Topic: Origins - Early Versions
James McDonald’s contract with the Georgia Baptist Association in 1832 required him to keep a daily journal and report quarterly. [1] He often sent reports to The Christian Index, [2] which was published by the association. By the time McDonald was in Jacksonville, the editor was Joseph Stevens Baker. [3]
Baker’s family had moved to Dorchester, South Carolina, from Massachusetts in 1695. [4] The Congregational church removed to Liberty County, Georgia, in 1752. [5] His grandfather was the first deacon. [6] After the American Revolution, it affiliated with the Presbyterians. [7]
Joseph was raised to be a Presbyterian minster like his four step-brothers. For that purpose he was sent to Hampden-Sidney College. [8] While the school supported religious freedom, [9] it also housed the Presbyterian’s Union Theological Seminary. [10]
When he returned to Liberty County, the local church asked him to prepare an answer to the question: was John’s baptism a Christian baptism? Two years later, Baker sold his property in Georgia and entered Columbian College to study medicine. [11] It had been founded in 1821 by Baptists. [12]
Baker practiced medicine for a few years, then became a Baptist missionary. It was after he moved to Georgia around 1840 that he took over the editorship of The Christian Index. It suffered the same financial problems that McDonald did when the Southern Baptist Convention replaced the Northern Baptist sponsors. [13] He resigned in 1848, and moved to Jacksonville, Florida. [14]
By then, Baker was fifty years old. His son, McRobert Baker, was a lawyer who also moved to Jacksonville. In 1850, he was the town’s mayor. [15] Joseph must have acted as a preacher at McDonald’s church when the evangelist was out proselytizing. [16] In 1851, McDonald sold his land to the Bakers [17] and moved to Atlanta. McRobert turned part of the acreage into a plantation, which he called LaVilla. [18]
The same year, 1850, McDonald’s deacon, Elias Jaudon bought a 550 acre plantation on the Saint John’s River. The previous owner, William McKay, had used 50 slaves to grow sea island cotton. By 1855, Jaudon had expanded Magnolia Plantation to 1,000 acres and added livestock and over crops. [19]
In 1853, McRobert Baker was a circuit court judge for Sumter County in the central part of the state, but still lived in Jacksonville. [20] The next year, Joseph returned to Georgia. [21] McRobert’s interests in central Florida increased, and, in 1856, he sold LaVilla to Francis L’Engle. [22]
Jaudon remained the deacon for Bethel Baptist church, and supported the minister who arrived in 1859, E. M. Dennison. [23] The church had grown to 290 members, of whom 250 were Black. [24] By 1861, Jaudon provided land for a new building closer to town. [25] The cemetery remained where it was.
In the meantime, in 1860, Jaudon, McRobert, and others incorporated La Villa Institute as a school to train teachers. [26]
During the Civil War, the new church building was used as a hospital for Union troops. [27] After the war, the white and Black members fought over its ownership. In 1868, a court gave whites the property, and ordered them to pay compensation to the newly freed Blacks. They used the funds to erect a wooden building at a new location, which they called Bethel Baptist. In response, the whites changed their name to Tabernacle Baptist. [28]
Jaudon’s role in this fight is unknown. By 1868, he was 62 years old. [29] His oldest son had died in Richmond in 1862, [30] and he apparently had left the area during the war. [31] Jaudon returned a less wealthy man; he had lost capital when slaves were emancipated. His land had not been tended during the war and probably had been used by Union troops in 1865.
During Reconstruction, Jacksonville attracted northerners, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, [32] who came for the winters or to make investments. [33] Capital moved more freely after Federal troops were withdraw in April of 1869. [34] In 1869, Jaudon sold 100 acres to Elwell Jamison, who in turn sold 35 acres to William James. They hoped to build a residential suburb. [35]
Jaudon died in 1872. [36]. McRobert had died in Richmond in 1864. [37] His father, Joseph, moved to Quitman, Georgia, after the war where he died in 1877. [38]
End Notes
1. James C. Bryant. “James McDonald: Missionary to East Florida.” Florida Baptist Historical Society meeting, Deland, Florida, 5 May 1984. Republished on the society’s website. 17, footnote 27. James McDonald is introduced in the post for 5 March 2023.
2. Bryant. 3.
3. “The Christian Index.” Georgia Historic Newspapers website.
4. Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society. History of the Town of Dorchester, Massachusetts. Boston, Massachusetts: Ebenezer Clapp, Jr., 1859. 261-262.
5. James Stacy. History of the Midway Congregational Church, Liberty County, Georgia. Newman, Georgia: S. W. Murray, 1899. 16-18.
6. Stacy. 33.
7. Stacy. 12.
8. William Cathcart. Baptist Encyclopedia. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Louis H. Everts, 1881. Biography of Joseph S. Baker reprinted by Greg Willis. “Joseph S. Baker, Queries Considered
Church Discipline, 1847.” 247-249 in Polity, edited by Mark Dever. Center for Church Reform, 2001. 248.
9. “Hampden–Sydney College.” Wikipedia website, accessed 4 March 2023.
10. “Union Presbyterian Seminary.” Wikipedia website, accessed 4 March 2023.
11. Cathcart. 248.
12. “Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.” Wikipedia website, accessed 4 March 2023.
13. The post for 5 March 2023 discusses the impact of the division of the Baptist church over slavery on the income of McDonald.
14. Cathcart. 248.
15. Richard Lee Cronin. “Cowboys & Lawyers: Part 2 - Joseph McRobert Baker.” Citrus Land Fl website, 9 January 2020.
16. Thomas Frederick Davis. History of Early Jacksonville. Jacksonville, Florida: The H. and W. B. Drew Company, 1911. 88.
17. T. Frederick Davis. History of Jacksonville, Florida and Vicinity, 1513 to 1924. Saint Augustine, Florida: The Record Company for The Florida Historical Society, 1925. 43-44.
18. Davis, 1925. 44.
19. Wayne W. Wood. The Living Heritage of Riverside & Avondale. Jacksonville, Florida: Riverside Avondale Preservation, Inc., 1994. 9.
20. Cronin.
21. Davis, 1911. 88.
22. Patricia Drozd Kenney. “LaVilla, Florida, 1866-1887: Reconstruction Dreams and the Formation of a Black Community.” Masters thesis. The University of Florida, 1990. 13.
23. Item on E. M. Dennison in “Biographies D.” Florida Baptist Historical Society website, 23 November 2020.
24. Davis, 1911. 88.
25. Davis, 1911. 87.
26. Chapter 1,166—[No. 73]. An act to incorporate La Villa Institute, near Jacksonville, Florida, 1860. 157-1958 in The Acts and Resolutions Adopted by the General Assembly of Florida at Its Tenth Session. Tallahassee, Florida: Dyke and Carlisle for Office of the Floridian and Journal, 1861.
27. Davis, 1911. 87.
28. “Our History.” The Bethel Experience website.
29. “Elias Gabriel Jaudon, Jr.” Geni website, last updated 8 February 2023.
30. Isaiah W. “Elias Gabriel Jaudon III (1836 - 1862).” Wiki Tree website, 10 November 2013; last updated 20 April 2018.
31. Steve W. has been researching the history of the 169th Civil War regiment from Troy, New York. The men were camped north of Jaudon’s plantation in 1865. On 9 February 2014, he reprinted reports by men in the regiment on the Metro Jacksonville website who described vacant houses in the area. In another post on 9 February 2014, Steve concluded: “I think a possible reason why the mansion, plantation, and nearby village were not identified by the men is because the place was deserted, per orders of the Confederate authorities. Nobody was left behind to say who owned the property.” [39]
32. Stowe paid her first visit to Jacksonville in 1867. For the next 17 years she and her husband spent their winters on 90 acres of land they purchased. She became a bit of a tourist attraction herself when steamboats went buy their property. [40] Her observations on a ring shout are quoted in the post for September 2018.
33. Davis, 1925. 149, 152.
34. Davis, 1911. 197.
35. Wood. 10.
36. “Elias Gabriel Jaudon, Jr.”
37. Cronin.
38. Stacy. 138. Quitman is located near the Florida boundary; the rivers flow into the Suwannee in central Florida. The surrounding Brooks County was a center of vigilante activity during reconstruction. [41]
39. Steve W. “Topic: Jacksonville Plantation Mystery (Civil War) -- SOLVED.” Metro Jacksonville website, 9 February 2014.
40. Jeff Klinkenberg. “Mrs. Stowe’s Florida.” Tampa Bay website, 19 November 2006; last updated 20 November 2006.
41. “Brooks County, Georgia.” Wikipedia website, accessed 8 March 2023.
Sunday, March 12, 2023
LaVilla Landowners - Joseph Stevens Baker
Sunday, March 5, 2023
LaVilla Landowners - James McDonald
Topic: Origins - Early Versions
James Weldon Johnson grew up in LaVilla, a small community west of Jacksonville after the Civil War. [1] The area originally was an island, but the surrounding creeks later were filled. [2]
Like most land in the area, it began as a Spanish grant, and changed hands several times. In 1836, Adin Waterman acquired 250 acres on behalf of Lydia Pinkston, apparently as an investment. [3] It was described as pine and oak woods in 1863. [4] Waterman had a large timber grant from the Spanish with a sawmill near modern Chester. [5] He had been named as her trustee when she married Milo K. Pinkston. [6]
In that year, 1836, James McDonald was a Baptist evangelist in Darien, Georgia. [7] He had been born in Limerick, Ireland, where his father was hung as a rebel in 1805. The seventeen-year-old fled the country after “exacting revenge upon a fellow countryman for his false testimony against his relatives.” He had been raised as a Roman Catholic, and so headed for Cuba, where he was arrested by the Spanish as a spy for England. A friend from Norfolk saved him from execution. [8]
That was around 1815. Sometime after he moved to Georgia, where he became a Baptist. During his voyage to Cuba, the ship’s captain had tried to convince him “it was not a mortal sin to read the Scriptures.” [9]
McDonald was living near Macon in central Georgia when he was licensed to preach in 1830. Two years later, the Georgia Baptist Association made him a missionary to Burke County near Augusta on the South Carolina border. [10] By 1837, he was working for the Sunbury Baptist Association and living in Darien. [11] Most of his converts there were Black. [12]
He made an exploratory trip down the coast into north Florida in the spring of 1837 where he held a three-day protracted meeting. In the summer, he returned to the area where he held a five-day meeting in Jacksonville. After people asked him to return, [13] he moved to Fernandina’s Nassau County in 1838. At the time the county seat was at the Court House Ditch on Waterman’s Grant. [14]
McDonald’s primary purpose was holding meetings where he converted attendees. If enough affiliated, he found some local person to run the congregation, while he went elsewhere. He did return on a circuit a preach at each group. [15] By 1839, he had organized 17 congregations, and was ministering to seven. [16]
In 1840, Jacksonville built a small church, [17] and, in June, McDonald moved from Nassau County to the town. The building was dedicated in September, with a gallery for slaves. [18]
His life became for secure in 1941, when he was hired by the American Baptist Home Missionary Society. [19] That year, he notified The Christian Index:
“In this beautiful river [St. Johns] opposite our town, I have never baptized but one white person, whilst thirty blacks have gone down into the water, and been buried with Christ by baptism into death.” [20]
In January 1842, Waterman transferred 250 acres to McDonald. In March, a neighbor deeded the adjoining 250 acres to him. [21] In May, the 44-year-old man married. [22] In August, the Seminole War, which had been raging since 1835, formally ended. [23]
McDonald’s wife, Theresa Amanda Pendarvis, was the descendant of the Joseph Pendarvis, who had gone to South Carolina from Barbados in 1672. [24] His son, John, recognized and freed the children of his slave mistress, Parthena. [25] Theresa’s father George was born in Dorchester, South Carolina, and was in Jacksonville by 1830. [26] One of her sisters was named Lavilla. [27]
Nothing is known about the wives of George’s father, William, or his grandfather, also William, the son of John. [28] PBS thought some of John’s descendants could have married white women, and within a few generations been considered white. [29] One assumes Theresa was deemed white.
McDonald’s security ended in 1845, when the Baptists split over slavery. He lost his position with the northern society, and returned to itinerant evangelism for the Southern Baptist Convention. [30]
Meantime, the congregation in Jacksonville sold its church building and erected a brick building on McDonald’s land in 1846. His deacon, Elias Gabriel Jaudon, purchased some adjacent land for a cemetery. [31]
The Southern Baptist Convention finances deteriorated and, in 1849, the 51-year-old began planning a move to Atlanta. [32] After weathering the war there, McDonald moved to Rome, Georgia, in 1869, where he died in April. [33]
Jaudon must have maintained the church during the periods McDonald was working as an evangelist. His immigrant ancestor, Daniel Jaudon, moved from the Bay of Biscay to the French Santee. [34] Sometime his grandson, Samuel Elias Jaudon, moved to the Black Swamp area near Beaufort. [35] There the family affiliated with the local Baptist church. [36]
Our Jaudon managed a plantation on Hilton Head for Mary Sarah Stoney Barksdale. This was probably after her husband died in 1832 and before she remarried in 1836. [37] Her grandfather, John Stoney, had migrated from Tipperary, Ireland, in 1774. [38] His son, her father James, married the daughter of a Baptist convert who lived in the Black Swamp area. [39]
Jaudon was able to marry in 1835, and, by 1840, was a planter in Beaufort. [40] He was in Jacksonville by the time McDonald held his first meeting. He and his wife were charter members, and must have been two of the few whites in the congregation. When he died in 1872, [41] he owned the Magnolia Plantation. [42]
End Notes
1. Johnson is discussed in the post for 12 February 2023.
2. T. Frederick Davis. History of Jacksonville, Florida and Vicinity, 1513 to 1924. Saint Augustine, Florida: The Record Company for The Florida Historical Society, 1925. 151.
3. Davis, 1925. 43.
4. Thomas Frederick Davis. History of Early Jacksonville. Jacksonville, Florida: The H. and W. B. Drew Company, 1911. 180.
5. John Hendricks. “Pioneers Who Lived in the Yulee Area Two Hundred Years Ago.” The Yulee News, 16 June 2022. 2. Not much more is known about them except Waterman named one of his sons Lewis Pinkston. [43]
6. Davis, 1925. 43.
7. Darien, Georgia, is mentioned in the posts for 2 October 2018 on Lydia Parrish and for 3 February 2019 on Robert Winslow Gordon. Gordon collected four versions of “Come by Here” near Darien in 1926.
8. “James McDonald.” Florida Baptist History website.
9. James C. Bryant. “James McDonald: Missionary to East Florida.” Florida Baptist Historical Society meeting, Deland, Florida, 5 May 1984. Republished on the society’s website. 9.
10. Bryant. 9.
11. “James McDonald.”
12. Bryant. 3.
13. Bryant. 4.
14. Bryant. 5. “So stagnant did business become between 1835 and 1840 that the county seat was removed from Fernandina to a community known as Court House Ditch at Waterman’s Grant, between King’s Ferry and Fernandina.” [44]
15. Bryant. 6.
16. “James McDonald.”
17. Davis, 1911. 86.
18. Bryant. 11.
19. “James McDonald.”
20. The Christian Index, 24 September 1841. 618. Quoted by Bryant. 12.
21. Davis, 1925. 43. Davis used the word “deeded.” This suggests McDonald may not have bought the land, as it seems hard to believe he would have accumulated any capital.
22. Bryant 17, note 18.
23. “Seminole Wars.” Wikipedia website, accessed 26 February 2023.
24. Agnes Leland Baldwin. First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670–1700. Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1985. 182.
25. Jim Latrip. “Pendarvis.” Gen website. The connection was made by Theresa’s daughter who knew the names of George, William, and William. Randy Floyd found the reference in a letter of James Barnwell Hayward. Hayward then tied the elder William to Joseph. [45] Hayward elided John’s children in his published genealogy of the family. [46]
26. Fred. “wilfredleblanc -- Cavaliers and Pioneers.” Roots Web website, last updated 9 May 2019. Page for “George Pendarvis.” Dorchester is discussed in the post for 12 March 2023.
27. George Pendarvis. Will, 28 October 1870. Transcribed by Jane Gibbs and posted on US Gen Web website. He called Theresa Tracy.
28. Latrip.
29. “Pendarvis.” Public Broadcasting System website.
30. Bryant. 13.
31. Davis, 1911. 87.
32. Bryant. 14-15.
33. Bryant. 15.
34. Robert E. H. Peeples and Sarah Nichols Pickney. “Jaudon of Carolina.” Huguenot Society of South Carolina, Transactions (89):123-139:1984. 123. Daniel probably immigrated after 1700, because he is not in Agnes Leland Baldwin’s list of seventeenth century settlers. [47] His son was born in 1715 in the French Santee. [48] The French Santee is mentioned in the post for 20 November 2022 on Hezekiah Maham.
35. “Samuel Elias Jaudon.” Gini website, 5 September 2017.
36. Peeples and Pickney.
37. “Calibogia (Lawton) Plantation.” The Heritage Library Foundation, Hilton Head, South Carolina, website.
38. Mags Gaulden. “John Stoney (abt. 1748 - 1821.” Wiki Tree website, 18 March 2014; last updated 20 February 2023.
39. Robert E. H. Peeples. Tales of Ante Bellum Island Families. Hilton Head, South Carolina: 1970. Part reprinted in “Gaillard Genealogy,” Square Space website.
40. Peeples and Pickney.
41. “Elias Gabriel Jaudon, Jr.” Gini website, 8 February 2023.
42. Peeples and Pickney.
43. Sally Spencer (Watkins) Lanoza. “Adin Eleazer Waterman.” Geni website, 8 November 2022. She does not have surnames for Waterman’s wife or mother.
44. “American Proprietors, 1818-1860.” Amelia Island Genealogical Society website.
45. Cited by Fred. Page for “Sarah Rebecca McDonald.”
46. James Barnwell Hayward. Pendarvis-Bedon Family. Atlanta, Georgia: Foote and Davies, 1905. 45.
47. Baldwin.
48. Edward Leo Neary. “Elias Timothy Jaudon.” Geni website, 14 July 2021.
Sunday, February 19, 2023
Jacksonville in the Civil War
Topic: Origins - Early Versions
James Weldon Johnson described ring shouts he saw in Florida, in the 1880s. As mentioned in the post for 12 February 2022, he generalized his experience to fit everything he read later. That was necessary when he was discussing ring shouts in the introduction to his collection of spirituals.
However, it makes it difficult to know what existed in Fernandina and Jacksonville where he spent time as a boy. As should be clear to anyone who has read many of these posts, Black experiences differed by location. This would especially be true of Florida where Spain controlled territory until 1821. [1] Spain imported its slaves from central Africa, rather than west Africa, and many were baptized in the Roman Catholic church. [2]
Ring shouts may not have existed in northeastern Florida under the Spanish, but they were there, in a modified form, in 1871. When Harriet Beecher Stowe visited Jacksonville that year, she asked to “visit the meetings of the coloured people.” She found it “quite easy to do” because “there were two very large, active prayer meetings, the one Baptist and the other Methodist.” The Presbyterian [3] did not say which she visited. [4]
Whatever slave communities existed after the United States took control were disrupted by the Civil War. When hostilities broke out, local white men were sent to fight in Tennessee and Virginia. Union forces from Port Royal, South Carolina, [5] took advantage of the vacuum on 4 March 1862 and seized control of Fernandina’s Amelia Island. [6] The ocean port on the Saint Mary’s River, which flows south from Georgia, was used a “base of operations” until the end of war. [7]
Jacksonville was an inland port on the Saint John’s River, which flows north, parallel to the coast, for more than 300 miles. When Confederate sympathizers heard news of Fernandina, they fled west. [10]
The United States Navy made its first foray into Jacksonville on 11 March 1861. Confederate troops responded by burning all but one lumber mill. Then, a mob of “refugees from Fernandina and Jacksonville” set fire to more buildings. [11] The navy stayed until 1 April. [12] The loyal citizens, who had stayed in March, moved to Fernandina with the troops. [13]
The next expedition to Jacksonville occurred after Confederates built fortifications south of the city. The northern troops from Hilton Head found the town to be “nearly deserted” in October 1862. [14] One soldier noted “Grass and weeds grow rank and tall in the principal streets,” while “about the streets you see darkies, a few women, and a very few men.” [15] They took the slaves back with them. [16]
The Army hierarchy was hesitant to enlist Black soldiers. The first tentative experiments were at Port Royal, where Thomas Wentworth Higginson was named commander of the First South Carolina Infantry regiment in November 1862. [17] He noted that plantation owners had taken their house slaves with them when they fled Saint Helena Island. The field hands were “very black.” [18]
He also observed that the slaves who had come back from the October expedition to Jacksonville were “much lighter in complexion & decidedly more intelligent.” [19] When they proved they could master the drills, he sent recruiters to Fernandina and Saint Augustine in December 1862. They filled the regiment. [20]
The First South Carolina saw its first action in January 1863 when it sailed to Fernandina, then went up the Saint Mary’s river into Georgia. [21] Their success prompted James Montgomery to organize the Second South Carolina Infantry in Beaufort. [22]
Higginson’s troops were part of the longest occupation of Jacksonville, which began in March 1863. [23] The general overseeing operations from Hilton Head said “the negroes are collecting at Jacksonville from all quarters.” [24]
The troops spent time building forts. Their camp was in pine woods on an island west of Jacksonville near a brick church [25] that was built before the war by Baptists. [26] One imagines the men recreated the camp life they had had in South Carolina, which included frequent ring shouts. Although a contingent was left with the fortifications, most returned to South Carolina at the end of March to support “operations against Charleston and Savannah.” [27]
Once the First South Carolina Infantry had proven the value of Black troops, the Army organized more companies with recruits from the north. [28] When Union troops returned to Jacksonville in January 1864, seven of the fifteen infantry regiments were Black. They came from Massachusetts (2), North Carolina (1), and South Carolina (4). Higginson’s First South Carolina was not included, but Montgomery’s Second was. [29]
The main purpose was to support the siege of Charleston by stopping the flow of food from central Florida. [30] The army was routed when it moved inland. [31] They began leaving in April, and by May most of the “2,500 or 3,000 men” left were Blacks. [32] They left in July. [33] While Confederates rightly boasted of their victory, [34] commanders in Washington were moving troops away from peripheral areas to mount the attack in Virginia [35] that resulted in Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865.
At war’s end, the Army’s primary purpose was protecting federal buildings and supplies. [36] The Seventh Infantry of the regular army was assigned to Florida in May. [37] Otherwise, the military began mustering out volunteer units. It began with the expensive calvary in May 1865. [38] The Black regiments from the North left Florida in December. [39]
Congress was slower to respond to post-War needs. It established the Freedmen’s Bureau on 3 March 1865, but no one was sent to Florida until 1 September. [40] By then the planters were reestablishing their power. The legislature they elected passed its first laws controlling African Americans in October. [41]
Former slaves flocked to cities where there still were soldiers. Thomas Osborn, head of the Bureau, discontinued their rations in Fernandina and Jacksonville in November. He wanted them working on plantations, not living off the government. [42] His requests for continued military support were ignored by the War Department. [43]
Finally, in February 1866, nearly a year after Appomattox, Osborn was able to open an office in Jacksonville. [44]
A year later, on 15 March 1867, Congress put the South under martial law. [45] There must have been some troops in Jacksonville, [46] because the Freedmen’s Bureau moved its headquarters there in May. [47]
By 1868, Southern states had Republican governments, and Congress was preparing to declare victory. Florida elected Harrison Reed in July, and on the Fourth John Sprague, head of the Bureau, surrendered his authority to Reed. Reed’s request to have troops remain was refused. [48]
In October 1868, the head of the Army’s Department of the East moved troops to protect rail centers. Jacksonville had two companies of the Seventh Infantry, with men going to Fernandina as needed. [49] This was the regular army, and they were mainly white men from outside the South.
In December, Congress reduced the Freedman’s Bureau’s functions to education, and eliminated most of its employees. In February, the Seventh Infantry was moved to Montana [50] to protect miners against attacks by Native Americans. [51] Before they left, the soldiers opened fire on rioting Blacks in Jacksonville. [52] Sprague complained anarchy had returned. [53]
Graphics
Karl Musser. “St. Marys River Watershed.” Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 15 March 2007.
End Notes
1. Bland and Associates, Inc. “Historic Context and References.” Appendix A to The Historic Properties Resurvey, City of Fernandina Beach, Nassau County, Florida. 2007. 12.
2. Hugh Thomas. The Slave Trade. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. 397-398.
Michael A. Gomez. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 145-146.
3. John Gatta. “The Anglican Aspect of Harriet Beecher Stowe.” The New England Quarterly 73(3):412-433:September 2000. 312.
4. Stowe’s version is discussed in the post for 30 September 2018, and reprinted in “Ring Shouts: Historic Descriptions and Contemporary Examples.” The latter is available on the Academia.edu website.
5. Union activities in Port Royal Sound are discussed in the post for 20 September 2018.
6. Bland. 24.
7. Bland. 25.
8. United States Census. 1880. Population, By Race, Sex, and Nativity. Table V. “Population, by Race and by Counties: 1880, 1870, 1860.” 384.
9. Bland. 32.
10. Thomas Frederick Davis. History of Early Jacksonville. Jacksonville, Florida: The H. and W. B. Drew Company, 1911. 160.
11. Davis. 161.
12. Davis. 167.
13. Davis. 169.
14. Davis. 174.
15. Valentine Chamberlain. “A Letter of Captain V. Chamberlain, 7th Connecticut Volunteers.” Florida Historical Quarterly 15:93:October 1935. Quoted by Samuel Proctor. “Jacksonville During the Civil War.” Florida Historical Quarterly 41(4):343-355:1962. 351.
16. Davis. 174.
17. William A. Dobak. Freedom by the Sword: The U. S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867. Washington DC: United States Army, Center of Military History, 2011. 34-35.
18. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Quoted by Dobak. 35. His source is: The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, edited by Christopher Looby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Higginson is discussed in the post for 20 September 2018, which is reprinted in “Ring Shouts: Historic Descriptions and Contemporary Examples.”
19. Higginson. Quoted by Dobak. 36. Dobak suggests Higginson’s views were typical of the time, when whites thought people who were more like them, i.e., with lighter skins, were better than those that differed. This became a self-fulfilling prophecy when lighter skinned slaves were given more access to whites, and thus were more socialized into western ways, than those who were left alone because they had darker skins.
20. Dobak. 36.
21. Dobak. 39.
22. Dobak. 40.
23. Davis. 175.
24. Davis. 176.
25. Proctor. 352.
26. “Bethel Church (Jacksonville, Florida).” Wikipedia website, accessed 11 February 2023.
27. Davis. 178.
28. Dobak. 55. Joshua Rieger noted that families from areas controlled by the Union continued to move into the center of the state, and that “ planters’ families from across the South migrated to Middle Florida and southwest Georgia to protect their property interests in slaves.” [54] This would have increased the productive capacity of the area.
29. Dobak. 64.
30. Dubak. 61.
31. Davis. 186.
32. Davis. 189.
33. Davis. 191.
34. During Reconstruction, Joe Richardson said: “Floridians boasted that theirs was the only capital east of the Mississippi not captured during the war. The only attempt to take Tallahassee had been defeated in large part by a group of young boys and old men in March 1865. Though the Confederacy had fallen, the people did not feel that Florida had been conquered and they were inclined to be defiant and belligerent.” [55]
35. Dubak. 70.
36. Dubak. 459.
37. Steve A. Hawks. “7th United States Infantry Regiment.” Civil War in the East website, 2023. He has one sentence on its role in Reconstruction.
38. Dubak. 471.
39. Dubak. 473.
40. Reginald Washington. “Introduction” to Records of the Assistant Commissioner and subordinate field offices for the state of Florida, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1872. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002. 1.
41. Joe M. Richardson. “Florida Black Codes.” Florida Historical Quarterly 47(4):365-379:1968.
42. Joshua Rieger. “Florida Freedmen’s Bureau during Reconstruction, 1865-1872.” University of Florida senior paper, 8 April 2015. 14.
43. Rieger. 9.
44. Rieger. 19.
45. Merlin G. Cox. “Military Reconstruction in Florida.” Florida Historical Quarterly 46(3):219-233:1967. 219.
46. Most of the published research on Reconstruction in Florida deals with politics and vigilante groups in the central part of state. Little exists on the military. Even descriptions of the Seventh Infantry are sparse for the period between Chancellorsville and Montana.
47. Washington. 1.
48. Ralph L. Peek. “Aftermath of Military Reconstruction, 1868-1869.” Florida Historical Quarterly 43(2):123-141:1964. 123.
49. Peek. 133. The commander was George Meade.
50. Peek. 138.
51. “Fort Shaw.” Wikipedia website, accessed 17 February 2023.
52. Peek. 138.
53. Peek. 140.
54. Rieger. His source was Jerrell H. Shofner. Nor Is It Over Yet. Gainesville, University Presses of Florida, 1974. 3.
55. Richardson. 371.
Sunday, February 12, 2023
James Weldon Johnson - Ring Shout
Topic: Origins - Ring Shout
I just came across another description of a ring shout. This one was written by James Weldon Johnson in 1925, and reprinted with slight changes in 1933.
The preface to his Book of Spirituals drew upon both his boyhood experiences in a suburb of Jacksonville, Florida, and later research. [1] The hard part is isolating those sections which represent his first-hand experience in the 1880s in LaVilla.
In his 1933 autobiography, [2] he mentioned three churches: one he attended that was a mile from his home, one a block away from his house, and the ones his father served as a minister.
As a child, he walked two blocks to his maternal grandmother’s house. In his autobiography he mentioned the perils a small boy faced who knew things more by hearsay, than experience. He said he did not cross the street until he passed the house of Mr. Cole who “everybody said was crazy.” [3]
Next he passed the houses of two older women. He remembered: “we were a little bit afraid of Aunt Venie, too; for she was said to have fits.” [4] He added she was “the champion of all ‘ring shouters’ at the “colored church on the corner.” [5]
He gives no evidence he ever went into the church. Saint Paul was an African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), founded in 1869. [6] The AME denomination was introduced into Jacksonville by Charles Pearce in 1866, with the permission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. [7]
Johnson’s grandmother joined Mount Zion Methodist Church. [8] It was organized by the Northern Methodist Episcopal Church in 1864. The Methodists had split over slavery in 1844. [9] The Southern branch was the one that proselytized slaves in South Carolina and Georgia, then shucked them off into the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in 1870. [10]
The northern church sent its first missionary south to Beaufort. South Carolina, in 1862. [11] During the war, the hierarchy began recruiting “disabled clergy” to send to the “warmer climates” to serve soldiers. Sanford Swain went to Jacksonville in 1864 [12] where he began with Black soldiers. [13] He organized Mount Zion in May of 1866 with both Black and white members. [14]
The difference between Saint Paul’s and Mount Zion was more than the difference between the Northern and Southern branches of the Methodist Church. Neither of Johnson’s parents were ever slaves on plantations in this country. His mother was raised in the Bahamas after England abolished slavery in 1833. [15] Both her father and her grandfather were white. [16]
His father, James Johnson, was born free in Richmond, Virginia, and ran away to New York City when he was a teen. [17] Less information exists about him. Johnson admits he never heard his father “speak of his childhood and what lay back and beyond it.” [18] He learned about his father’s religious conversion from his maternal grandmother. [19]
The elder Johnson was in his fifties when he became a Baptist minister. His first assignment was in Fernandina, an old settlement thirty miles northeast of Jacksonville. [20] Johnson remembered he and his brother went to visit him for “a few days at a time” [21] and that the church was “large.” [22]
By 1886, his father had found a pulpit in Jacksonville, and returned home. Johnson described it as “little” [23]. In fact, it had some prestige in LaVilla. Shiloh Baptist was built in 1875 by several prominent Blacks. [24] When Johnson’s father was an alderman in 1872, the tax collector for the town was Samuel Spearing. [25] Spearing supervised the Sunday School. [26]
Later, Johnson’s brother, Rosamond, was the choir director and organist for Bethel Baptist church. [27]
I am not sure that Johnson saw a ring shout when he was young, despite asserting in Spirituals that he remembered “remember seeing this dance many times when I was a boy.” [28] His description matches that of many others, and include details someone who did not participate would not notice.
In his autobiography, he says something different. There he wrote:
“When there was a ‘ring shout’ the weird music and the sound of thudding feet set the silences of the night vibrating and throbbing with a vague terror. Many a time I woke suddenly and lay a long while strangely troubled by these sounds.” [29]
What is true in this statement is his reaction to the music. It may not have been a “ring shout” but an emotional religious service. He may not have known the difference as a child. The only experience he mentions is a revival he attended when he was nine years old. He contrasted the “decorum of the regular Sunday services” with “overlaid emotions” that came “to the surface.” [30]
I trust him on music because it was something he was attuned to as a child. His mother had a good voice, [31] and both he and Rosamund took piano lessons. [32] Drums were the one instrument he mentioned several times. They may be all he recalled about his visit to the Bahamas with his mother when he was four years old. [33]
Later, he said he wanted to be a drummer in a brass band, and recalled the skills of Martin who “could beat a continuous and unbroken roll on his muffled drum all the way from the church to the cemetery.” He added “I lost my ambition to be a drummer, but drums have never lost their tumultuous effect on me.” [34]
The question is why would Johnson write beyond his experience. By 1925, he had become politically active with the NAACP, while his brother wrote popular music. Rosamund created the piano arrangements for the Spirituals collection. No doubt the two compared notes when James was writing the “Preface” where he took on the persona of an expert. He broaches the ring shouts at the end of his discussion to distinguish them from spirituals.
“This term ‘shout songs’ has no reference to the loud, jubilant Spirituals, which are often so termed by writers on Negro music; it has reference to the songs or, better, the chants used to accompany the ‘ring shout’.” [35]
This led to a description of ring shouts. In his autobiography, he introduces part of his 1925 descriptions to explain the word “shout” after he said Aunt Vinnie was a “shouter.” Again, he may have felt a need to define a term for his less-informed readers.
If Johnson did see ring shouts when he was young, it was in one of the churches were his father was pastor. Rosamond was more likely to have seen them after James left for school in Atlanta in 1887.
End Notes
1. James Weldon Johnson. The Book of American Negro Spirituals. New York: The Viking Press, 1925.
2. James Weldon Johnson. Along This Way. New York: The Viking Press, 1933. 129–604 in James Weldon Johnson, edited by William L. Andrews. New York: Library Classics of the United States, 2004.
3. Johnson, autobiography. 157.
4. Johnson, autobiography. 157.
5. Johnson, autobiography. 158.
6. Teresa Stepzinski. “St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church celebrates 150 years of serving God and Jacksonville.” Jacksonville website, 15 September 2019.
7. John R. Scott. “Introduction of African Methodism into East Florida.” 168-174 in Proceedings of the Quatro-Centennial Conference of the African M. E. Church of South Carolina, edited by Benjamin W. Arnett. Xenia, Ohio: Aldine Printing. House, 1890. 173.
8. Johnson, autobiography. 143. Mount Zion is now Ebenezer United Methodist Church.
9. John T. Foster Jr. and Sarah Whitmer Foster. “The Last Shall Be First: Northern Methodists in Reconstruction Jacksonville.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 70(3):265–280:January 1992. 269.
10. The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church is discussed in the post for 15 November 2020.
11. Foster. 269.
12. Foster. 268.
13. Foster. 270-271.
14. Foster. 272.
15. Johnson, autobiography. 135.
16. Johnson, autobiography. 136.
17. Johnson, autobiography. 137.
18. Johnson, autobiography. 137.
19. Johnson, autobiography. 163.
20. Johnson, autobiography. 190.
21. Johnson, autobiography. 193.
22. Johnson, autobiography. 190.
23. Johnson, autobiography. 198-199.
24. Patricia Drozd Kenney. “LaVilla, Florida, 1866-1887: Reconstruction Dreams and the Formation of a Black Community.” MA thesis. University of Florida, 1990. 57.
25. Kenney. 34.
26. Kenney. 57.
27. Charlie Patton. Jacksonville Native Left a Huge Legacy, But Nothing Marks It.” The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville, Florida, 15 June 2012. He said Johnson was the organist in the 1890s.
28. Johnson, Spirituals. 33.
29. Johnson, autobiography. 158.
30. Johnson, autobiography. 161.
31. Johnson, autobiography. 137.
32. Johnson, autobiography. 147.
33. Johnson, autobiography. 179.
34. Johnson, autobiography. 197.
35. Johnson, Spirituals. 33. Rosamond added to the confusion. His version of “Dry Bones” was advertised as a shout song in 1938. [36]
36. J. Rosamond Johnson. “Dry Bones: Descriptive, Characteristic Shout Song.” New York: Handy Brothers, 1938.
Sunday, February 5, 2023
Walter Anderson - Come By Here (Part 2)
Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Continued from previous post dated 29 January 2023
Notes on Performance
Cover: “Nobody Knows.” Linoleum cut on tanwove paper [1] of Negro head by William Smith.
Color Scheme: The cover uses dark brown ink on beige stock. Inside, the pages employ brown ink on beige paper.
Reissue as 50 Negro Folk Songs: Same cover design, but with a light brown cover and cream pages. The version of “Come by Here” is the one used in Max Exner’s The Bridge of Song. It used the plate made by Jane Keen for Indianola Sings with a revised title and no reference to Angola.
Reissue as 56 Negro Folk Songs: Same cover design, but with a goldenrod cover and white pages. The plate for “Kum Ba Yah” is the one from that period.
Notes on Audience
The songbook Look Away seems to have had wide distribution: several libraries have recorded owning copies with WorldCat. The publication dates are contradictory because Lynn Rohrbough, the owner of the company that issued Look Away, was not consistent in how he labeled his songbooks.
As mentioned in the post for 18 July 2021, Rohrbough or Walter Anderson, the editor of Look Away, may have sent copies to civil rights groups in Alabama in 1963. Carlotta Scott King had been a student of Anderson’s at Antioch College, [2] and contributed a song to the 1963 revision. [3]
Anderson himself apparently carried copies to distribute. In 1980, he gave a copy to John Paul II when he was invited to meet him at a United Nations conference held at the pope’s summer palace. John Paul responded: “I love spirituals. I like to sing them.” [4]
The anthology seems to have encouraged others to submit collections of spirituals to Rohrbough. In 1961, CRS published Great Day. The editor, Joseph Jones, was the son of a Black Presbyterian pastor who organized Sunday Schools in the south for the denomination. He “frequently sang and led singing on his travels.” [5] The artwork for Great Day was done by B. D. Roberts, the principal of a Black elementary school in Charlotte, North Carolina. [6]
The 1963 revision of Look Away had Jones’ version of “Rock My Soul.” It was illustrated with Roberts’ illustration for “Great Day.” [7] Jones’ page for “Kum Ba Yah” had the drawing of a man sitting on the ground with a mule by Roberts. [8]
Notes on Performers
Walter Franklin Anderson was born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1915 to children of slaves. His mother’s family had been owned by an Irishman near Asheville, North Carolina, who fathered Anderson’s grandmother. [10] His father was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to slaves who had been purchased by Swedes. [11]
James Rosemond Anderson could read music and play piano. [12] He sent all nine of his children to music classes. [13] Leila Henrietta Weaver had attended Berea College for one year before Kentucky passed a law that prevented African Americans from sharing classes with whites. [14] She made sure all the children could go to college. Most went to Hampton Institute in Virginia. One boy attended Wilberforce in Xenia, Ohio. [15]
Walter studied piano and organ at Oberlin College. He spent his summers working at a summer residential camp run [16] by Karamu House, a Cleveland community center modeled on settlement houses. [17]
His first teaching job, after graduation, was at Wilberforce where he led a chorus that emphasized “gospel music, spirituals, and related sorts of ethnic music.” [18] The Black college founded by Methodists was in the throes of reorganization, [19] and Anderson left after a year. [20]
In 1938, Anderson embarked on a career as a concert pianist. [21] After a year on the road, he accepted a position at Kentucky State College. [22] This time he had to direct the band [23] and a jazz orchestra. [24] During February, he was able to book concerts. [25] He also continued to work at the Karamu camp in summers. [26] It hired him full-time in 1942. [27]
While he was working in Cleveland, he took classes at the Cleveland Institute of Music. [28] A piece he wrote for his composition class, “Variations on the Negro Spiritual, Lord, Lord, Lord,” was played by the Cleveland Symphony in 1946. [29] The arrangement of “Lord, Lord, Lord” in Look Away must have been based on that work.
In 1946, he found a home as chairman of the Antioch College music department. He was then thirty years old. [30] In addition to teaching, he continued to play concerts, and edited the songbooks issued by Lynn Rohrbough. His next projects are discussed in the post for 4 June 2023.
The names listed on the Advisory Editorial Committee [31] suggest he asked for help from people he already knew. Clarice Jones Michaels had been his department chairman at Kentucky State, [32] and Harry Baker later held that position. [33] Anderson’s brother continued to live near Wilberforce, [34] and that probably is how Anna Terry became involved.
Other members of the committee were on the faculties at Southern University, [35] University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, [36] the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, [37] and Clark, [38] Howard, [39] Spellman, [40] Morgan State, [41] and North Carolina colleges. [42] Anderson may have met people when he touring or at academic meetings.
Anderson was responsible for the aesthetic design of Look Away. Karamu House had become an arts center. The man whose artwork is on the cover, William Elijah Smith, moved from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Cleveland in 1927 where he was taken in by the center’s owners, Russell and Rowena Jelliffe. His training in the 1930s included classes at the John Huntington Polytechnic Institute. During the 1950s he ran a gallery in Los Angeles devoted to art by African Americans. He may have done the print used by Anderson for the WPA in the Depression. [43]
Rohrbough obviously had stayed in contact with Marion Downs and Olive Williams, and probably had met Welch at sometime when she was in Ohio. [44] He, or Anderson, may have known Thomas Harrison who ran a private music school in Tallahassee, Florida. [45]. I could not find any information on line about E. Anderson of Langston, Oklahoma, [46] or Fred Hall of Montgomery, Alabama.
One of the most famous members of the committee was Charles Harris. He had accompanied the concert tenor Roland Hayes. [47] The other noted contributor was Bayard Rustin. He then was with the Fellowship for Reconciliation, and later helped Martin Luther King organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. [48] FOR was the organization that sponsored the songbook for Conscientious Objectors edited by Olcutt Sanders.
Sanders’ role may have been a silent one. As mentioned in the post for 22 January 2023, the 1940s songbook was the first to include a number of spirituals. All ten he selected were in Look Away. In 1963, was hired to direct Karamu House. [49]
Availability
Songbook: Look Away: 50 Negro Folk Songs, edited by Walter F. Anderson. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service. Undated, but before Olive Williams moved from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Baltimore, Maryland in the mid-1950s. [50] Does not contain “Kumbaya.”
Songbook: “Come By Here (Kum Ba Yah).” 27 in Look Away: 50 Negro Folk Songs, edited by Walter F. Anderson. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service. Undated revision; dated to late 1957 or early 1958 by the plate.
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.” 27 in in Look Away: 56 Negro Folk Songs, edited by Walter F. Anderson. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1963.
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.” 13 in J. T. Jones. Great Day: Negro Spirituals as Sung and Directed by J. T. Jones. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1961.
Songbook: Rosa Page Welch. Fifteen Negro Spirituals. Delaware, Ohio: Informal Music Service, 1960s. It came up in my search for “Come by Here,” but the WorldCat entry did not provide any details to support the selection. It probably was “Kum Ba Yah.”
Album: Rosa Page Welch. “Kum Bah Yah.” Sings Of God’s World And “His Wondrous Love. MRC LP 11-28. The liner notes mention a 1963 event. [Discogs entry.]
End Notes
1. “William E. Smith (1913 - 1997 ) Nobody Knows.” Item offered by Swann Auction Galleries, New York, 7 October 2008. Invaluable website.
2. Joan Horn. Playing on All the Keys: The Life of Walter F. Anderson. Yellow Springs, Ohio: Yellow Springs Historical Society, 2007. 178-180.
3. “Walk Together Children” as sung by Carlotta Scott King. 39 in Look Away, 1963.
4. Horn. 178.
5. LindaJo J. McKim. The Presbyterian Hymnal Companion. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993. 125.
6. Roberts was principal of the Myers Street School in Durham. [51] “It was the largest elementary school in North Carolina for black children” in the “late 1940s.” [52]
7. Jones. 1.
8. Jones. 13.
9. John Major ran MRC Records from the 1960s through the 1980s. [53]
10. Horn. 2.
11. Horn. 7.
12. Horn. 24.
13. Horn. 10.
14. Horn. 3.
15. Horn. 17.
16. Horn. 39.
17. “Karamu House.” Wikipedia website, accessed 4 January 2023.
18. Horn. 49.
19. Horn. 50-52.
20. Horn. 54.
21. Horn. 53.
22. Horn. 59.
23. Horn. 60.
24. Horn. 61.
25. Horn. 59.
26. Horn. 40.
27. Horn. 72.
28. Horn. 80.
29. Horn. 87.
30. Horn. 96.
31. Look Away, early 1950s. 2.
32. Horn. 60.
33. Thorobred, Kentucky State College yearbook, 1969, dedicated to Baker.
34. Horn. 17.
35. DeBose Tourgee should be Albion Tourgee DeBose. He taught at Howard, Talladega College, and Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, according to the Debose Foundation website.
36. Ariel M. Lovelace directed the Vesper Choir, according to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff website.
37. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga awards the Edmonia J. Simmons Endowed Scholarship in Music according to its website.
38. J. DeKoven Killingsworth was chairman of the music department at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia. [54]
39. Walter Lawson was dean of Howard’s College of Fine Arts. “He developed the art of choral singing among Negroes to perhaps its highest point. He is credited with demonstrating that the Negro choir, while retaining its folk music, also could interpret the choral literature of the world.” [55]
40. Kemper Harrold was a violinist [56] and head of the music department at Spellman in Atlanta. [57]
41. Orville Moseley was head of the music department at Southern University in the 1940s [58] and directed the choir at Morgan State in the 1950s. [59] Morgan State is in Baltimore where Williams later had close relations with it.
42. Thomas Dorsey was chairman of the music department at North Carolina College in Durham. [60]
43. “William E. Smith (Artist).” Wikipedia website, accessed 4 January 2023.
44. Welch was often in Ohio, usually as a soloist for a Disciples of Christ or Christian Church gathering. Irma Voight said she was at Ohio University for its 1943 Brotherhood Week, in part because she taught spirituals to youth groups. [61]
45. “Students holding recital at the St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church in Tallahassee.” Florida Memory website.
46. He probably was associated with Langston University, but could I not confirm this.
47. “Harris Family Papers.” Durham County Library website, Durham, North Carolina.
48. Bayard Rustin. Wikipedia website, accessed 10 January 2023.
49. Sanders is discussed in the post for 13 February 2022.
50. Williams is discussed in the post for 22 January 2023.
51. Jones. 32.
52. Charlotte Mecklenburg Story website.
53. “MRC (2).” Discogs website.
54. “The Renowned Dr. J. DeKoven Killingsworth, conducting the Clark College Philharmonic Society.” National Museum of African American History and Culture website.
55. Death Notice for Warner Lawson, Sr. The Pittsburgh Courier, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 19 June 1971. 6. Item posted by internet judith_lawson on 5 June 2015.
56. Associated Negro Press. “Musicians Open Meet At Hampton Institute.” Published by Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 29 August 1931.
57. Item. Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 7 August 1943.
58. Item. Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 10 February 1940.
59. Item. Baltimore Afro American Newspaper Archives website, 4 December 1951.
60. Johnny B. Hodge, Jr. A Biography of Phillmore Mallard Hall with Particular Emphasis on His Contribution to the Development of Black School Bands in North Carolina. PhD dissertation. American University, 1997. 155.
61. Irma Voight. “The Religious Foundations of Ohio University.” Ohio University website.
Sunday, January 29, 2023
Walter Anderson - Come By Here (Kum Ba Yah)
Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Lynn Rohrbough implied the interest in Black spirituals was increasing when he told Clare Lovejoy Lennon on 15 November 1956:
“Some years ago we put out this little Look Away and are considering a revision. Can you think of any songs from your home community that should be included?” [1]
That is a modest description for what must have been a major project. He listed twenty people on the Advisory Editorial Committee, including Marion Downes, [2] Rosa Page Welch, [3] and Olive Williams. [4] Many others taught music in Black colleges.
The editor, Walter Anderson, built on the Williams collection discussed in the post for 22 January 2023. The only songs he dropped from the main book were not religious: “Li’l Liza Jane” and “Mr. Banjo.”
Beyond that, all but six appeared in academic or popular collections edited by Rosamund Johnson, [5] Nathaniel Dett at Hampton Institute, [6] James Work at Fisk Institute, [7] Edward Boatner for the African American’s National Baptist Convention, [8] and Nicholas Ballanta on Saint Helena Island. South Carolina. [9]
One was Marion Downs’ arrangement of “A-men,” and two were arranged by Anderson. [10] Three were more popular: “Children, Go Where I send Thee” was related to “Green Grow the Rushes.” [11] “O Won’t You Sit Down” had been popularized by the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet Singers in 1937. [12] “I Want To Die Easy” was recorded by Josh White. [13]
In addition to spirituals, the collection included some game and work songs. Of the 45 spirituals, 31 already were in the CRS repertoire and used by editors of songbooks for Methodist [14] and Evangelical and Reformed churches, [15] the Young Women’s Christian Association, [16] the Camp Fire Girls, [17] 4-H, [18] and the American Camping Association. [19] Only two new ones were accepted between 1955 and 1957 by Methodists. [20] Two of those were CRS versions of existing Girl Scout songs. [21]
Rohrbough reissued the collection with the same subtitle, 50 Negro Folk Songs, but it included 56. In most cases, Anderson had printed one song to a page. The reissue, eliminated empty space and dropped the names of the Advisory Committee. [22]
Two songs were dropped: “I Want Two Wings” and “Won’t You Sit Down.” Six of the eight new songs were in existing folk song collections, although one, “He’Got the Whole World in His Hands” had been recorded by Marian Anderson in 1952. [23] A version by Laurie London [24] rose to second place on Billboard’s popular music chart in April of 1958. [25]
“Oh, My Lovin’ Brother” has the fragmentary quality of songs collected by Newman Ivey white. [26]
The eighth song was “Come by Here.” The plate no longer said it was from Angola, but did not yet have a replacement credit. Anderson’s selection of the song for this collection may have cemented its heritage as a spiritual for CRS.
One of the new songs, “I’m Gonna Sing,” had been used earlier. [27] Two, beside “Kumbaya” and “He’ Got the Whole World” were used by editors before 1960. [28] Three were ignored by the songbooks I’ve seen. [29]
In 1963, the collection was revised. This time the cover said it had 56 Negro Folk Songs, but, in fact, had 57: “Rocka My Soul” was added on the back cover. It came from another spiritual collection Rohrbough published in 1961 for Joseph Jones. [30]
The last edition swapped six songs, and all met the same criteria as those removed. The plate for “Kum Ba Yah” was the one then current that described it as a “Spiritual.”
Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line
Credits
None given
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: “Koom-bah-yah,” same as that published in Indianola Sings, which is reproduced in the post for 29 May 2022
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying; same verses and same order as those published in Indianola Sings
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; the melody is the same as Indianola Sings
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final “Lord”
Ending: none
(Continued in post dated 5 February 2023.)
End Notes
Unless otherwise noted, songbooks were published by Cooperative Recreation Service of Delaware, Ohio.
1. Lynn Rohrbough. Letter to Mrs. Claire Lennon, 15 November 1956. Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene of World Around Songs.
2. Marion Downes is discussed in the post for 22 January 2023.
3. Rosa Page Welch is discussed in the posts for 31 January 2022 and 5 February 2023.
4. Olive Williams is discussed in the post for 22 January 2023.
5. J. Rosamund Johnson. Utica Jubilee Singers Spirituals. Philadelphia: Oliver Ditson Company, 1930. This is mentioned in the post for 2 August 2021.
CRS cited J. Rosamond Johnson. Rolling along in Song. New York: The Viking Press, 1937.
6. R. Nathaniel Dett. Religious Folk-Songs of the Negro. Hampton, Virginia: The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, 1927.
CRS cited R. Nathaniel Dett. The Dett Collection of Negro Spirituals. Chicago: Hall and McCreary, 1936.
7. John W. Work. American Negro Songs. New York: Publishers, 1940. This is cited by CRS.
J. B. T. Marsh. The Story of the Jubilee Singers with Their Songs. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1875.
8. Edward Boatner. Spirituals Triumphant Old and New. Nashville, Tennessee: National Baptist Convention, Sunday School Publishing Board, 1927.
9. Nicholas George Julius Ballanta-(Taylor). Saint Helena Spirituals, for Penn Normal, Industrial and Agricultural School. New York: G. Schirmer, 1925.
10. “Lord, Lord, Lord” and “Sinner, You Know.” The first is discussed in the post for 5 February 2023.
11. “Children, Go Where I Send Thee.” Wikipedia website, accessed 4 January 2023.
12. Norfolk Jubilee Quartet Singers. “Sit Down, Sit Down, I Can’t Sit down.” Decca 62397. Recorded 15 July 1937. [31]
13. Joshua White. “Lord I Want To Die Easy.” Conqueror 8455. 24 November 1933. [Discogs entry.]
14. Joyful Singing, for The National Convocation of the Methodist Youth Fellowship. This is discussed in post for 20 February 2022.
Wisconsin Hymns and Folks Songs, order from Walter Eyster or Lowell Rekdal.
Sing It Again!, for Methodist Board of Education. This is discussed in the post for 9 February 2021.
World Fellowship through Song, edited by Eleanor Gough, E. O. Harbin, Ruth Carey, and F. A. Lindhorse for United Methodist Church, Clear Lake Recreation School in Des Moines, Iowa.
Melody in Michigan, for Detroit Area of the Methodist Youth Fellowship. This is discussed in the post for 20 February 2022.
Larry Eisenberg. Lift Every Voice. This is discussed in the post for 9 February 2020.
15. Songs of Many Nations, for Evangelical and Reformed Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1944. This is discussed in the post for 20 February 2022.
16. Sing Along the Way, edited by Marie Oliver for the YWCA’s Woman’s Press. Editions from 1942, 1951, and 1956. This is discussed in the post for 20 March 2022.
17. Joyful Singing, Campfire Girls Edition. Two undated editions are discussed in the post for 20 March 2022.
18. Music of One World, edited by Max V. Exner for Iowa Extension Music Office. This is discussed in the post for 18 December 2022.
19. A. C. A. Song Book, for American Camping Association, Chicago, Illinois. This is discussed in the post for 28 May 2023.
20. “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel” and “Standing in the Need of Prayer.”
21. “All Night, All Day” and “Certainly Lord” are in Mary A. Sanders. Sing High, Sing Low. New York: 1946. The songbook is discussed in the post for 4 December 2022.
22. Rohrbough made similar changes when he reissued Anderson’s African Song Sampler. This is discussed in the post for 15 January 2023.
23. Marian Anderson. “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands.” Marian Anderson Sings Eleven Great Spirituals. RCA Victor LRM 7006. 14 May 1952. [Discogs entry.] She performed it on a television special in 1953. [32]
24. Laurie London. “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands.” Eric Records AR 208. 1957. [Discogs entry.]
25. “Laurie London.” Discogs website.
26. Newman I. White. American Negro Folk Songs. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1928. Unlike the other academic collections, this contains no music. It does contain citations to other works which they do not. It is the best place to look if one want to see texts of spirituals before they are polished and standardized.
27. “I’m Gonna Sing.” 41 in Lift Every Voice, edited by Larry Eisenberg for Methodist Church, Inter-Division Committee on Music and Education. As mentioned in the post for 9 February 2020, Eisenberg left the church’s employment in 1952.
28. “Let Us Break Bread Together” and “Wade in the Water.”
The collections I consulted were:
1956. Music Makers, for Camp Fire Girls.
1956. Wesley Woods Sings, The Methodist Church, Erie Conference Board of Education, Meadville, Pennsylvania.
1957. Chansons de Notre Chalet, edited by Marion A. Roberts for Our Chalet, Adelboden, Switzerland. This is discussed in posts for 27 November 2022 and 4 December 2022.
1957. Sing Along, edited by Mary Wheeler, Lura Mohrbacher, and Augustus D. Zanzig for the National Board of the YWCA in New York. This is discussed in the post for 11 December 2022.
1957. The Bridge of Song, edited by Max V. Exner for the Iowa State College Extension Music Program. This is discussed in the post for 18 December 2022.
1958. Sing It Again, for The Methodist Church, General Board of Education.
1958. Lake Poinsett Fellowship Songs.
1958. Let’s All Sing, edited by Walter Anderson, Annabeth Brandle, Larry Eisenberg, and Anna Woolf for The American Camping Association. This is discussed in the post for 4 June 2023.
1958. Rejoice and Sing, for a group of Presbyterian churches. Dated by plate.
1959. Guiana Sings, edited by Frederick Hilborn Talbot for 4-H Clubs of British Guiana. This is discussed in the post for 7 August 2022.
1959. Cache of Songs for Alaska.
29. “Oh, My Lovin’ Brother,” “We Shall Walk through the Valley,” and “Rise Up, Shepherds.” The last is a Christmas song; many songbooks do not include seasonal music.
30. “Rocka My Soul.” 30 in Great Day: Negro Spirituals as Sung and Directed by J. T. Jones. Jones was with the United Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
31. Discography of American Historical Recordings on-line database. University of California, Santa Barbara website.
32. “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” Wikipedia website, accessed in 13 January 2023.
Sunday, January 22, 2023
Olive Williams - Negro Folk Songs
Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Lynn Rohrbough’s repertoire of spirituals may have begun with Olcutt Sanders. As mentioned in the post for 13 February 2022, Sanders edited a songbook for Conscientious Objectors sometime around 1942.
The Pocket Songster included ten. All but one were well-known from recordings by Jubilee Quartets, Marian Anderson, and Paul Robeson. [1] One carried a note that it came from a popular collection edited by Nathaniel Dett at the Hampton Institute. [2] Perhaps Rohrbough had a copy, but Sanders was just as likely. He had become interested in area of folklore while he was a student at the University of Texas in Austin.
One was an arrangement by Marion Downs. [3] The African American was a trained singer who gave concerts in Austin. Her husband was then president of the local Samuel Huston College. [4] The Black school was associated with the Methodist church. [5]
Once the spirituals were available from CRS, other editors selected them for their songbooks. In 1944, E. O. Harbin chose seven for a Methodist songster, and listed the title “Mary and Martha,” but did not provide a version. [6] Edward Schliming used seven for the Evangelical and Reformed Church, and added “I’ve Got Shoes.” [7] Marie Oliver picked six for the YWCA and added “Han’ Me Down.” [8]
Then, in 1945, Rohrbough published an extraordinary collection. It’s a bit difficult to know exactly what he was doing, from the copy I have. The first page says it was published in 1945 by Cooperative Recreation Service.
Negro Folk Songs introduced 14 spirituals, of which 12 were selected by editors of later songbooks. [12] It also included some children’s game songs.
During the rest of the 1940s and early 1950s, editors selected spirituals but added few. Then, in 1953, Larry Eisenberg contributed six new songs for Lift Every Voice. [A] Although three were familiar, [14] none were picked up by the songbooks I’ve examined. Some of the others, especially those with named authors, may not have been traditional. [15]
Notes on Performers
Marion Jackson was born in Arkansas in 1916, but raised in Baltimore, Maryland. She studied at Juilliard and earned a masters in music from Columbia. She continued performing after her husband, Karl Downs, died in 1948. She later made albums with an Austin company. She died in 1990. [16]
Olive J. Williams was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1906, and graduated from Howard. She then taught at several Black schools, including the Lincoln School and Dorchester Academy in Tennessee. She returned to Harrisburg in 1946, where she had a private studio in the YMCA building. In the mid-1950s, she was hired by the Baltimore schools, where she lived the rest of her life. She died in 1990, and her funeral was held in an Episcopalian church. [17]
Like Jackson, Williams studied at Juilliard and earned a music masters from Columbia. [18] The dates for neither woman have been given, and one wonders if they knew one another. They did not need to be in classes together. There must have been few female, African Americans who went to either school during the years of segregation. Alumnae and other groups may have provided links.
The unanswered question is how Williams heard about Cooperative Recreation Service.
Availability
Songbook: Negro Folk Songs. Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1945.
End Notes
Unless otherwise noted, the source for recording history is the Discography of American Historical Recordings on-line database. University of California, Santa Barbara website.
1. The spirituals included by Sanders are:
“Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit” - Paul Robeson (1925), Fisk University Jubilee Singers (1926)
“Go Down Moses” - Tuskegee Institute Singers (1914), Marian Anderson (1924, 1936), Tuskegee Institute Quartet (1926), Hampton Institute Quartet (1941)
“I Ain’t Gwine Study War” - Fisk University Jubilee Singers (1920)
“I Want To Be Ready” - Tuskegee Institute Singers (1916), Fisk University Jubilee Singers (1919, 1920), Tuskegee Institute Quartet (1926)
“O Nobody Knows” - Marian Anderson (1924), Paul Robeson (1926), Fisk University Jubilee Singers (1926), Tuskegee Institute Singers (1927), Hampton Institute Quartet (1941)
“Steal Away” - Tuskegee Institute Singers (1914), Fisk University Jubilee Singers (1915, 1926), Paul Robeson (1925), Tuskegee Institute Quartet (1927), Hampton Institute Quartet (1941)
“Swing Low Sweet Chariot” - Fisk University Jubilee Singers (1909, 1915, 1926), Fisk Quartette (1911), Tuskegee Institute Singers (1915), Paul Robeson (1925, 1933), Hampton Institute Quartet (1941)
“Jacob’s Ladder” and “Lord, I Want To Be a Christian” were recorded by the Bethel Jubilee Quartet for Homer Rodeheaver’s Rainbow Records in 1923. The first was called “Do You Think I’ll Make a Soldier?” They are discussed in the posts for 25 July 2021 and 22 August 2021.
“Let Us Cheer the Weary Traveler” was recorded by the Kentucky Jubilee Four (1937), the Memphis Pullman Porters Chorus (1930), the Heavenly Gospel Singers (1938), the Golden Gate Quartet (1938). By 1944, CRS was giving credit to R. Nathaniel Dett. Religious Folk Songs of the Negro. Hampton, Virginia: The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, 1927. 30.
2. “I Want To Be Ready.” R. Nathaniel Dett. The Dett Collection of Negro Spirituals. Chicago: Hall and McCreary Company, 1936. Volume 1.
3. “Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit.”
4. Philip J. Merrill. “Get On Board: The Life & Legacy of Marion Jackson Downs.” Old West Baltimore website, 27 June 2019. Her photograph appears with her biographical entry on the Discogs website.
5. “Huston–Tillotson University.” Wikipedia website, accessed 24 December 2022.
6. Joyful Singing. This songbook is discussed in the posts for 20 February 2022 and 27 February 2022. “Mary and Martha” was recorded by the Tuskegee Institute Singers in 1914.
7. Songs of Many Nations. 46. This songbook is discussed in the posts for 20 February 2022 and 27 February 2022. “Shoes” was recorded by Marian Anderson in 1924 and 1928 as “Heav’n, Heav’n.”
8. Sing Along the Way. 54-55. This songbook is discussed in the post for 13 March 2022. “Han’ Me Down” was credited to J. Rosamund Johnson. Rolling Along in Song. New York: The Viking Press, 1937. “Hand Me Down My Silver Trumpet” was recorded by the Bethel Jubilee Quartet in 1923.
9. “Roll, Jordan, Roll” was recorded by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers (1909, 1919, 1920) and the Tuskegee Institute Singers (1915).
10. “Lincoln Normal School.” Wikipedia website, accessed 24 December 2022.
11. Marengo County is discussed in the post for 24 January 2021.
12. The songs that were not selected by later editors were Williams’ arrangement of “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and Francis Ames’ “Good News in the Kingdom.” The latter is described as a West Indian spiritual. Ames wrote lyrics or songs published by C. C. Birchard. Some examples include “Columbus” in 1926, [19] “Sailor’s Home Song” in 1936, [20] and “The Patteran” in 1943. [21]
13. This songbook is discussed in the post for 9 February 2020.
14. “Good News” was recorded by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers (1911, 1916, 1920), the Tuskegee Institute Singers (1914), and the Tuskegee Institute Quartet (1926).
“I Know the Lord” was recorded by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers (1911, 1919, 1920, 1924) and was included Dett’s popular collection.
“I’m Gonna Sing” was included in Dett’s larger collection.
15. “Come Out the Wilderness” was from Helen and Larry Eisenberg. The Pleasure Chest. Nashville, Tennessee: Parthenon Press, 1949.
16. Merrill.
17. “Olive J. Williams dies; music teacher was 84.” The Baltimore Sun, 26 May 1990. 1. Copy posted on the web by rachaelkeriwilliams on 1 November 2019. It has her photograph.
18. Baltimore Sun.
19. Francis Ames. “Columbus.” In Senior Laurel Songs, edited by M. Teresa Armitage. Boston: C. C. Birchard Publishing Company, 1926. [WorldCat entry.] Her song books competed with those of the Concord Institute mentioned in the posts for 5 September 2021 and 5 December 2021. This one also has “Ain’t Gwine Study War No More.”
20. Francis Ames. “Sailor’s Home Song.” In Laurel Glee Book, edited by M. Teresa Armitage. Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1936. [WorldCat entry]. This also has “The Climate” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
21. Francis Ames. “The Patteran.” In Music Everywhere, edited by M. Teresa Armitage and Peter W. Dykema. Boston: C. C. Birchard and Company, 1943. [WorldCat entry.] This also has “Every time I feel the Spirit” and “Chick-a-hank-a.” The second is included in Look Away which is discussed in the post for 5 February 2023.