CRS Precursors to Custom Songbooks

Topic: CRS Versions
Lynn Rohrbough began making his living publishing recreation materials in the 1920s. [1]  His first format was mimeographed sheets placed in binders.  He soon found a printer, but kept the binder format.  It no doubt changed in small ways with the technology.  The first example I have is Handy II from 1930.

The red, hard cover has metal reinforced holes for unattached loose-leaf rings.  The seal of the Social-Recreation Union, mentioned in the post for 12 September 2021, is embossed on the cover, but the inside cover indicates it is published by Church Recreation Service.  The sections cost .25 each and the binder sells for .50.  One also could subscribe to the Kit magazine for updates.  It was produced by Holland Press of Chicago.

Inside is a set of booklets measuring 3 5/8" x 6 3/4".  It lists section S, “Social Songs,” but that was not something saved by the owner of my copy.  I suspect the size of the sections was dictated by the size of the binder that was available, and then was perpetuated by custom when binders no longer were used.

Rohrbough’s move into publishing custom songbooks was gradual, and probably evolved from workshops where he taught various types of folk dances.  In 1938, he published Folk Dances of Tennessee.  So far as I know, this is the first book he published on behalf of someone else.

Lucien McDowell grew up in DeKalb County on a tributary of the Cumberland River in middle Tennessee.  He graduated from Tennessee Polytechnic Institute in neighboring Putnam County, and, in 1934, joined the newly organized Tennessee Folklore Society at the college.  One member was George Pullen Jackson. [2]

Members encouraged him to compile the songs he had heard as a child, and in 1936 he had a manuscript ready. [3]  Unfortunately, the market for Appalachian folk music was sated.

Francis James Child had begun publishing his ballad collection in 1882, [4] and in 1905, Henry Belden asked teachers and scholars to “recover every vestige of the English and Scottish Ballads in America.” [5]  Cecil Sharp focused people’s attention on the Appalachians in 1917 when he published local Child ballads. [6]  Academic presses had backlists of collections by the 1930s.

The popular folk-song anthology market was dominated by the works of Carl Sandburg [7] and John Lomax. [8]  Locals promoting their own collection also were becoming common, with John Jacob Niles the best known. [9]  And, of course, nothing could compete with Jackson’s White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands. [10]

McDowell turned to Edwards Brothers in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  It had begun by mimeographing copies of notes from professors’ lectures in 1893.  In 1930, when it incorporated, it still specialized in small print-runs for academics. [11]  His Songs of the Old Camp Ground was “reproduced from typewritten copy” in 1937. [12]

The next year he and his wife, the former Flora Lassiter, published Folk Dances of Tennessee in a mimeographed format. [13]  Later that year, Rohrbough republished the book in Flora’s name.  It is easy to hypothesize how McDowell heard about the Edwards Brothers.  It is harder to deduce how Rohrbough and the McDowells became partners.

In 1939, Rohrbough published six songs with the title Tennessee Folk Songs.  He later reissued Dances with modern technology. He added a photograph of Flora and a tribute to her by composer Charles Faulkner Bryan. [14]  It contains eight songs, six of which were published in 1939.  I do not have a copy of the original Dances, but suspect it did not contain the songs.  A review identifies her as “a ballad singer and musician.” [15]

The 1939 Folk Songs is a long sheet of paper, which is folded in half, then in thirds to measure 4" x 7".  The ink is blue green, and a woodcut of a mountain-valley farm is on the front page.  It identifies Flora as “a native and life-long resident of the Caney Fork valley in the Cumberland mountains of Tennessee.”

Folk Dances of Tennessee led to more collections for the round- and square-dance market.  As mentioned in the post for 26 September 2021, he published Singing Games of the South in 1938, and two more dance Kits in 1939.  By 1940, he had discovered that different types of dances had distinctly different audiences.  He recombined collections in “flexible” bindings as Handy books of play parties, American square dances, and European folk dances. [16]  Two years later, he published Western Play Party Games, [17] and reissued the Handy collection with different sections. [18]

I have a copy of the 1940 play party omnibus, which obviously is not from 1940: it has a plastic comb binding. [19]  While the reproduction technology changed, I suspect the page format did not.  It has medium-weight cardboard covers and cream-colored pages, suitable for removing to use at an event.  It is squarer in shape than his usual books, 3 3/4" wide and 6 23/32" long.

Absent any details on the subscriber list for Rohrbough’s company, the names of the contributors to Handy Play Party Book provide some hints.  He names sources for 73 of the 104 games.  Of the 47 individuals who gave him at least one game, 31 are women, 13 are men, two are families, and one uses initials.  Many of the women contributed one singing game, while four men provided more than one.  Like Lucien McDowell and William Klein of the Alpine Institute in Tennessee, they may have been collectors or recreation leaders. [20]

The geographic reach of Rohrbough’s recreation network can be glimpsed in the states where his sources lived.  The largest number, naturally, are the fourteen from Ohio.  Appalachian states, where play parties were popular, came next: six of his sources are from Kentucky, while four are from Tennessee or West Virginia.  Surprisingly, six live in Texas.

Rohrbough did not publish many songbooks edited by others.  However, the authors of one contributed to the play-party project.  Members of the Ritchie family of Perry County, Kentucky, offered six songs, and later Edna Ritchie helped compile Songs of All Times for the Council of the Southern Mountains. [21]

When Flora published her final song collection in 1947, she did it privately in the town where she was living. [22]

Notes of Performers
Flora E. Lassiter was born in White County, Tennessee, where her great-grandparents had lived. [23]  In 1908, she married Lucien Lafayette McDowell. [24]  Little more is known about her.  He was a teacher, then principal and school superintendent in Smithville, Tennessee. [25]  While it is possible they met through kin, [26] it also is possible she took classes at Tennessee Polytechnic.

Bryan knew her through the Tennessee Folklore Society.  He recalled her family was “a storehouse of folk music” and that she had “a retentive memory for every melodic curve, each word, and even subtle shadings of inflections used by members of her immediate family.” [27]  She herself said she was an effective collector because she

“knew where to go and what to ask about, two things an outside collector would not know, be he ever so well versed in collecting folk material.  We also had the advantage of a real personal friendship with those among whom we worked, some of them closely connected with us by blood or marriage.” [28]

She died in 1968, and was buried in  Bethel Methodist Church Cemetery in DeKalb County. [29]

Graphics
1.  Handy II, edited by Lynn Rohrbough.  Delaware, Ohio: Church Recreation Service, 1930, copy 440.  Inside cover and title page.  Name of the owner partially obscured.

2.  “Shuckin’ of the Corn.”  Tennessee Folk Songs, recorded by Mrs. L. L. McDowell.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1939.  Other copies appear in the posts for 13 February 2022 and 20 February 2020.  It is mentioned in the post for 20 March 2022.

3.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Handy Play Party Book.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1940.  98–99.  “I Want to Be a Farmer.”  Contributed by R. Bruce Tom, Columbus, Ohio. [30] “Needle’s Eye.”  Described by Soweda Hall, Winchester, Kentucky; courtesy of J. Olcutt Sanders. [31]

4.  Flora L. McDowell, taken by Orville Joyner.  Folk Dances of Tennessee, edited by Flora L. McDowell.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, reissued edition.  4.  See the post for 1 May 2022 for more information.

End Notes
1.  For more on Lynn Rohrbough’s early career, see the posts for 12 September 2021 and 19 September 2021.

2.  Carolyn Livingston.  Charles Faulkner Bryan: His Life and Music.  Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2003.  59.

3.  Livingston.  70.

4.  Francis James Child.  The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882–1898.

5.  Henry Marvin Belden.  “The Study of Folk-Song in America.”  Modern Philology 2:573–579:1905.

6.  Cecil James Sharp and Olive Dame Campbell.  English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians.  New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917.

7.  For more on Sandburg, see the post for 5 May 2019.
8.  For more on Lomax, see the post for 12 May 2019.

9.  John Jacob Niles.  Seven Kentucky Mountain Songs.  New York: G. Schirmer, 1929.

John Jacob Niles.  Songs of the Hill-Folk.  New York: G. Schirmer, 1934.

He is mentioned in note 23 of the post for 5 May 2019.

10.  George Pullen Jackson.  White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933.

11.  Bill Shea.  “Printing Company Edwards Brothers Grapples with a Shrinking Market.”  Crain’s Detroit Business, 7 January 2010.  A similar company, William Brown, is mentioned in the post for 5 January 2020.

12.  Lucien L. McDowell.  Songs of the Old Camp Ground.  Ann Arbor, Michigan: Edwards Brothers, 1937.  Description from WorldCat website.

13.  Lucien L McDowell and Flora Lassiter McDowell.  Folk Dances of Tennessee.  Ann Arbor, Michigan: Edwards Brothers, 1938.  Description from WorldCat website.

14.  The reissue has a yellow cover with a brown design by Jack McDowell and measures 6 5/8" x 9 11/16".  If Bryan wrote his appreciation of Flora for this publication, then it was published in 1953; [32] otherwise, the reissue is after that date.

15.  Review of the Edwards Brother edition on page 639 of the February 1939 issue of Recreation, the organ of the National Recreation Association.  It was favorable.

16.  Second title page of Handy Play Party Book of 1940.

17.  Western Play Party Games, edited by Lynn Rohrbough.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1942.

18.  Rohrbough, Western, page 2.  The 1942 collection included Singing Games from the South, Western Play Party Games, Treasures from Abroad, [33] and an earlier collection of Ohio Play Party songs that supposedly was published in 1923 as Kit 24, and is now Kit P.  This must refer to Play Party Games published in 1932 as Kit P according to WorldCat.  It was reissued as Play Party Games of Pioneer Times: Set down from Original Sources in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Iowa sometime in the 1940s.  WorldCat indicates it still is called Kit P.

19.  Plastic combs were developed in the 1950s. [34]

20.  One contributor was Fred M. Smith.  He is mentioned in the post for 26 September 2021 as active in the Northland Recreation Laboratory.

21.  Council of the Southern Mountains.  Songs of All Times, compiled by Edna Ritchie, Raymond Kane McLain, Richard Chase, and Marie Marvel.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1946.  Chase published a number of books on Appalachian lore.  Handy Play Party Book reprinted one from Traditional Ballads, Songs and Singing Games, [35] and attributed “Bow Belinda” directly to him. [36]  Edna’s sister, Jean, replaced Niles as the most important indigenous performer of Appalachian music in the 1950s. [37]

22.  Lucien L. McDowell and Flora Lassiter McDowell.  Memory Melodies.  Smithville, Tennessee, 1947.  [WorldCat website.]  Lucian had died in 1943. [38]

23.  “Ceiley Elizabeth Clark.”  Ancestry website.
24.  Steve Eskew.  “Fora E. Lassiter.”  Eskew’s website; last updated 25 August 2021.
25.  Livingston.  69.

26.  Putnam County is southwest of DeKalb and White adjoins it on the east.  They all are in the Caney Fork Valley where saltpeter was mined before and during the Civil War.  White was on the border between Union and Rebel supporters, and suffered from guerilla activities. [39]  No doubt people moved along the river, especially after the war.

No one has done a genealogy of the Lassiters; my information is gleaned from people interested in women who married into their families.  One source has Flora’s mother born in White County, [40] and another has her born in DeKalb County with her father born in Davidson County. [41]

27.  Charles Faulker Bryan.  5 in revised edition of Tennessee Folk Dances.
28.  Flora McDowell.  Quoted by Livingston.  70.

29.  James Real.  “Flora (Lassiter) McDowell (1883 - 1968).”  Wiki Tree website; last updated 11 June 2020.

30.  Tom also is discussed in the posts for 12 September 2021, 19 September 2021, 3 October 2021, 10 October 2021, and 17 October 2021.

31.  Sanders is discussed in a post for 13 February 2022.

32.  On page 200, Livingston says it is from a paper Bryan wrote in 1953; the page with the citation is blocked in the on-line version.

33.  Treasures from Abroad, edited by Lynn Rohrbough.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service.  Introductory notes by Chester L. Bower and Neva Boyd.  The latter is mentioned in the post for 3 October 2021.

34.  “The History of Book Binding.”  Powis website.

35.  Richard Chase.  Traditional Ballads, Songs, and Singing Games.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Institute of Folk Music, 1935.  “The Duke of York” is reprinted on page 122.

36.  Pages 94–95.
37.  “Jean Ritchie.”  Wikipedia website.
38.  Eskew.
39.  “White County, Tennessee.”  Wikipedia website.
40.  “Catherine Elizabeth Lassiter (born Parker), 1862 - 1939.”  My Heritage website.

41.  “Floyd Lassiter, born 1885.”  My Heritage website.  He is Flora’s brother.  Nashville is in Davidson County.

Zander and Klusmann’s Repertoire

Topic: CRS Versions
(This continues a discussion begun on 28 November 2021.)
My copy of Carl Edward Zander and Wes Klusmann’s Camp Songs (1938) is 56 pages with 163 titles in the index.  My edition of their Camp Songs ’n’ Things (1939) is 120 pages with 143 titles.  The use of music explains the differences in page length. [1]

Both booklets mix “fun songs” with rounds, nineteenth-century popular songs, religious, and organizational material.  In the 1938 version, Boy Scout songs [2] dominate the section of “Organization Songs” while some associated with the Camp Fire Girls, [3] Girl Scouts, [4] and Young Women’s Christian Association [5] are sprinkled through the collection.

The “Organization Songs” section of the 1939 books is more inclusive.  Boy Scout songs still are the majority, but there are ones from the Farm Bureau, [6] 4-H, [7] Camp Fire, Young Men’s Christian Association, [8] and Young Women’s Christian Association. [E]  In addition, the CFG, YWCA, and Girl Scout songs published in 1938 are included elsewhere in the book, as are some new Girl Scout [9] and YWCA songs. [10]

Many of the remaining songs fall into one of the categories for American folk music used by Carl Sandburg and John Lomax. [11]  Two groups are “Sea Songs” and “Songs of the Range.”  Chanteys are popular with Boy Scout camps that stress aquatic activities or have a Sea Scouts program.  Cowboy songs have special resonance in the west.  “Songs of the South” includes both spirituals and songs by Stephen Foster.

Zander and Klusmann are like Sandburg, whose goal is to present the songs people are singing.  They differ from Lomax and Lynn Rohrbough who emphasize material they believe people ought to know or be singing.  Thus, Rohrbough uses international songs from the Concord school [12] and its publisher, E. C. Schirmer, while the Boy Scout leaders use songs from a variety of sources.

Both include Augustus Zanzig’s “Walking at Night” [13] and the “Weggis Song.”  The second was introduced by the YWCA in 1922. [14]  They also share the English songs, “Green Grow the Rushes” and “The Keeper.”  Rohrbough credits the first to a British songbook, [15] and probably learned the second from a Concord songbook. [16]  The camp version of “The Keeper” goes back to Cecil Sharp. [17]

All the European songs used by Zander and Klusmann have choruses of sung syllables.  I use the term “sung syllables,” rather than “vocables,” because “vocables” has become a generic term for any spoken sound that does not have a specific definition.  It includes everything from words like “huh” to lyrics of Native American music. [18]

“Sung syllables” usually rhyme and often exploit literary techniques like alliteration, consonance, and ablaut reduplicatives. [19]  “Weggis” uses the /L/ with different hard consonants in “hol-di-ri di-a.”  The more challenging “Walking alternates labial and dental phonemes in “sto-do-lo pum-pa.”

Sung syllables are not nonsense, like “Tiddle de Wink de Wink de Woo,” [20] better known as “skinna-ma-rink-a-dink,” because they alternate textual verses with the choruses.  Thus, they provide a way for older campers, who are under pressure to abandon their childish ways, [21] to continue making sounds for the joy of making sounds.  Most have three verses, which provide three opportunities to sing the chorus.  With “Walking,” added pleasure comes from the juxtaposition of the slow verse with the tongue-twisting chorus.

Zander and Klusmann included “The Foot Traveler” in Camp Songs and said it was from the Franklin Square Collection. [22]  The editor, John Piersol McCaskey, began attending the Lancaster County Teachers’ Institutes in Pennsylvania. [23]  His collection developed into eight volumes published by Harper Brothers between 1881 and 1892. [24]  Its begins “on foot I gaily take my way” with a “tra la la” chorus.

The two editors added more European songs in 1939.  “The Herdsman,” has a similar theme to “The Foot Traveler” with a yodeling-style chorus of “ho-le-a.”  It first was published by the British Girl Guides in the Kent County Song Book. [25]

The other two European songs are drawn from the national song repertoire.  Rohrbough published them in different versions.  The Scout’s text for “Marianina” is by Homer Harbour, [26] while CRS has words by David Stevens. [27]  The chorus exploits the alliterative qualities of the girl’s name when it combines it with “tra la la.”  Zanzig said it was “a popular favorite in Italy, especially in Tuscany.” [28]  He was using the Harbour words when he was touring, but, by the time he published Singing America, his publisher probably had indicated it already had copyrighted versions of the song. [29]

The Boy Scout version of “Tiritomba” was published by the Paul-Pioneer Music Corporation in 1933, [30] while CRS used one from the Concord school. [31]  The Neopolitan song was published by Guillaume-Louis Cottrau in the early nineteenth century. [32]  When Rohrbough’s songbooks reached audiences outside those that supported by youth groups included in Zander and Klusmann’s songbooks, people wanted rational explanations for words that did not fit the “tra la la” mode.  CRS finally had to add “‘Tiritomba’ is meaningless, not a word.” [33]

For this blog, “Kumbaya” is the most important of these songs with unknown words that require explanation before some will sing them.

Notes on Performers
Carl Edward Zander, shown in the above photograph was born in 1897 to a man who had moved to California from Troy, New York, sometime before 1892, when he married a local women. [34]  During World War I, Zander served in the artillery in France and Germany, [35] something that would have provided him with skills needed to run camps for adolescent boys.

At sometime, he leaned to play “the banjo, guitar, and a small wind instrument.” [36]  After World War II, he worked with his wife’s brothers in a lumber company in Berkeley, and died in Contra Costa, California, in 1976. [37]  His son remembers “sailings to Catalina Island aboard the boat he built with his Dad” and their “many adventures at the Scout Camp in the mountains.” [38]

Wesley Herman Klusmann, shown in the above photograph, was born in 1897 in Los Angeles. [39]  His first interest in music is reported in 1932 when he directed Boy Scouts from “various troops” who sang for the annual BSA banquet in Los Angeles. [40]

His name became more prominent after he joined the national Scout staff to direct the organization’s camping program in 1943. [41]  He was particularly active in integrating Order of the Arrow, one of those alternative local activities mentioned in the post for 28 November 2021, into the standard program.  He retired in 1962 [42] and died in 1979. [43]  “He is perhaps best remembered by a generation of Arrowmen for leading each National Conference in singing his favorite song, ‘The Happy Wanderer’.” [44]

Graphics
1.  Carl Edward Zander.  Photograph courtesy of his family.

2.  W. H. Klusmann.  Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas, morning edition, 10 April 1945.  Copy from The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries website uploaded under the Creative Commons License.

End Notes
1.  More details on these two songbooks can be found in the post for 28 November 2021.  Zander and Klusmann are mentioned again in posts for 13 March 2022 and 20 March 2022.

2.  The one with the most enduring popularity is “Trail the Eagle.”  Its composer, Donald Monroe, was the first Scout executive for the Crescent Bay District Council. [45]  He is mentioned briefly on page 172 by Patricia Averill.  Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris, 2014.

3.  The CFG contributions are “Paddle Song” on page 18, [46] and “Camp Fire Law” and “Camp Fire Prayer” [47] on page 52.

4.  The round “Hey, Ho!” is from Sing Together, edited by Janet E. Tobitt.  New York: Girl Scouts, Inc., 1936.  57.

5.  The YWCA published “As the Bright Flames Ascend” and “Each Camp Fire Lights Anew”  in Girl Reserve Songbook, edited by Mildred Roe.  New York: The Womans Press, 1923.  29. Girl Reserves was the young women’s group sponsored by the YWCA.  “Each Camp Fire” is reproduced in the post for 28 November 2021 and 13 March 2022.

6.  Lillian Atcherson, Florence Cheadle, and Catherine Wilson.  “American Farm Bureau Spirit.”  Copyright 1930 by American Farm Bureau Federation and reprinted on page 48.

7.  “A Ploughing Songs” and “4-H Field Song.”  Copyright by Home Publishing Company of Grinnell, Iowa.  One is on page 83, the other on page 85.  CRS identifies the composers as Fannie R. Buchanan and Rena M. Parish. [48]

8.  Allen Spur.  “Y.M.C.A. Song.”  Copyright by Universal Publications and reproduced on page 87.

9.  Marie Gaudette.  “God Has Created a New Day.”  46 in Kent County Song Book, edited by Gladys Crawter, Doris Escombe, Audrey Page, and Alison Tennant for the Girl Guides.  London: Novello, 1934 fifth edition.  Reproduced on page 107.  Gaudette is discussed by Averill on page 335 and her photograph appears on page 79.

10.  Abbie Graham and John H. Glover.  “Girl Reserve Litany,” reprinted on page 110.

Margaret Snyder.  “Witchcraft.”  Written in 1935 and copyrighted on 17 March 1937; reproduced on page 81.  The song and Snyder are discussed by Averill on 348–351.  Snyder’s photograph appears on page 571.  The song is discussed in the post for 13 March 2022.

11.  For more information on their organizational formats, see the posts for 5 May 2019 and 12 May 2019.

12.  The Concord School is discussed in the post for 5 September 2021.
 
13.  “Walking at Night.”  56 in Singing America, edited by Augustus D. Zanzin.  Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1940.  Czech, translated and arranged by Zanzig.  It is mentioned the post for 28 November 2021.  Averill provides more information on page 57.

14.  “Weggis Song.”  2:160–161 in Folk Songs of Many Peoples, edited by Florence Hudson Botsford.  New York: The Womans Press, volume 2, 1922.  For more information, see the post for 13 March 2022.

15.  “Green Grow the Rushes.”  59–60 in The New Fellowship Songbook, edited by H. Walford Davies.  London: Novello, 1931.  He says it is an “old song” and his Eton version came from Nevile Bray.  It appears in Pocket Songster, edited for the Fellowship of Reconciliation.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service. [49]  63.

16.  Rohrbough never identifies a source, but it was published as “The Keeper” on pages 38–39 in A Book of Songs for Unison and Part Singing for Grades IV, V, and VI, edited by Archibald T. Davison, Thomas Whitney Surette, and Augustus D Zanzig.  Boston: E. C. Schirmer Music Company, 1922.  This page number is for the student edition called Concord 4.  It appears on pages 44-45 of Concord 14, the version with piano accompaniment.  An extract was published by E. C. Schirmer as Ten Folk Songs and Ballads. [50]  Since it is identified as “traditional,” “English,” and “18th century,” Rohrbough may not have needed to cite his source.

17.  Averill discusses “The Keeper” on page 231.
18.  “Vocable.”  Cambridge Dictionary website.
19.  These techniques are discussed in more detail by Averill on pages 145–149.
20.  Camp Songs, 45, and Camp Songs ’n’ Things, 94.

21.  Averill discusses the consequences of pressures for rationality on children, and cites Freud on pages 112–113.

22.  Camp Songs.  22.
23.  Averill.  436.  Teachers’ institutes are discussed in the post for 5 September 2021.

24.  WorldCat website.  “The Foot Traveler” appears in volume 5 of the Franklin Square Song Collection, edited by J. P. Mccaskey.  New York: Harper and Brothers, 1888.

25.  Kent County Song Book.  37.  It is described as Swiss.  My information is for the fifth edition.  I do not know if it appeared in an earlier edition.  These kind of youth group songbooks were not always collected by libraries and so do not appear on the WorldCat website.

26.  “Marianina.”  Italian melody, with English version by Homer Harbour and Zanzig; copyright by the National Recreation Association.  Reprinted on page 68.  Harbour earned a degree in English from Harvard in 1906, [51] and in 1911 co-wrote a song with Thomas Whitney Surrette of the Concord School. [52]  He contributed eleven lyrics to the Concord schools book for the upper grades, mentioned in the above note 16, and later taught at the Brookline High School [53] where Zanzig was teaching in 1925. [54]

27.  “Marianina.”  Italian popular tune with words by David Stevens from Singing America.  Reprinted on page 33 in CFG edition of Joyful Singing.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Song Services; copy provided by Josephine Weber of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

28.  Zanzig, Singing America.  82.

29.  “Marianina.”  Words by David Stevens and arrangement by Harvey Worthington Loomis; copyrighted by C. C. Birchard of Boston in 1924.  [Worldcat website.]

“Marianina.”  Words by David Stevens and arrangement by Gladys Pitcher; copyrighted by C. C. Birchard of Boston in 1927.  [Worldcat website.]

30.  “Tiritomba.”  In Keep on Singing, edited by Kenneth S. Clark.  New York: Paull Pioneer Music, 1933.  Neopolitan Folk Song with English words by Fenton Gaylord; reproduced on page 54 of Camp Songs ’n’ Things.

31.  “Tiritomba.”  27 in CFG Joyful Singing.  Italian Folk Song from Ten Folk Songs and Ballads for School, Home and Camp.  Boston: E. C. Schirmer, 1931.  Another version is mentioned in the post for 13 March 2022.

32.  Berny Devlin.  Comment added 25 November 2011 to “Tiritomba (English translation).”  Lyrics Translate website.  Cottrau was a Frenchman who moved to Naples where he collected and wrote songs. [55]  The first date for his revised Passatempi Musicali [56] on the WorldCat website is 1827.

33.  “Tiritomba.”  17 in Music Makers for the Camp Fire Girls.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Song Service, copy purchased in 1975.  Italian Folk Song, with English by Zanzig; © 1962, CRS, Inc.

34.  Day Association Genealogical Committee.  The Day Genealogy; A Record of the Descendants of Jacob Day and an Incomplete Record of Anthony Day.  Boston: The Warren Press, 1916.

35.  Carl Edward Zander family.  Email, 3 November 2021.
36.  Zander family.
37.  BG.  “Carl Edward Zander Sr.”  Find a Grave website, 8 February 2021.
38.  “Carl Edward Zander Jr.”  Times-Standard, Eureka, California, 31 January 2012.
39.  “Wesley Herman Klusman.”  Mormon’s FamilySearch website.

40.  “300 Boy Scouts in Annual Banquet.”  Daily News, Los Angeles, California, 12 February 1932.  23.

41.  “A History of ACA Presidents and Board Chairs.”  American Camping Association website.  He was president of the ACA from 1943 to 1944.

42.  “NOAC 1967.”  Order of the Arrow website.
43.  FamilySearch.

44.  Order of the Arrow.  “The Happy Wanderer” was popularized in 1954 by the Obernkirchen Children’s Choir.  Averill discusses its history on pages 311 and 332.

45.  “Crescent Bay Historical Project.”  Crescent Bay District, West Los Angeles BSA Council website, Jeff Morley webmaster.

46.  “My paddle’s keen and bright” was written by Margaret Bradshaw McGee at Sebago-Wohelo in 1918.  The camp was owned by the founders of Camp Fire, Charlotte Vetter Gulick and Luther Halsey Gulick.  Averill has a short biography of her on page 445 and her photograph on page 565.

47. Words are credited to Rowe Wright.

48.  The Bridge of Songs, edited by Max V. Exner for Iowa 4-H.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1957.  12 and 18.

49.  This songbook is discussed in the post for 13 February 2022.
50.  See note 31 for details.
51.  Harvard Alumni Bulletin.  21:104:24 October 1918.

52.  Homer Howells Harbour and Thomas Whitney Surrette.  “Soldiers of the Republic.”  Library of Congress website.

53.  Murivan.  Brookline, Massachusetts, high school yearbook, 1929.
54.  See the post for 5 September 2021.
55.  “Guillaume Louis Cottrau.”  Wikipedia website.

56.  Guillaume Louis Cottrau.  Seconda edizione de' primi sei fascicoli dei Passatempi musicali.  Naples: Calcografia e Copisteria de’ Reali Teatri, 1827.

Custom Songbooks

Topic: CRS Versions
Larry Holcomb believes Lynn Rohrbough’s Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) began publishing custom songbooks in 1940. [1]  The first may have been a collection for the American Country Life Association. [2]  One suspects it was commissioned by someone at Ohio State University or Ohio Wesleyan University who was active in the organization. [3]

Custom songbooks were not invented by Rohrbough, although there are aspects he may have rediscovered.  The first seems to have been produced by Carl Edward Zander [4] and Wes Klusmann for Boy Scouts in California.  The exact history does not emerge until they copyrighted a book in 1938 for the YMCA. [5]

The one I own is the “28th printing” from 1938. [6]  The format is the same as that used by CRS in the 1930s: 3 6/16" wide by 6 7/16" long. [7]  This booklet’s cover is thin cardboard while the pages are heavy stock.  It is held together with two staples.

The Boy Scouts of America was organized in 1910 by a committee that hoped to merge the programs of Ernest Thompson Seton and Daniel Beard with the British program of Robert Baden-Powell.  Since none of the men involved had an interest in administration, the group hired James Edward West as manger.  He quickly dispatched Seton and Beard, and treated the organization as a business. [8]

A number of Scout councils had organized camps on their own that combined Scouting programs with those of private boys’ camps in New England.  In 1918, West reduced costs when he transferred the burden of troop organization over to local churches.  In 1926, he replaced existing camp programs with troop camping.  Councils provided safe sites, and local troop leaders provided manpower. [9]

Zander’s name first appears as a council executive and camp director in 1924 and 1925; [10] after that troop camping prevailed.  Klusmann’s name first appears when he was associated with the Woodcraft League of America in 1928. [11]  That group was sponsored by Seton. [12]

Local councils circumvented West’s limited camping programs in small ways.  Zander and Klusmann did not copyright their songbooks for the Boy Scouts.  Instead, they seem to have created a private business, Songs ’n’ Things, in Berkeley.  Both were the sons of entrepreneurs.  Klusmann’s father sold pharmaceutical supplies, [13] while Zander’s was “a musician who played, taught, and had a music store.” [14]

According to historians for the Crescent Bay BSA District, the first book was called Camp Songs for Boy Scouts.  It contained fifty songs and “circulated widely throughout the scout camps of Southern California and beyond.” [15]

Camping and youth group organizations were strong in California and other groups asked for copies.  That led the two men to issue Camp Songs: Popular Edition, which they modified for different markets by including songs specific to each group.

The two Boy Scout field executives modified the “21st printing” by substituting Camp Josepho’s name in place of “popular edition” and added a four-page insert in the middle that had no page numbers.  Later, they altered the “23rd printing” by adding an eight-page section of Josepho’s songs that were numbered in sequence. [16]

My 1938 copy of Camp Songs does not contain music, only the lyrics with notes on the tunes.

In 1939, Zander and Klusmann introduced a second collection, Camp Songs ’n’ Things [17] that does have music.  It also includes some stunts.

 

Printing did not mean print run, but version of the master songbook.  The date refers to the copyright date of the title, not the date of the publication.

 

As you can see, the type is in two fonts.  The constant information is darker than the text that changes.  They may well have had one plate where they made the substitutions.  Crescent Bay says their “21st printing” was from 1942 and their “23rd printing” from 1945.

My “1938” copy of Camp Songs: Popular Edition contains “Walking at Night” with a credit to the National Recreation Association.  The first publication was 1940 in Augustus Zanzig’s Singing America. [18]  As mentioned in the post for 26 September 2021, Zanzig was traveling around the country collecting songs, and may well have introduced this in California before he issued his songbook. [19]

Zander and Klusmann’s use of dates and version numbers makes it difficult to know exactly when the two men introduced particular songs.  The only time limit would be 1943, when Klusmann moved to New York to work in the national BSA office, [20] although Crescent Lake indicates Zander must have continued the business a few years longer.  His family remembers “him in his den packing up and shipping out Songs 'N Things books” years after he was “out of Scouting.” [21]

Graphics
1.  Camp Songs, front cover.
2.  “Each Campfire Lights Anew.”  Camp Songs, page 50.
3.  “Each Campfire Lights Anew.”  Camp Songs ’n’ Things, page 94.
4.  Camp Songs, inside back cover.

End Notes
Zander and Klusmann are mentioned in the posts for 5 December 2021, 13 March 2022, and 20 March 2022.

1.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  “A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service.”  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.  102.  Reconstructing this phase of CRS’s history is difficult for several reasons.  Rohrbough’s memory cannot always be trusted.  Business records before 1960 had been destroyed by the time Holcomb was working with Rohrbough. [23]  Few songbooks carry dates of publication, and often that information is not reliable.  In their place, one must compare songbooks looking for internal evidence.  Rohrbough did not keep copies of everything he produced, and Holcomb amassed his collection from rummaging through the storeroom and talking to friends. [24]  I have been buying copies on-line, and that is limited to those that survived sixty or seventy years.  When my information differs from his, I assume his usually is correct and my source is later than his.

2.  American Country Life Association.  Songs.  1940 according to Holcomb.  104.

3.  The American Country Life Association was founded in 1919. [25]  Paul Vogt of Ohio State University [26] and Bruce Melvin of Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, [32] were early supporters of the group.  Both had left the state by the mid-1920s, but others remained active.  OSU hosted the 1935 national conference. [36]  I have not found the names of anyone active in the group in the 1940s in Ohio.

4.  When he was publishing songbooks, Zander used the name Carl.  Later, he used Edward.  I will use his full name to make clear he is the person being discussed.

5.  Carl E. Zander and Wes H. Klusmann.  Camp Songs: Popular Edition.  Los Angeles: 4 May 1938; edition for Y. M. C. A.  Item AA 269978 in United States Copyright Office.  Catalog of Copyright Entries. Part 1.  Number 7, 1938.  785.

6.  Carl E. Zander and Wes H. Klusmann.  Camp Songs: Popular Edition.  Berkeley, California: Songs ’n’ Things, copyright 1938, 28th printing.

7.  The post for 12 December 2021 has a photograph of the CRS Handy II cover from 1930.

8.  Patricia Averill.  Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris, 2014.  367–368.

9.  Averill.  368.

10.  Alan O’Connor, Gerry Albright, Cliff Curtice, Irene Fujimoto, Frank Glick, Howard Herlihy, John Nopel, Bill Soncrant, Janette Soncrant, and George Williams.  “History of the Golden Empire Council: Boy Scouts of America.”  Sacramento, California: Golden Empire BSA Council, 1996.  33.

11.  Item.  Eagle Rock Sentinel, Los Angeles, California, 20:6:24 February 1928.
12. Averill.  145.

13.  The National Corporation Reporter, 8:130:1894, lists The William H. Klusmann [37] Company as a manufacturer and dealer in “essential oils, juices of plants and vegetables, drugs.”

14.  BG.  “Carl Edward Zander Sr.”  Find a Grave website, 8 February 2021.

15.  Crescent Bay Historical Project.  “Camp Josepho - Song Books.”  Crescent Bay District, West Los Angeles BSA Council website, Jeff Morley webmaster.

16.  Crescent Bay Council.

17.  My copy is Carl E. Zander and Wes H. Klusmann.  Camp Songs ’n’ Things.  Berkeley, California: Songs ’n’ Things, copyrighted 1939, ninth printing.  I could not verify the copyright status from the Library of Congress catalogs available on the internet.  Except for the use of music, it has the same format as Camp Songs.

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

19.  The post for 5 December 2021 provides evidence that Zanzig was spreading songs before he published Singing America.

21.  “Regional Meeting.”  Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, 14 March 1943.  23.  Among those attending was “Wes H. Klusmann, National director of camping.”

22.  Carl Edward Zander’s family.  Email, 3 November 2021.
23.  Holcomb.  104.

24.  Holcomb.  104.  “Most of those that the author found were located in the shelves of surplus and reference books at the CRS headquarters--an enormous but incomplete source.  Others were found in the private libraries of many longtime friends of the Rohrboughs.  Titles, dates, and purchasing groups of some additional custom songbooks were discovered in various advertising flyers of the CRS.”

25.  Merwin Swanson.  “The ‘Country Life Movement’ and the American Churches.”  Church History 46:358–373:1977.  369.

26.  Vogt published his text on Rural Sociology in 1918 [27] while he was at OSU. [28] He took a position with the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1916 promoting improvements in rural churches. [29]  He left that job in 1926 [30] and was living in Philadelphia in 1923. [31]

27.  Paul Leroy Vogt.  Introduction to Rural Sociology.  New York: Appleton, 1918.
28.  “Paul Leroy Vogt.”  Everybody Wiki website.
29.  Swanson.  367.
30.  Swanson.  371.
31.  American Country Life Association.  Proceedings, 1923 conference.  201.

32.  Melvin was on the association’s committee on teaching of rural sociology in 1923 while at Ohio Wesleyan. [33]  In 1926, he was at Cornell. [34]  In 1938, he was promoting on recreation programs as ways to prevent delinquency in rural areas. [35]

33.  American Country Life Association, 1923.  200.

34.  Bruce L. Melvin.  “Methods of Social Research.”  Listed in “Preliminary Program of the Twenty-First Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Society” published by American Journal of Sociology 32:471–476:1926.  472.

35.  Bruce Lee Melvin and Elna Nielsen Smith.  Rural Youth: Their Situation and Prospects.  Washington DC: Works Progress Administration, Division of Social Research, 1938.  83.

36.  Fred R. Yoder.  Review of “Country Life Programs.”  Rural Sociology 1:530:1936.

37.  “Wesley Herman Klusmann.”  Ancestry website.  It blocks information on his father, William H. Klusmann.

Barbados Tobacco

Topic: Gullah History
The lack of labor was the greatest impediment to settling Barbados: it was uninhabited.  Henry Winthrop arrived on the first ship in 1627.  After working a few months, he calculated in August that he needed “to have every year some 2 or 3 servants over, and to have them bound to me for 3 years for so much a year, some 5 pounds or 6 pounds a year.” [1]  By October, when he asked his father to “send me over 2 or 3 men that they be bound to serve me,” [2] he told him to offer “not above 10 pounds a year.” [3]

By then, what had begun as an expedient in Virginia had become the norm.  Agriculture was not mechanized, and men capable of physical labor were needed to plant and harvest crops.  If one was not encouraging families to migrate like New England, then one had to have indentured servants as help.  Even in Massachusetts, many arrived with two or more servants. [4]

Winthrop’s sponsor, William Courteen [5] established the colony to grow tobacco.  Seeds and skilled Arawak workers from Guyana were the first thing his agent, Henry Powell, supplied. [6]  When Winthrop wrote in August, he already had “a crop of tobacco on the ground,” [7] and may have begun realizing its labor requirements.

The market for tobacco already existed.  Nicholas Monardes’ account of its medicinal qualities had been translated into English in 1577, [8] while Walter Raleigh had introduced smoking to the court of Elizabeth I in 1586. [9]  Information on how to grow it probably came from the Arawak and Gervase Markham’s translation of The Country Farm in 1616. [10]  It warned the seeds are so tiny, individuals neede to start a number in a single hole, then transplant them later. [11]  That is twice the labor of wheat, after time is spent clearing a field.

The first results showed there still was much to learn.  Winthrop was told his tobacco was “very ill-conditioned, foul, and full of stalks, and evil colored” and not seen as at all satisfactory by English grocers. [12]

The introduction of a new crop occurs in three phases.  During the pioneer period legends arise that ascribe the success to one individual who shares his knowledge freely.  Melissa Morris summarizes what she calls tobacco’s “origin story” as:

“the French ambassador Jean Nicot was visiting the gardens of the Portuguese king, and someone gave him a tobacco plant from Florida.  Nicot carried the plant back to France, where he made people aware of it and its medicinal properties.  In some versions, he even goes on to cure several people of a whole host of different ailments.” [13]

Historians counter legends with Guinness lists of names of men who deserve credit, including more specific details on how Nicot acquired his seeds.

A great innovator appears in the second phase who makes the plant a commercial success.  John Rolfe saw local Natives growing the North American species when he arrived in Virginia in 1610.  From that he knew it would grow. [14]  However, he realized the local Nicotiana rustica could not compete with the Nicotiana tabacum being produced by the Spanish. [15]  He procured seeds from the Trinidad-Guyana area in 1612, [16] but still had an inferior product.  It was only after a man named Lambert found a better way to dry the leaves [17] that Rolfe had success on the London market in 1617. [18]

Barbados initiated tobacco production during the third phase when men imitate the work of their predecessors, sometimes making improvements, sometimes failing.  The Arawak obviously were not curing their tobacco like Rolfe.

Before Winthrop could react, James Hay sent a group from Saint Kitts to take over Barbados in 1628. [19]  He had financed a colony there in 1623, [20] but attracted various investors with competing interests.  As a result, “the settlers were prone to violent conflict among themselves.” [21]  When the Spanish attacked neighboring Nevis [22] in 1629, the indentured servants ran away and “swam aboard and told them where” the English hide their provisions, and how the island stood. [23]

As is obvious from the behavior of the indentured servants, planters on Saint Kitts and Nevis had more exploitive views of labor than Winthrop professed.  Later in 1629, the Barbados governor responded to complaints of abusive treatment by threatening to give their servants to better masters.  The planters rebelled, and the governor was recalled by Hay. [24]

Henry Colt spent two weeks in the harbor at Barbados in 1631.  While his ship was stopped on its way to Saint Kitts, forty indentured servants “stole away in a Dutch” ship. [25]  They came on board his ship uninvited, and hung around for hours to avoid work. [26]  He found their masters were prone to drunkenness and quarrels. [27]

The labor contracts in Barbados were merging several English traditions. [28]  As mentioned in the post for 7 November 2021, men in rural areas agreed to do specified work for a year at a set wage.  Winthrop had this in mind when he told his uncle he expected to pay two men an annual wage from the hundred pounds he was being paid by Courteen [29] to raise tobacco.

When his father sent two boys from London, he was working under the rules of the apprenticeship system. [30]  This was changing rapidly in London, not so much in form, as in numbers.  The population of the city had more than doubled in size between 1550 and 1600, when it was about 200,000. [31]  Bruce Robinson suggests the growth came from activities at court and the port. [32]

However, life expectancy was low in the city, [33] with only seventeen good years between 1618 and 1661.  Three plagues killed 20% of the population [34] each time in 1603, 1625, and 1636–1641; epidemics raged in thirteen years. [35]  Only 10% of live births lived to age 45, with 36% dead before age five, 24% by age 15, and 15% more before age 25. [36]  At one time apprenticeships were used to train individuals to perpetuate businesses; now skilled tradesmen and merchants needed apprentices just to stay in business.

While London was prospering, population growth in England dropped to 50%, from 79% in the previous half century [37] that coincided with the inflation mentioned in the post for 7 November 2021.  The population increase on a fixed quantity of land meant per capital income increased 5% between 1600 and 1690, rather than the 12% before. [38]  With less money, men married later. [39]

Anthony Garvan notes that, among emigrants who settled Connecticut in the 1630s, a family head and his oldest son might be classed as yeomen, while the younger sons were listed as husbandmen. [40]  Both were rural, but the yeoman “generally had a freehold.” [41]  Usage suggests the husbandman was “a kind of meaner yeoman who might with the improvement of his estate become a yeoman himself.” [42]

The answer, as suggested by Garvan, was leaving. [43]  In Hampshire in southern England, John Graunt found one parish increased by 300 during a forty year period, while 300 to 400 went to London.  Rather than adapt to urban life, another 400 went to rural colonies in the New World, including the Carribelands. [44]

Barbados never improved its tobacco.  In 1650, it still was considered “the worst that grows in the world.” [45]  Enslaving the Arawak by the men from Saint Kitts stopped any cultural exchange that might have helped. [46]  The high-handed treatment of the planters kept them from experimenting. [47]  Henry Colt complained he never saw anyone working in 1631. [48]  Mistreating indentured servants made it difficult to get them to do more than the minimum work.

At this point Barbados was not a successful model for others, although its evolving attitude toward labor would persist in South Carolina.

End Notes
1.  Henry Winthrop.  Letter to Thomas Fones, his uncle, 22 August 1627.  Quoted by N. Darnell Davis.  Cavaliers and Roundheads in Barbados.  Georgetown, British Guiana: Argosy Press, 1887.  32.  His source is the Winthrop papers in the Massachusetts Historical Collections. Spelling modernized; the original is: “I do intend to have everye yere some 2 or 3 servents over, and to have them bound to me for 3 yerres for so muche a yere, some 5 lbs or 6 lbs a yere.”

2.  Henry Winthrop.  Letter to John Winthrop, 15 October 1627.  Quoted by Davis, 33.  Spelling modernized; the original is: “send me ouer 2 or 3 men yt they be bound to searve me.”  John Winthrop was active in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

3.  Henry Winthrop, 15 October 1627.  Spelling modernized; the original is “not aboue 10 pd a yere.”

4.  Anthony N. B. Garvan.  Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial Connecticut.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951.  9.

5.  Courteen is mentioned in the posts for 31 October 2021 and 7 November 2021.
6.  Powell and the Arawak are mentioned in the post for 30 October 2021.

7.  Henry Winthrop, 22 August 1627.  Quoted by Davis.  32.  “We have a crop of tobacco on the ground.”

8.  Nicholas Monardes.  The Newe Founde Worlde.  Seville: Alonso Escrivano, 1574.  Translated by John Frampton as Joyfull Newes out of the Newe Found Worlde.  London: Willyam Norton, 1577.  Reissued by London: Constable, 1925.
 
9.  E. R. Billings.  Tobacco: Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce.  Hartford, Connecticut: American Publishing Company, 1875.  Chapters 3 and 4.

10.  Charles Estienne and Jean Liebault.  Praedium Rusticum.  1554.  Translated from Latin into French by Estienne as Maison Rustique in 1564.  Translated into English as The Country Farme by Gervase Markham.  London: Adam Jslip for John Bill, 1616. [49]  Individuals were growing different species of tobacco in their gardens according to Monardes [50] and Gerard. [51]

11.  Estienne.  Quoted by Billings.  Chapter 1.  He Anglicized Estienne’s name to Stevens.

“For to sow it, you must make a hole in the earth with your finger and that as deep as your finger is long, then you must cast into the same hole ten or twelve seeds of the said Nicotiana together, and fill up the hole again: for it is so small, as that if you should put in but four or five seeds the earth would choake it: and if the time be dry, you must water the place easily some five days after: And when the herb is grown out of the earth, inasmuch as every seed will have put up his sprout and stalk, and that the small thready roots are intangled the one within the other, you must with a great knife make a composs within the earth in the places about this plot where they grow and take up the earth and all together, and cast them into a bucket full of water, to the end that the earth may be seperated, and the small and tender impes swim about the water; and so you shall sunder them one after another without breaking of them.”

Methods became more complex later in Virginia with the use of seed beds.

12.  John Winthrop.  Letter to Henry Winthrop, 30 January 1628.  Quoted by Davis.  36.  His source is Robert C. Winthrop.  Life and Letters of John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, at Their Emigration to New England, 1630.  Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864.

13.  Melissa N. Morris.  “Cultivating Colonies: Tobacco and the Upstart Empires, 1580-1640.”  PhD dissertation.  Columbia University, 2017.  76–77.

14.  Lee Pelham Cotton.  “Tobacco: The Early History of a New World Crop.”  National Park Service, Historic Jamestown website.

15.  Morris has maps showing the distribution of the two species on page 61.

16.  Melvin Herndon.  Tobacco in Colonial Virginia.  Williamsburg, Virginia: Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration Corporation, 1957.  2.

17.  Morris.  96.  Her source is The Records of the Virginia Company of London, edited by Susan Myra Kingsbury.  Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1905.  III:92.  Lambert is a critical figure who has been lost in the tale of the great innovator who saved the Virginia colony from economic oblivion. It is odd no settler with named Lambert has been identified since so much research has been on done on the history of Jamestown and early Virginia.

18.  Herndon.  2.

19.  Davis.  44.  This is mentioned in the post for 31 October 2021.

20.  Roy E. Schreiber.  “The First Carlisle, Sir James Hay, First Earl of Carlisle as Courtier, Diplomat and Entrepreneur, 1580–1636.”  American Philosophical Society Transactions 74(7):1–155:1984.  170.

21.  Schreiber.  174.

22.  Nevis is two miles from Saint Kitts.  During the ice age, when water levels were lower, they were one island. [52]

23.  John Hilton.  Relation of the First Settlement of St. Christophers and Nevins.  29 April 1675.  Reprinted in Vincent T. Harlow.  Colonising Expeditions to the West Indies and Guiana, 1623-1667.  London: The Hakluyt Society, 1925; since reprinted.  10.  Paraphrase of “runn away from vs and Swimed aboard & told them were w hid our provissions, & in what case our Islands stood in.”  Original document in British Museum, Egerton MSS 2395.

24.  Larry Gragg.  Englishmen Transplanted: The English colonization of Barbados, 1627–1660.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.  36.  His source is Gary A. Puckrein.  Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-1700.  New York: New York University Press, 1984.  37–9.

25.  Henry Colt.  “The Voyage of Sir Henrye Colt Knight to the Ilands of the Antilleas.”  Cambridge University Library MSS, Mm. 3, 9.  74 in Harlow.  “Forty of ye seruants when I was now ther, stoll away in a Dutch pinnace.”

26.  Colt.  65–66.
27.  Colt.  66.

28.  John Wareing.  Indentured Migration and the Servant Trade from London to America, 1618-1718.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.  40.  “The colonial indenture system originated in conditions of husbandry in England, and were temporary, contractual, and provided maintenance for the servant [ . . . ] also influenced by the system of apprenticeship for adolescents, the Vagrancy Laws, and the practices of the Virginia Company in binding their servants.”

29.  Henry Winthrop, 22 August 1627.  Quoted by Davis.  32.  He wrote: “paid 100 pounds a piece for our labors.”  [“paid 100li a yere apeece for or labors.”]

30.  John Winthrop.  Quoted by Davis.  36.  “but I knew not what to do for their binding, being not able to walk or write, and they being but youths.”  Winthrop had been sick that winter.

31.  Stephen Alford.  London’s Triumph: Merchants, Adventurers, and Money in Shakespeare’s City.  New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.  13.
 
32.  Bruce Robinson.  “London: Brighter Lights, Bigger City.”  BBC website, 17 February 2011.

33.  Economists at the London School of Economics show “natural increase varied widely across the city in the early seventeenth century, with the wealthier central parishes experiencing a positive natural increase outside plague years, the surrounding poorer parishes suffering an average deficit of 10 per cent, but with average deficits of 30 per cent occurring in the out-parishes.” [53]

34.  Neil Cummins, Morgan Kelly and Cormac Ó Gráda. “Living Standards and Plague in London, 1560–1665.”  Economic History Review 69:3–34:2016.  4.
 
35.  John Graunt.  Natural and Political Observations, Mentioned in a following Index, and made upon the Bills of Mortality.  London: Tho. Roycroft for John Martin, James Allestry, and Tho. Dicas, 1662, second edition.  27.  The 14 plague years were 1603, 1625, 1636 which lasted 12 years, and 1642.  Sickly years in which the death rate was higher than in subsequent years were 1618, 1620, 1623, 1624, 1632, 1633, 1634, 1649, 1652, 1654. 1656, 1658, and 1661.  That left 17 good years in the 44 years between 1618 and 1661.

36.  Graunt.  58.

37.  Stephen Broadberry, Stephen, Bruce Campbell, Alexander Klein, Mark Overton, and Bas van Leeuwen.  “British Economic Growth, 1270-1870.”  14 July 2010.  52.

38.  Broadberry.  53.

39.  Broadberry.  25.  “Although it is not known when it first became the norm, late marriage is known to have been prevalent in early modern England.”

40.  Garvan.  8.
41.  Garvan.  8.
42.  Garvan.  9.

43.  Garvan.  9.  He believed the servant group “was generally made up of countrymen; rural distress shared with the husbandmen made both groups migrate and the husbandman paid the poorer servant’s fare in return for his promise of labor.”

44.  Graunt.  61.  The parish suffered its greatest mortality from the plague in 1638. [54]

45.  Richard Ligon.  A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes.  London: Peter Parker, 1673.  113.  The original is “theirs at Barbadoes is the worft I think that growes in the world.”

46.  For more on the Arawak, see the post for 31 October 2021.
47.  Harlow.  67, note 1.

48.  Colt.  67.  “In ten days travel about them, I never saw any man at work.” [“in 10 days trauayle about them, I neuer saw any man at work.”

49.  “ESTIENNE, Charles.”  Donald Heald website.
50.  Monardes.  1:75.

51.  John Gerard.  The Herbal.  1633 edition reprinted by Dover Publications of New York City in 1975.  356–358.  His first edition was published in London by John Norton in 1597.

52.  “Nevis.”  Wikipedia website.
53.  Cummins.  5.
54.  Graunt.  62.

Barbados Land Usage

Topic: Gullah History
Histories of Barbados are replete with examples of large plantations.  When James Hay [1] won his grant from Charles I in 1627, he turned 10,000 acres over to a syndicate of his creditors headed by Marmaduke Rawdon. [2]  They recruited seventy settlers with promises of a hundred acres, or 7,000 of their acres. [3]  In 1629, their agent made 140 more grants for 15,872 acres of the original 10,000. [4]

These grants could be subdivided and resold.  Alison Games says former indentured servants were not promised land at the end of their contracts, but could buy it.  They had so little money, they often pooled their resources into partnerships that purchased an average of 2.5 acres. [5]

Hilary Beckles found outside the original 10,000 acre allocation, 776 grants were made between 1628 and 1638 that were at least ten acres. [6]  Ronnie Hughs lists nine men who received a hundred or more acres with the first large grant made in 1630. [7]  These few larger grants accounted for most of the acreage, for Beckles found the average size was 95.78 acres each, and, combined with the original grant, represented 84,329 acres.

Barbados is not elastic like Virginia, where men could claim land in the wilderness beyond the original grant.  It is an island, with finite resources.  Today, its area is 167 square miles, or 106,880 acres.  However, not all that land can be farmed.  Only 16.28% is considered arable, or 11,258 acres. [8]

The island is the exposed section of an ocean ridge formed at the point where one tectonic plate is sinking under another. [9]  The limestone base is covered by a veneer of coral, which means soils are easily depleted.  Henry Colt thought planters were fooling themselves in 1631.  He noticed the soil was “loose sand” and that the ground they thought the most fertile was “but the leaves and ashes of your trees.  Dig but half a foot deep and the will be found nothing else but clay.” [10]  By the 1670s, Richard Blome noted settlers already were leaving worn out plantations for Jamaica. [11]

Perhaps the greatest limiting factor was the island has no water sources: potable water had to be collected in cisterns when it rained. [12]  This, more than anything, perpetuated medieval patterns of land usage.

The Roman concept of settlements organized in grids and joined by connecting roads was long lost in England, [13] and not reintroduced until Christopher Wren rebuilt London after the fire of 1666. [14]  In its place, families lived in settlements [15] near a church and worked land divided into narrow strips. [16]  The best fronted the only road, but many only could be reached by crossing the land of another person. [17]

Anthony Garvan believes settlers in Connecticut imported modified versions of this settlement pattern.  Before 1645, every township included a nuclear village, [18] with lands distributed along a single road whose purpose was allowing “every land owner to access his land.” [19]  As shown in the plan for Weathersfield, the land was laid out in long narrow strips that extended from the road to the township boundaries and crossed whatever terrain existed.  Some strips spanned land, water, and an island. [20]

Richard Ligon drew the map of Barbados shown above in or before 1657.  The detail below shows the twenty-one-mile strip of waterfront on the west side of the island served as a road.  No roads yet existed into the interior.  If one wanted to market one’s crop, one had to be very close to the water.  Richard Dunn has counted 285 plantations, [21] which would make their average width 452.5'.

The one difference between Connecticut and Barbados was the use of surveys.  Garvan says they were introduced in the Netherlands by the Duke of Alba as a way of asserting control on towns. [22]  The lots on the Weathersfield plot are straight lines.  It would be hard to imagine a straight line on Ligon’s map. [23]

Oliver Rackham says the narrow fields in England developed when oxen were used, and reflected the needs of those animals. [24]  The strips in Barbados may have been adjudicated like everything else relating to land of the island, by who brought a boundary area into cultivation first and was able to enforce it against his neighbors.

Graphics
Richard Ligon.  Map of Barbados in A True and Exact History of Barbadoes, 1657.  Reproduction from copy in Bryn Mawr Library posted on National Humanities Center website, 2006.

End Notes
1.  Hay, the Earl of Carlisle, is mentioned in the post for 7 November 2021.

2.  Historians argue over who instigated the claim on Barbados.  Some believe it was Rawdon’s idea and that he used his Hay’s indebtedness as leverage to get him to act. [25]  Others think Hay was responsible, [26] since he also invested in the Virginia Company and the settlement of Saint Kitts. [27]

3.  Larry Gragg.  Englishmen Transplanted: The English colonization of Barbados, 1627–1660.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.  33.

4.  Gragg.  36.

5.  Alison Games.  Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World.  Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999.  126.

6.  Hilary MacDonald Beckles.  “White Labour in Black Slave Plantation Society and Economy: A Case Study of Indentured Labour in Seventeenth Century Barbados.”  PhD dissertation.  The University of Hull, August 1980.  His source is Some Memoirs of the First Settlement of the Island of Barbados.  Barbados: Wm. Beeby, 1741.  l–25.

7.  Ronnie Hughes.  “Presugar Land Distributiion in Barbados.”  Department of History seminar paper.  University of West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, November 1980.  Table reproduced on “1630-1644: Land holdings of 100 acres or more” on Roots Web website.  Beckles thanks “Hughes, from the University of the West Indies, for his greatly valued assistance while working on the manuscripts in the Barbados Archives” in his Acknowledgments.

8.  “Geography of Barbados.”  Wikipedia website.  The exact numbers probably were slightly different in 1630.

9.  R. C. Speed.  “Geology of Barbados: Implications for an Accretionary Origin.”  International Geological Congress, 26, Paris, 7–17 July 1980.  Proceedings 259–265.

10.  Henry Colt.  “The Voyage of Sir Henrye Colt Knight to the Ilands of the Antilleas.”  Cambridge University Library MSS, Mm. 3, 9.  In Vincent T. Harlow.  Colonising Expeditions to the West Indies and Guiana, 1623-1667.  London: The Hakluyt Society, 1925; since reprinted.  67.  Spelling modernized; the original is “For your soyle yt is naught, nothinge ele but loose sand.  Your growned wch you esteeme ye best is but ye leaues & ashes of your trees.  Digg but half a foot deep & the wilbe found nothinge else but Clay.”  To clear the land, they cut trees and burned them in place.

11.  Richard Blome.  A Description of the Island of Jamaica.  London: T. Milbourn for Robert Clavel, 1672.  Cited by Laura Hollsten.  “Controlling Nature and Transforming Landscapes in the Early Modern Caribbean.”  Global Environment 1:80–113:2008.  It was after this period that planters began using manure to keep their land productive.

12.  Ligon. 28.  Copy on internet from Missouri Botanical Garden.

13.  Anthony N. B. Garvan.  Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial Connecticut.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951.  29.  There probably are more recent works on this subject, but Garvan was chairman of my graduate school department and he and this book are what influenced my thinking.

Oliver Rackham.  The History of the Countryside.  London: J. M. Dent, 1986.  164.  He thought the period of the Black Death was the “high water mark of the open field.” [28]  After that time, large landowners began converting land to sheep pasture by replacing the strips and common land into enclosed areas.  Tenants were evicted. [29]  Enclosures were more common where men had left during the plague or where warfare was a problem, like along the border with Scotland. [30]

14.  Garvan.  33.
15.  Rackham. 178.
16.  Rackham.  164.
17.  Rackham.  165.
18.  Garvan.  40.
19.  Garvan.  42.
20.  Garvan.  52.

21.  Richard S. Dunn.  Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.  29.

22.  Garvan.  19.

23.  Beckles says Rawdon’s syndicate hired a surveyor, John Swan, to “organise their land into large tenanted estates.” [31]  That does not mean Swan was using geometry rather than the older system of metes and bounds.

24.  Rackham.  165.

25.  Gary Puckrein.  “Did Sir William Courteen Really Own Barbados?”  Huntington Library Quarterly 44(2):135–149:1981.

N. Darnell Davis.  Cavaliers and Roundheads in Barbados.  Georgetown, British Guiana: Argosy Press, 1887.  51.

26.  Roy E. Schreiber.  “The First Carlisle, Sir James Hay, First Earl of Carlisle as Courtier, Diplomat and Entrepreneur, 1580–1636.”  American Philosophical Society Transactions 74(7):1–155:1984.  “Though it is possible that the merchant-financiers who backed the earl forced him into these disputed projects, it is difficult to believe he was incapable of deflecting their schemes had he been so inclined” (page 139).

27.  Schreiber.  Virginia, 168; Saint Kitts, 170.
28.  Rackham.  170.

29.  Wilhelm Hasbach.  Die englischen Landarbeiter in den letzten hundert Jahren und die Einhegungen.  Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1894.  Translated as A History of the English Agricultural Labourer by Ruth Kenyon.  London: P . S . King and Son, 1908.  33–34.

30.  Hasbach.  29.

31.  Beckles.  16.  His source is: John Oldmixon.  The British Empire in America.  London: John Nicholson, Benjamin Tooke, Richard Parker and Ralph Smith, 1708.  2:1.

Barbados Views of Land

Topic: Gullah History
The Earliest settlers in South Carolina may not have brought the plantation system with them, if for no other reason than they did not yet have a crop requiring slave labor.  What they did bring, though, were views of land usage and labor practices they learned as young men in England.

Thus, if one were to begin at the beginning, as proposed in the post for 14 October 2021, one would start with the Duke of Normandy landing on the British island in 1066.  William confiscated lands of those who opposed him, and redistributed them to 180 of his supporters.  However, ownership remained in his hands, and it was granted in return for military support. [1]  Knight’s heirs had to prove their military skills before grants were renewed.  Land without title has little value, and, after William passed, nobles found ways to define ownership as something that could be inherited and disposed of by individuals. [2]

The next milestone in the history of land ownership was the Bubonic Plague, which killed 40% to 60% of the English population, after it entered the island in 1348. [3]  Arable land reverted to waste because not enough men were available to cultivate it, and no markets existed for agricultural products.  With scarce labor, wages and standards of living improved for survivors.

Harriett Bradley argues there was another reason land was abandoned: after several centuries of agriculture, it no longer was fertile.  When the land produced less for the same effort, poverty ensued. [4]  Landowners replaced the hierarchy of services with leases, and paid laborers only when they worked during plowing and harvesting times.  Landowners became “concerned with the problem of getting as much rent as possible.” [5]

Land became a burden.  Ambitious men looked to trade for wealth.  After Mary of Scotland became queen in 1553, joint-stock companies were given monopolies for foreign trade: the Muscovy Company was first in 1550. [6]

Trade patterns changed in the 1570s.  The Spanish introduced a new method for extracting silver from ore, and, within a few years, exports from South America increased ten-fold. [7]  Instead of using the new wealth to develop his country, [8] Philip II spent it trying to suppress Protestantism in what is now Belgium.  The center of European trade moved from Antwerp, Belguim, to Genoa, Italy, in 1572. [9]  Elizabeth chartered the Turkey Company in 1581 and East India Company in 1600 to pursue trade in the new commercial centers. [10]

Silver exports from South America reached their peak between 1580 and 1620. [11]  Gold was hoarded, and, with inflation, prices for wheat and fire wood rose steeply in England in the 1580s. [12]  David Fischer reports England entered a period of “deep depression,” and wealth became concentrated in the hands of the few. [13]

Many believed demographic recovery from the Black Death was the cause.  They reasoned that as the population grew, it expanded beyond the available food and firewood supply. [14]  As always, more factors were involved.  The climate veered abruptly toward the cold when crops failed between 1594 and 1597. [15]  This was followed by a return of epidemics and a major economic collapse between 1610 and 1622 [16] with an accompanying drop in the price of wool and textiles. [17]  The Thirty Years War, which began in 1618, probably did not help, although fighting was confined to the European continent.

The problems were not limited to the island.  On the continent, Fernand Braudel believes the influx of silver from the Spanish Empire was a factor, [18] especially when it led to devaluations of currencies.  He notes volatile prices affected merchants and entrepreneurs more than landowners, and so those with means began acquiring land. [19]

Presumably this turn to land also occurred in England, where there was little new land to be had.  Henry VIII already had seized the estates of the monasteries and sold them to raise money in the 1540s. [20]  James I tried to dominate Ireland with new colonies in Ulster.  However, London merchants did not believe the dangers of settling a hostile countryside were worth the investment in land.  They only contributed under duress. [21]

Something more promising appeared with the Great Drainage Act of 1600, which promised companies that drained swamps would receive a share of the recovered land in compensation.  James supported proposals to drain fens in the eastern part of the island where a large number of monasteries had been established, and then deposed.  Local lease holders objected violently, and little came of the first attempts [22] beyond the idea that companies could be rewarded if they claimed new lands that were “free or virtually free of any conflicting title or encumbrance.” [23]

Overseas colonies opened another source of wealth.  James chartered the Virginia Company in 1606 to protect English land claims on the continent between the French in Canada and the Spanish in Florida.  It was rechartered in 1609, with one company open to merchants from London and a second to men in Bristol. [24]  Unlike Ulster, this was popular: about 650 individuals and 50 London companies invested. [25]

Satisfaction did not last long: until John Rolfe produced a decent variety of tobacco in 1617, [26] the colony had no commercial crop, and depended on the company for supplies.  Some investors turned that need into an opportunity by organizing a separate company to supply the colony. [27]

The original Virginia company owned the land and the settlers were contract employees, much like the rural wage earners mentioned above.  When the first contracts came due in 1613, many planned to leave.  To retain them, the governor offered those who remained three-acre tenant farms. [28]

The first period for investors ended in 1616, but the company had no money to distribute.  Instead, it gave each of them fifty acres for private development.  It expanded the new idea that land could be substituted for cash in 1617 when it promised  fifty acres per person to anyone who paid the way for a settler, even if the person was an indentured servant or slave. [29]  The original investors began pooling their grants to create bigger plantations and hired their own contract laborers. [30]

The investors still were not satisfied, and Robert Rich was especially vocal.  His complaints led James to revoke the charter on 24 May 1624 and convert it into a royal colony, [31] thus diverting any profits to himself.  A few days later, on May 29, Parliament abolished such monopolies. [32]

Courteen began his settlement of Barbados after Parliament acted, with some idea of land ownership dervied from the Drainage Act.  However, James’ son, Charles I, was not one to admit the legitimacy of Parliamentary actions.  He reintroduced grants as “patents,” exploiting as exception to the Statute of Monopolies.  In 1627, he gave James Hay the rights to develop the Caribbean islands. [33]

This set in train thirty-three years of legal conflicts that ultimately involved the heirs of Courteen and Hay, and the creditors of both.  The details, which have been chronicled by Larry Gragg, [34] are outside the scope of this essay.  What is important is the attitude toward land and deeds.  Hay’s creditors sent their own agent to Barbados who took over Courteen’s settlement.  Land ownership still belonged to the strongest.  However, to gain trust from Courteen’s colonists, who had gone as contract employees, he granted them titles to the land they had worked.  Each time, threats arose to whoever was in power on the island, land was used to reward supporters.

Chaos continued until the Restoration of 1660, when Charles’ son, Charles II, cancelled all the patents, and recognized a royalist supporter as the true leasee of the land which he, the king, ultimately owned. [35]  He only had been on the throne a short time when he acted, and needed to avoid reigniting the civil war that had raged in England for eighteen years.  To prevent rebellion, he confirmed the land titles of settlers. [36]

And so, just before settlers in Barbados begin promoting a scheme for Carolina, they had assurances that land ownership no longer was something that could be revoked by the whim of a monarch or revoked to punish unfaithful followers.  Not all the ideas introduced by William I were extinguished, but an important one had been replaced by the concept of private land.

End Notes
1.  Charles J. Reid Jr.  “The Seventeenth-Century Revolution in the English Land Law.”  Cleveland State Law Review 43:221–302:1955.  234.  The exact number, 180, is from “Enclosure.”  Wikipedia website.

2.  Reid.  235–236.

3.  For more on the effects of the Bubonic plague and the introduction of the woolen industry, see the post for 19 May 2019.

4.  Harriett Bradley.  The Enclosures in England: An Economic Reconstruction.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1918; reprinted by Batoche Books of Kitchner, Ontario, in 2001.  30.

5.  Bradley.  38–39.

6.  Michael John Hebbert.  “London.”  Encyclopædia Britannica website, uploaded 20 July 1998; last updated 4 August 2021.

7.  Fernand Braudel.  Le Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéan à Epoque de Phillippe II.  Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1966 revised edition.  Translated as The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II by Siân Reynolds.  New York: Harper and Row, 1972.  1:476.

8.  Braudel.  1:478–479.
9.  Braudel.  1:490.
10.  Hebbert.
11.  Braudel.  1:476.

12.  David Hackett Fischer.  The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.  74.

13.  Fischer.  91.
14.  Fischer.  72–73.

15.  Fischer.  93. The effects of the mini-ice age on Jamestown are mentioned in the post for 31 October 221.

16.  Fischer.  95.
17.  Fischer.  96.
18.  Braudel.  1:490.
19.  Braudel.  1:527.
20.  Reid.  238.

21.  James Stevens Curl.  “The City of London and the Plantation of Ulster.”  British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website, 2001.

22.  “The Middle Level of the Fens and Its Reclamation.”  249–290 in The Victoria History of the County of Huntingdon, volume 3 edited by William Page.  London: Saint Catherine Press, 1936.

23.  Anthony N. B. Garvan.  Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial Connecticut.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951.  59.

24.  “Virginia Company.”  Wikipedia website.

25.  Jeff Wallenfeld.  Answer to query “What are the names of the men who funded the Virginia Company of London?” posted to Beyond Britannica website by anneypeters on 23 November 2020.  He responded on 24 November 2020.

26.  Emily Salmon and John Salmon.  “Tobacco in Colonial Virginia.”  Encyclopedia Virginia website, 5 February 2021.

27.  Bernard Bailyn.  Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America.  New York: Vintage Books, 2013.  78.  The company was the Somers Isles Company; the islands now are known as Bermuda.  Rolfe was among those who first explored Bermuda. [37]

28.  Bailyn.  78.

29.  Bailyn.  79.  This use of land to attract settlers became known as the head-right system.

30.  Bailyn.  80.

31.  C. H. F.  “Rich, Robert (1587-1658).”  48:1885-1900 in Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Sidney Lee.  London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1896.  Rich is the Earl of Warwick.  He was one of the investors in the Somers Isles Company, and eventually joined the fray in Barbados on behalf of Courteen’s heir.

32.  “Statute of Monopolies.”  Wikipedia website.

33.  Hilary Beckles.  A History of Barbados.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.  8.  Hay was the Earl of Carlisle, and had been associated with James I. [38]

34.  Larry Gragg.  Englishmen Transplanted: The English Colonization of Barbados, 1627-1660.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.  Chapter 3, “Establishing a Colony, 1625–1660.”

35.  Robert M. Bliss.  Revolution and Empire.  Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017.  142.

36.  Richard S. Dunn.  Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.  80.

37.  “Somers Isles Company.”  Wikipedia website.
38.  “James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle.”  Wikipedia website.