contracts.  Robinson’s father, Peter, always worked for Allison Nelson, [8] an Atlanta lawyer who had moved to Meridian in 1856.  After Nelson died from typhoid fever in the Confederate army in 1862, [9] his widow continued to lease him. [10]

Life for Mariah and Peter was easier than it was for slaves in Sumter County.  She said she was “a house-girl an stay’d in de house; nebber did stay out in de slave quarters” [11] in Georgia.  When she was in Texas,

“de slaves was allowed to visit at a set time, usually Saturday night an’ Sunday after noon.” [12] Peter and his brother John [13] were fiddlers who played “foh both whites an’ blacks to dance all over de country.” [14]

Mariah remembered “Dere was quite a bunch of us an’ in de meantime durin de war I met Peter Robinson.  We had a court-ship an got married after gettin’ permission from each of our bosses.  We was married by Ceasar Berry (a slave of Buck Berry, an a colored preacher).” [15]

Reconstruction was almost as ugly in Texas as it was in Alabama. [16]  In early 1870, after Republicans had won the state elections, an Austin newspaper reported “Bosque County was averaging two killings each week.” [17]

It must have been at this time that Peter was a teacher, registrar, trustee assigned to aiding war widows, and a representative in the state legislature. [18]  He survived, bought land, and built a house in 1872. [19]  However, Mariah recalled “twice we was burnt out in de same place.” [20]

While Sumter County closed its boundaries, outsiders continued to move into Bosque County.  In 1878, James Sadler, two brothers and a sister came from Tennessee and founded what became the African-American colony of Rock Springs. [21]

They were members of the Colored Cumberland Presbyterian church.  As mentioned in the post for 28 August 2019, the parent body was formed in 1810 after the Cane Ridge revival by individuals who valued religious experience over seminary education, and sang hymns as well as psalms.  African Americans departed in 1874. [22]

Sadler was a preacher who organized his own church. [23]  He also helped Peter establish a Cumberland Presbyterian church in Meridian. [24]  Mariah remembered “we use to go to de church annual meetins’ in covered wagons.” [25]

Peter and Mariah had ten children. [26]  Their daughter Ida married William Sedberry in 1896.  John married Ella Hampton in 1906.  Her mother had been brought to Texas from Tennessee. [27]

Notes on Performers
John Robinson [28]
1877 Born in Bosque County, Texas
1952 Die in Meridian, Texas

Ella Hampton Robinson [29]
1885 Ella Hampton born in Bosque County, Texas
1906 Ella marry John Robinson in Meridian, Texas, become Ella Robinson
1984 Ella Robinson die in Meridian, Texas

Ida Robinson Sedberry [30]
1874    Ida Robinson born in Bosque County, Texas, sister of John
1896    Ida Robinson marry William M. Sedberry, become Ida R. Sedberry
1968    Ida Sedberry die in Lubbock, Texas

Availability
John Robinson, Ella Robinson, and Ida Sedbury. [31]  “Lord, Will You Come by Here.”  Collected by John Lomax in Lubbock, Texas, 19 January 1937.  Archive of American Folk Song.

Graphics
1.  Mariah Hill Robinson with her daughter Lula.  Ella Robinson collection.  Reproduced in June Rayfield Welch.  People and Places in the Texas Past.  Dallas: G. L. A. Press, 1974.  107.

2.  Home of Peter and Mariah Robinson.  Ella Robinson collection.  Reproduced by Welch.  105.

3.  Photographs of John, Ella, and Ida appear on the Photos C tab.

End Notes
Ella Robinson gave copies of photographs and family papers to the Archives of the Bosque County Historical Commission, Meridian, Texas.  Copies were provided by Bill Calhoon, Manager of Bosque County Collection.

1.  The Lubbock [Texas] Evening Journal reported: “Despite the fact that both Lomax and John spent their early childhoods at Meridian, it was only by chance that the former got recordings here of the negro’s voice.” [32]

2.  Rebecca Raddle.  “Robinson, Priscilla.”  634 in Bosque County: Land and People.  Meridian: Bosque County History Book Committee, 1985.

3.  Mariah Robinson.  Interview by the Federal Writers Project for the WPA’s Slave Narratives collection from Texas, volume 3.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941. [33]

4.  Ages based on dates in Find a Grave entries for the Meridian Cemetery in Meridian, Texas.

5.  There’s no indication if “uncle” and “aunt” were blood or communal titles.

6.  Robinson, published version.  Young’s father went to New Orleans to settle the matter.

7.  Lodowick Johnson Hill, Sr.  The Hills of Wilkes County, Georgia and Allied Families.  Atlanta, Georgia: Johnson-Dallas Company, 1922.  He said Theophilus received a “bounty grant” between 1794 and 1800.  Alex Hitz said those had expired, but the Bounty Reserve was opened to headright settlers between 1790 and 1796. [34]

8.  Raddle.

9.  Thomas W. Cutrer.  “Nelson, Allison.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.  15 June 2010; last updated 26 November 2014.

10.  Raddle.

11.  Mariah Robinson.  Interview by the Federal Writers Project that was not included in the published volume, but has been posted on s website as “Robinson, Mariah TX-3 35380.”

12.  Robinson, unpublished version.
13.  Raddle.
14.  Robinson, unpublished version.  I assume they learned while they were in Alabama.
15.  Robinson, unpublished version.

16.  One reason for the differences between the two states was the responses of the Republican governors.  In Alabama, William Hugh Smith “rejected close identification with freed people,” and made reconciliation with whites his “basic priority.”  Michael Fitzgerald said “he denied reports of Klan activity, refused to arm a state militia, and opposed federal antiterrorist legislation, even after it became clear that local officials were thoroughly intimidated.” [35]

In Texas, Allen Trelease said Edmund Jackson Davis organized a state police force that included all county officials.  “Between July 1870 and December 1871 the state police arrested 4,580 persons, 829 of them for murder or attempted murder.” [36]

17.  [Austin, Texas] Daily State Journal.  Cited by “History of Bosque County.”  Bosque County website.

19.  Robinson, unpublished version.
19.  Calculated date.
20.  Robinson, unpublished version.

21.  Gordon Nowlin.  “James B. Sadler.”  Website for the Historical Foundation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America.

22.  Wikipedia.  “Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America.”
23.  Nowlin.
24.  Robinson, published version.
25.  Robinson, unpublished version.
26.  Robinson, published version.

27.  “Annie Elizabeth Hampton.”  Obituary.  Probably 1911.  Copy in Ella Robinson collection.

28.  “John Robinson, Pioneer Chef, Rites at Meridian.”  Obituary.  1952.  Copy in Ella Robinson collection.

29.  “Ella Robinson.”  Obituary.  Meridian [Texas] Tribune.  15 November 1985.  5.  Copy in Ella Robinson collection.

30.  David Sifford.  “Ida Robinson Sedberry.”  Find a Grave website.  2 November 2003.

31.  This is the spelling used by the Archives.

32.  “Voice of Ex-Meridian Negro To Be Heard on British Broadcasts.”  The Lubbock [Texas] Evening Journal.  1938.  Clipping in Ella Robinson collection; date from internal evidence.

33.  For more information on the WPA Slave Narratives project, see the post for 23 January 2019.

34.  Alex M. Hitz.  “Georgia Bounty Land Grants.”  The Georgia Historical Quarterly 38:337–348:1954.  344.

35.  Michael W. Fitzgerald.  “Congressional Reconstruction in Alabama.”  Encyclopedia of Alabama website.  11 August 2008; last updated 24 October 2017.

36.  Allen W. Trelease.  White Terror.  New York: Harper and Row, 1971; paperback edition issued by Louisiana State University Press of Baton Rouge in 1995.  148.