Albion High School Band - Kumbaya

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Lynn Rohrbough was expanding the reach of Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) in the middle 1950’s.  While he was experimenting with recordings [1] and his agents were contacting secular youth groups, [2] “Kumbaya” was spreading through the arteries of the Methodist Church.

It is difficult to document the flow because CRS songbooks were ephemeral, and few survive.  Of those, few have dates.  One exception is the one produced for Lake Poinsett in 1958, which was discussed in the post for 9 July 2023.

One never knows what is actually sung from a songbook, and within that group, what is remembered.  Asking people involves unraveling memories, which can be tricky.  One woman, who lived about an hour north of my hometown, said:

“I am thinking that I first sang ‘Kumbaya’ in the early 50’s at the Sunday evening Youth Fellowship meetings of the Dowling Methodist Church.” [3]

She graduated from high school in 1957, so the early 50’s may have been 1956 or 1957.  Since the song was not publicized by CRS until 1956, she could not have learned it earlier.

A high-school classmate of mine wrote:

“My memories seem to flow together, one setting mixes in with others, so don’t trust anything I say about this as being accurate, although I’ve tried to find some time markers.  I remember singing Kumbaya around the fire at Lake Louise.  I was only there one year, in the summer of 1960, and after high school I was never in a setting where it was sung, so I doubt that I have it mixed up with some other large gathering around a fire.  [Name] was an MYF leader when we were in 9th grade, and I have a picture of him leading us in the song.  He left to teach in another school system the next year, so it was no later than that, the 1958-1959 school year.  I don’t remember if it was he who introduced the song or someone else.  I don’t have a memory of singing it in Jr. High MYF, but that may be my faulty memory.” [4]

MYF was the Methodist Youth Fellowship.  As my friend recalled, members were sent to Lake Louise between their sophomore and junior years in high school.  It was similar to Epworth Forest’s Senior Institutes mentioned the post for 30 May 2021.  The only other person I talked to about the camp remembers just the baseball games.

I learned it on the band bus.  Like my friend, I cannot be precise.  I was in the senior band from  ninth grade, 1958, to 1962.  Each year we took two trips, one to band day at Michigan State University, and another to an away game.  My junior year the father of one of the football players paid for us to attend every away game.

Games were played at night in Michigan.  When we boarded the school buses for the return trip home, we were cold and tired.  After heat filled the bus, and some became drowsy, we began singing slow songs like “Kumbaya” and “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.”  We could not have sung the latter until 1961, the fall of our senior year, because it only became popular in the fall of 1961. [5]

I do not recall if we were singing my freshman year, but I know it was an established tradition by my junior year, the fall of 1960.  I remember I sat next to a friend that year who wanted to talk, and I was a bit annoyed because I could npt join the singing.  I know it was that year because I was a majorette and he was the drum major.  He did not return the next year, and someone else was the drum major.

I mention these trivial details because they are the sort of secondary evidence individuals marshal when they are trying to reconstruct their memories of past events.

Based on that, I assume we were singing by my sophomore year.  I sent emails to some of my classmates on the bus.  Only one responded, and she did not recall singing.  She was Black, and her comment revealed another aspect of the sociology of our high-school class.

There were two buses, and people wanted to get on the one with one’s friends or, perhaps more accurately, the ones one wanted to be associated with.  Her comment suggests the African Americans in the band deliberately chose the bus that did not have the “cool white kids.”  It may have been self-segregation or simple logistics.  If the one group took many of the seats on the one bus, that left the other available for them.

If the singing was not initiated by the Black members of the band, then, I thought, it had to be someone who had gone to camp or was in a church group.  Our high school was small, and I knew the religious affiliation of many of the people in the band.  The largest number, who were in a social position to initiate the singing when I was a sophomore, were both Methodists and in Camp Fire Girls.
 
We did not sing it at either the day camp or the resident camp sponsored by the Camp Fire Girls.  The director of the local day camp confirmed by recollection.  She told me:

“I loved that” but “I don’t think I ever sang it at our day camp.” [6]

Her husband was on the faculty of the local Methodist college, and I assume she sang it at some of the church’s weekly fellowship meetings for adults.

The woman from Dowling remembered singing it at Kitanniwa, the summer resident CFG camp that people from my hometown attended.  As mentioned in the post for 21 January 2018, she recalled it from the 1960s, and then it was a counselors’ song, not a campers’ one.

The process of elimination led me to ask someone who was not in the band, but I knew still was active in the Methodist church if she remembered the song from MYF.  That led to the correspondence quoted above.

Our version no longer was the four-verse song publicized by CRS.  We repeated the “kumbaya” verse after every “someone’s xxx” verse as a burden.  While we probably sang the standard verses, they were not sung in any particular order.  My recollection is that someone started a verse and we began at the same time, but waited to hear the verb to join in on the “ing.”  This led to the possibility that verses were improvised to prolong the singing.

We probably only sang the melody, but because our voices were not trained to precise notes, the sound in our ears, while we were singing, was what I call timbraic harmony.  This is the effect of voices with different qualities singing together.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none

Vocal Group: adolescent, mainly female, members of the marching band

Vocal Director: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
None

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: probably equal emphasis on syllables

Verses: standard verses in any order, with ad libbed ones sometimes 

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: open-ended
Verse Repetition Pattern: “kumbaya” as burden
Ending: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
Tempo: slow
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one note to one syllable except for final “Lord”
Harmony: timbraic

Notes on Performance
Occasion: return trips from football games at night
Location: school bus
Microphones: none
Clothing: band uniforms worn for the game

Notes on Movement
Girls generally sat together, scattered the length of the bus.  The bus was warm, and people were relaxing from the cold.

Notes on Performers
I have not been able to contact the teacher, and so have not included his name.

His family was from West Virginia, [7] and he graduated from Hillsdale College in 1958, where he played football.  The young white man was tapped for Omicron Delta Kappa, [8] an honorary that included athletes. [9]  The school was founded by Free Will Baptists, but began allowing other congregants to attend in 1907.  It did not begin taking strong conservative stances until 1963. [10]

As my friend recalls, the new college graduate taught arithmetic and social studies in our school, which spanned grades seven to twelve.  He also coached junior varsity football and seventh-eighth grade basketball. [11]

He worked in other schools until he received a masters’ degree in 1963 from Michigan State University. [12]  He was on the Hillsdale faculty from 1967 to 1972, then returned to teaching.  Later, he moved to northern Michigan where he worked for the state prison system. [13]

I assume he learned “Kumbaya” at some sort of workshop for MYF leaders.

Availability
None

End Notes
1.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service.  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.  143-149.  Tony Saletan’s participation in the CRS recordings is mentioned in the post for 26 March 2023.

2.  See the posts for 27 November 2022 through 18 December 2022 that discusses the work of Max Exner and Augustus D. Zanzig in the 1950s.

3.  Email, 3 March 2016.
4.  Email, 11 May 2016.
5.  “Michael” is discussed in the posts for 29 January 2023 and 26 March 2023.
6.  Lucille Parker Munk.  Interview, fall 1974.
7.  Find a Grave website entry for his father.
8.  LinkedIn website entry.
9.  “Omicron Delta Kappa.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 3 May 2023.
10.  “Hillsdale College.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 3 May 2023.
11.  The Breeze, Albion High School, Albion, Michigan, yearbook, 1959.
12.  LinkedIn website entry.
13.  Hillsdale Chargers website.

Brook Green Legends

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The likely reason for the expansion of The Oaks plantation, mentioned in the post for 30 July 2023, was the introduction of a new variety of rice that increased productivity and profits.  Carolina Gold was developed on Brook Green, the plantation immediately north of The Oaks.  The land had been purchased in 1730 from the Pawleys by William Allston, one son of the immigrant John. [1]  It was inherited by his son, William Junior, and his grandson, Benjamin Junior.

Subsequent ownership details were lost when Georgetown County, South Carolina, papers were destroyed during the Civil War. [2]  The incontestable facts are Benjamin did not own Brook Green when he died in 1809, [3] Joshua John Ward was born on the plantation in 1800, [4] and Robert Francis Withers Allston was born there in 1801. [5]

Legends flourish in the absence of facts.  Susan Lowndes Allston believes her great-grandfather Benjamin [6] lost the land when he signed a note for a friend.  The noble man refused to evade payment because he was a minor when he signed.  Susan summarized the family hagiography: “‘I was old enough to know what I was doing.’  So the place went, and Benjamin lived elsewhere.” [7]

She believed the property was purchased “by the Withers brothers, Francis and Robert” [8] and that they rented the fields to Ward, and earlier to his father Joshua Ward, and that they did not buy the plantation until 1847 when Francis died. [9]

Alberta Lachicotte, whose great-grandfather [10] purchased the plantation [11] where Benjamin died, [12] believed the Withers purchased another property from Benjamin in 1800. [13]  She also thought both it and Brook Green then were called Springfield, and that Ward’s son was responsible for the Brook Green name. [14]  He purchased Springfield in 1847, but maintained it as a separate plantation. [15]

Susan thought Benjamin’s wife and Robert Wither’s wife were cousins. [16]  Benjamin’s wife, Charlotte Ann, was the daughter of the first William Allston and sister of the first Joseph of The Oaks.  Another of Benjamin and Charlotte’s sons was named Joseph Waties Allston. [17]  Two of Charlotte’s sisters married sons of William Waties, Junior. [18]

It may be Charlotte’s family worked together to find an appropriate buyer for Brook Green, and may even have bargained to allow the family to stay in their home until they could arrange a move.  Charlotte’s sister Mary’s son, John Waites, married a woman named Ann. [19]  She likely was Nancy Maham who married a John Waties in 1784. [20]  Nancy was the daughter of the Hezekiah Mahem, mentioned in the posts for 13 November 2022 and 20 November 2022.

Hezekiah’s sister Elizabeth married John Cooke. [21]  Their daughter, Elizabeth Cooke, married Charles Weston, [22] the son of Plowden Weston by his first wife. [23]  Plowden owned a plantation north of Brook Green. [24]

Hezekiah’s niece and Nancy Maham Watie’s cousin Elizabeth Cooke married Joshua Ward, after Weston died.  Joshua John’s great-grandson believed Joshua was a successful indigo planter. [25]  George Rogers thought the Wards were merchants and lawyers in Charleston. [26]  It is believed Joshua John acquired Brook Green by 1825. [27]

In 1838, Ward’s overseer, James C. Thompson, noticed part of a rice head that was larger than any other he had seen.  Ward saved the seed, and planted it the next year on the margins of an old field where it was nearly destroyed by standing water and rats.  The following year, he and Thompson planted the seed they’d been able to salvage in a large tub in Thompson’s yard, only to have a slave leave the gate open and a hog eat most of the crop.  They transplanted the survivors, and most of the rice was sterile. [28]

In 1840, they took what had survived the hog and rot, and planted half an acre.  The next year, Ward planted 21 acres at Brook Green, which his factor sold above the market price.  In 1842, Ward tried 400 acres, and the following year planted nothing but the new large grain. [29]

In 1844, Ward made Carolina Gold available commercially. [30]  From then until the civil war, the Brook Green rice “commanded the highest price of any rice on the world market in Paris and London.” [31]

Although, Ward was responsible for the wealth of the Waccamaw neck, he still was treated as a bit of an interloper.  Popular historians prefer to discuss a painter, Washington Allston, who lived briefly at Brook Green [32] and inherited Springfield. [33]  To give Ward respectability, George Rogers named the guests who attended a party he held when his daughter married.  They included Allstons, LaBruces, and Westons. [34]

More important is the memoir of J. Motte Alston, a grandson of Benjamin’s father’s uncle William. [35]  He recalled: “the party was kept up till the ‘wee sma hours’. A regular old-fashioned country dance to the music of sundry country fiddlers.” [36]  One of the musicians, most likely, was the father of Ben Horry, who was interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler in the 1930s. [37]

End Notes
1.  The first two generations of Allstons are discussed in the post for 23 July 2023.

2.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  Brookgreen Waccamaw in the Carolina Low Country.  Charleston, South Carolina: Nelsons’ Southern Printing and Publishing Company, 1956.  24.

3.  J. H. Easterby.  The South Carolina Rice Plantation as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston.  Chicago: University of Chicago, 1945.  New edition issued by University of South Carolina of Columbia in 2004.  12.

4.  “Joshua John Ward.”  Wikipedia website.
5.  Daniel C. Littlefield.  “New Introduction.”  ix-xxviii in Easterby.  ix.

6.  “Susan Lowndes Allston Collection.”  Georgetown, South Carolina, County Library website.

7.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  22.
8.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  24.
9.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  27.

10.  Alberta was the daughter of Arthur Herbert Lachicotte, who was the son of Francis William Lachicotte. [38]  Francis was the son of Philip Rossignol Lachucotte.  He fled Santo Domingo in 1792, and worked for an engine and boiler works.  He later ran the rice mill at Dean Hall and, in 1857, the one at Brook Green. [39]

11.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  469.  The plantation was Waverly.

12.  Rogers.  19.

13.  Alberta Morel Lachicotte.  Georgetown Rice Plantations.  Georgetown, South Carolina: Georgetown County Historical Society, 1993 revised edition.  55.

14.  Lachicotte.  58.
15.  Lachicotte.  57.
16.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  27.

17.  Robert Walden Coggeshall.  Ancestors and Kin.  Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988.  173.

18.  H. D. Bull.  “The Waties Family of South Carolina.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 45(1):12-22:January 1944.  15.

19.  Bull.  17.
20.  Nancy Maham is mentioned in the post for 20 November 2022.

21.  John J. Simons III.  “The Early Families of the South Carolina Low County.”  RootsWeb website.

22.  “Samuel Mortimer Ward, Jr.”  History of South Carolina, edited by Yates Snowden and H. G. Cutler.  Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1920.  4:289.

23.  Gurney Thompson.  “Plowden Weston (abt. 1738 - abt. 1827).”  Wiki Tree website, 5 September 2018; last updated 5 May 2023.

24.  “Weston Family Papers.”  Robert Scott Small Library, Special Collections, College of Charleston website.

25.  “Samuel Mortimer Ward, Jr.”  289.
26.  Rogers.  259.

27.  Kathy Kelly, John Califf, and Julie Burr.  “Brookgreen Gardens.”  National Registry of History Places Inventory -- Nomination Form, 4 February 1978.  3.

28.  Joshua John Ward.  Letter to Robert Francis Withers Allston, 16 November 1843.  The Proceedings of the Agricultural Convention and the State Agricultural Society of South Carolina from 1839-1846 inclusive.  Columbia: Summers and Carroll for the State Agricultural Society of South Carolina, 1846.  56-57.  The letter has been reprinted in many places including by Robert Francis Withers Alston, [40] Susan Lowndes Allston, [41] and the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. [42]

29.  Ward.

30.  Ward.  He claimed his 1838 seed was descended from that planted by his great-uncle in 1785, and mentioned in the post for 20 November 2022.

31.  Carolina Gold Rice Foundation.  The Rice Paper,  November 2009.

32.  Washington Allston was the step-brother of Benjamin. [43]  Susan Lowndes Allston devotes pages 18-19 and 23-24 to the painter.  She discusses Joseph and Theodosia at The Oaks on page 21.
,
33.  Lachicotte.  56.  She discusses the painter on pages 55-56.  Her discussion of The Oaks, on pages 59-61, only mentions Joseph and Theodosia.  Lachicotte devotes one paragraph to Joshua John Ward on page 58.

34.  Rogers.  269.

35.  Jacob Motte Alston was the son of Thomas Pinckney Alston, [44] shown in the chart in the post for 30 July 2023.  As noted there, Thomas was the son of Billy Alston and his second wife, Mary Brewton Motte, and the grandson of William Allston.  William’s brother John was Benjamin’s grandfather. [45]

36.  Jacob Motte Alston.  Rice Planter and Sportsman: The Recollections of J. Motte Alston, 1821-1909, edited by Arney R. Childs.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1953.  105.  Quoted by Rogers.  269.

37.  Ben Horry is discussed in the post for 10 September 2023.
38.  “Arthur Herbert Lachicotte.”  Mormon’s Family Search website.
39.  Rogers.  469.

40.  Robert Allston.  "A Memoir of the Introduction and Planting of Rice in South Carolina," 1843, reprinted in several other publications, including James Dunwoody, The Industrial Resources, Etc., of the Southern and Western States, volume 2, 1852.

41.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  29-30.
42.  Carolina Gold Rice Foundation.
43.  Coggeshall.  172.
44.  “Jacob Motte Alston.”  Ancestry website.
45.  Coggeshall.  172-174.

The Oaks Legends

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The adoption of tidal flood irrigation made the land within thirty miles of the coast valuable, while inland rice fields either were abandoned or converted to cotton.  Those who already had coastal land suddenly became much wealthier.

This led to the idolization of absentee planters who spent their time in Charleston where they dabbled in politics or culture, and left the management of their plantations to overseers.

This romanticized view of the Old South persists today in the history of The Oaks, the plantation where Hagar Brown lived after the Civil War.  The Joseph Alston who inherited the plantation in 1784 was five-years-old.  Unlike his grandfather Joseph Allston who lived on the plantation with his mother during his minority, [1] his father, Billy Alston, [2] sent young Joseph to the College of Charleston and Princeton. [3]

Alston returned to Charleston where he qualified for the bar in 1799, when he was 21. [4]  He married the daughter of Aaron Burr on 2 February 1801. [5]  Fifteen days later, Burr was selected as Thomas Jefferson’s vice-president by the Electoral College. [6]  Alston was elected to the South Carolina Assembly the next year, and stayed focused on politics until 1814. [7]

The life of Joseph’s wife has spawned legends.  Theodosia was not well after the birth of their son, and became depressed when the boy died in 1812.  The next year, during the War of 1812, she set sail to visit her father.  The ship disappeared, and the widowed Joseph died in Charleston in 1816. [8]

James Michie, who has conducted archaeological surveys of the property, believes it is significant because it may “contain a wealth of information regarding architecture and the possessions of slaves during the eighteenth century.” [9]  However, he knows he is given research grants because of the interest in Theodosia. [10]

Michie noted Joseph Alston only exists today “in the shadow of his wife.” [11]  What information he could find and deduce suggests the young man was spoiled: he never completed a project, did not graduate from Princeton and did not practice law.  A woman who observed him after he married Theodosia wrote: “report does not speak well of him; it says that he is rich, but he is a great dasher, dissipated, ill-tempered, vain and silly.” [12]

Joseph did not actually inherit The Oaks until 1803.  At that time he and his wife began considering how to renovate the house. [13]  The couple would have spent the growing season in a house they built on the Piedmont near Greenville, South Carolina. [14]  Management of the plantation would have been left to a resident overseer.  Michie uncovered artifacts suggesting a house existed that could have been the man’s home. [15]

What happened to the property after Joseph died in 1816 is not clear.  The next known name is Jose Alston, son of Joseph’s sister Josephine. [16]  If one looks at the family genealogy and the inheritance patterns, there are two possible interim owners.  It could have reverted to Joseph’s father, William Algernon, and from him to his daughter Josephine.

The alternative is it returned to Joseph’s grandfather, Billy, who then devised it to his son John Ashe Alston for the benefit of John’s son Thomas.  Thomas married Josephine.  Thomas was born in 1806, [17] and would have been about 10 years old in 1816.  Josephine was born in 1810 and would have been 6 years old when Joseph died.  She died in 1834, [18] perhaps when Jose was born. [19]  Thomas died in 1835 [20] when he was about 29 years old.

Jose was an orphaned infant when he inherited, so the property would been managed by overseers hired by either by one of his grandfathers, or his great-grandfather.  It was during Jose’s minority that “dramatic expansion of the plantation occurred.” [21]  As mentioned in the post for 23 July 2023, a mill already existed.  The old swamp rice bed was converted to a barge canal that connected with the Waccamaw to move rice down river. [22]

A large slave community appeared on the other side of a “a long, linear earthen embankment.”  Michie discovered “the existing chimney foundations clearly show there were two rows of opposing slave cabins, separated by about 175 feet.”  Physical evidence suggested at least 18 cabins. [23]

By chance we know the name of one overseer in this period.  J. Alston Reynolds said his father, Henry R., “left the oaks plantation on the Waccamaw River in the 1835 and was succeeded by Ralph.” [24]  William Scarborough noted the second generation overseer was an example of men with extraordinary skills.  J. Alston later invented a “machine for planting Rice. [25]

End Notes
1.  The first Joseph of The Oaks is discussed in the post for 23 July 2023.

2.  This Joseph’s father was William Alston.  As mentioned in the post for 23 July 2023, I am using his nickname to keep him separate from other Williams in the family.

3.  James L. Michie.  The Oaks Plantation Revealed: An Archaeological Survey of the Home of Joseph and Theodosia Burr Alston, Brookgreen Gardens, Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina: Waccamaw Center for Historical and Cultural Studies, 1993.  14.

4.  Michie.  14.
5.  Michie.  15.

6.  “1800 United States Presidential Election.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 17 July 2023.

7.  Robert Walden Coggeshall.  Ancestors and Kin.  Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988.  174.

8.  Michie.  11.
9.  Michie.  51.
10.  Michie.  13.
11.  Michie.  13.

12.  Maria Nicholson.  Letter to Hannah Nicholson Gallatin.  Quoted by N. Louise Bailey.  Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives, Volume IV, 1791 - 1815.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1984.  33.  Quoted by Michie.  15.

13.  Michie.  15.
14.  Michie.  17.
15.  Michie.  30, 32, 35, 51.
16.  Jose was named Joseph Alston.
17.  Coggeshall.  174.
18.  Saratoga.  “Thomas Alston.”  Find a Grave website, 16 July 2012.
19.  “Josephine Alston.”  Mormon’s Family Search website.
20.  Coggeshall.  174.
21.  Michie.  51.
22.  Michie.  48.
23.  Michie.  36.

24.  J. Alston Reynolds.  Letter to Robert F. W. Allston, 28 September 1861.  Reprinted by J. H. Easterby.  The South Carolina Rice Plantation as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston.  Chicago: University of Chicago, 1945; republished by University of South Carolina, 2004.  267-268.  Ralph’s surname was illegible.

25.  William Kauffman Scarborough.  The Overseer: Plantation Management in the Old South.  Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1984 edition.  159.

The Oaks - The First Generations

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The northern part of the Waccamaw Neck owned by Percival Pawley was deeded in the 1730s to members of the Allston, LaBruce, and Pawley families who had met when their fathers were immigrants in Charleston.  They were the ones who broke the large grants into ones suitable for plantations.

As mentioned in the post for 16 July 2023, William, the son of the immigrant, bought 1,129 acres from George Pawley in 1730.  In his 1743 will, he referred to it as “the tract of land I now live on with my dwelling house.” [1]  He made no mention of agriculture, but said he had “twelve hefers and twelve steers of the stock on Sandy Island.”  [2]

The inference is that he grew food on his land and raised cattle on the island for income.  This is reinforced by the fact that he held at least 5,322 acres and six lots in Georgetown, but only 35 slaves.  It seems he invested his profits in land, because he had no need for many slaves.

William had married when he was 23 years old. [3]  At the time he wrote his will 23 years later he had six living daughters, three sons, one granddaughter and a pregnant wife. [4]  Only the oldest daughter was married; his oldest son and next daughter had reached the age of maturity as defined in the his will. [5]

The boys were given land that could be developed, while the five unmarried girls were asked to split two tracts among themselves.  His son William, who was 20 years old, received 920 acres that his father had purchased elsewhere on the Waccamaw Neck.  He split the original Pawley land between his two other sons, Joseph, age 11, and John, age 4.  Joseph received the part where Hagar Brown lived after the Civil War. [6]

William appointed four men to oversee his estate: his son William; his brother John; the husband of his sister Elizabeth, Joseph LaBruce, and the husband of LaBruce’s sister, William Poole. [7]  John [8] and Poole died in 1750, [9] which left the management of Joseph’s land to his brother William and uncle Joseph.

Joseph took ownership in 1756,  one year after he married. [10]  He soon built a new house since his mother and younger siblings would still have been in his William’s home.  In 1769, he bought land downriver, closer to Georgetown from John Huger.  Huger just had purchased the 775 acres from the estate of Robert Pawley, [11] who was married to Joseph’s sister Frances, then 30 years old. [12]  Joseph may have let her continue living there.

Later that year, Joseph bought 280 acres to the north.  At the time, his oldest son Billy was fifteen years old. [13]  His younger one, Thomas, was five. [14]

Three years later, in 1770, he bought George Smith’s Castaway Plantation to the south of Robert Pawley’s land.  It had 300 acres. [15]  No mention is made of the crops at this time, although indigo had been the primary one along the lower Waccamaw until the 1760s. [16]  The men who had been active growers included Thomas Lynch and Archibald Johnston. [17]  Lynch was married to Joseph’s sister Elizabeth; Johnston was the husband of Joseph’s sister Esther. [18]

Joseph bought more land in 1772.  Again, the investment combined personal interests with those of the extended family.  This time the land was the Turkey Hill plantation directly south of The Oaks.  The land originally had been claimed by his father’s brother Joseph who willed it to his son Josias. [19]  Rowena Nyland said: “The reason Josias sold his inheritance is unknown.  He relocated in the Little River area on the North/South Carolina border on lands which his will suggests he obtained from Joseph Allston.” [20]

At the same time, Joseph probably acquired the property south of Turkey Hill which became known as Oatland.  Nyland said the documentary trail ended when Joseph’s Uncle Joseph willed the land to his son, Samuel. [21]  Nothing is known about him, and Nyland surmises Oatland may have come into the hands of his brother Josias. [22]

By 1773, he owned five plantations each with a hundred slaves.  A northern visitor declared “his plantation, negores, gardens, etc., are in the best order of any I have seen!” [23]  Unfortunately, Josiah Quincy was a city boy who only mentioned Joseph grew grapes. [24]

James Michie surveyed the site in 1993, and found the evidence that slave cabins were built on “lower elevations around the swamp.” [25]  This implies Joseph was growing rice with swamp irrigation. [26]  Swamps apparently had some structural limitations that led planters to develop separate plantations rather than amalgamate their land holdings.  The fact Joseph claimed to have 100 slaves per plantation suggests he also view of an ideal ratio of slaves to land. [27]

Joseph died in 1784 at age 51. [28]   He left northern part of Robert Pawley’s land to Billy, who soon after bought the Clifton plantation to the north.  He left the southern part [29] and Turkey Hill to his other son, [30] with the priviso that his widow, the former Charlotte Rothmahler, [31] live there until a home could be built for her at Oatland. [32]

He left The Oaks to his son Billy’s son Joseph, then age five. [33]   Michie did not indicate who supervised the plantation in the interregnum when rice growing was revolutionized.  The post for 16 January 2019 mentioned the popularization of tidal irrigation by Nathaniel Heyward in 1787.

The same year, 1787, Jonathan Lucas built the first workable rice mill to speed the preparation of the grain for market.  His first customers included John Bowman and Billy Alston. [34]  Alston, of course, was Joseph’s father, while Bowman’s wife was the granddaughter of Josephs’s great-aunt Elizabeth. [35]
    
As Michie discovered, the plantation was reconfigured for tidal irrigation and the slave quarters were moved [36]  The mill at The Oaks appears on a 1825 map. [27]  Little remains: the iron parts were removed during World War II, and the bricks from the chimney were reused for a beachfront house. [28]  For some period, rice may have been taken down the Waccamaw to Billy’s mill.

End Notes
1.  William Allston Senr.  Will, 29 January 1743.  Transcribed on “Yauhannah Wills.”  RootsWeb website.

2.  Allston.  The map in the post for 16 July 2023 shows the location of Sandy Island.

3.  Robert Walden Coggeshall.  Ancestors and Kin.  Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988.  173.

4.  Joseph A. Groves.  The Alstons and Allstons of North and South Carolina.  Atlanta, Georgia: The Franklin Printing and Publishing Company, 1901.  68.  Thomas was born in 1744 and died unmarried.

5.  The age of maturity for boys was 18, the age for girls was 17 or when they married.

6.  Allston.  Hagar Brown is mentioned in the posts for 25 December 2022 and 17 July 2023.

7.  Allston.  William Poole was a Georgetown merchant [39] who married Hannah [40] DeMarboeuf. [41]

8.  Coggeshall.  172.

9.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  60.

10.  James L. Michie.  The Oaks Plantation Revealed: An Archaeological Survey of the Home of Joseph and Theodosia Burr Alston, Brookgreen Gardens, Georgetown County, South Carolina.
Columbia, South Carolina: Waccamaw Center for Historical and Cultural Studies, 1993.  10.

11.  “Prospect Hill Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

12.  Coggeshall.  173.  Robert was the son of the Percival Pawley who, according to the post for 17 July 2023, moved to North Carolina.

13.  Joseph’s son William was known as King Billy of Clifton.  He changed the spelling of his last name to Alston. [42]  I’m using the nickname to make it easier to keep track of members of a family that repeated given names in each generation.


14.  Given the large gap in ages, it’s possible there had been others who were girls who did not inherit or children who did not survive.

15.  “Prospect Hill.”
16.   Rogers.  53.
17.   Rogers.  88.
18.  Coggeshall.  173.

19.  Rowena Nyland.  “Historical Analysis of the Willbrook, Oatland, and Turkey Hill Plantations.”  14-60 in Archaeological and Historical Examinations of Three Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Rice Plantations on the Waccamaw Neck, edited by Michael Trinkley.  Columbia, South Carolina: Chicora Foundation, May 1993.  30.

20.  Nyland.  32.
21.  Nyland.  31.
22.  Nyland.  34.

23.  “Journal of John Quincy, Junior, 1773.”  Massachusetts Historical Society.  Proceedings 44:453:1915–1916.  Quoted by Rogers.  99.

24.  Quincy was involved with the Sons of Liberty in Boston in the period leading to the American Revolution.  He went south in 1773 to encourage support for the coming revolution. [43]

25.  Michie.  28.
26.  Swamp grown rice is discussed in the post for 13 January 2019.

27.  The concept of an optimal size developed in Barbados and is discussed in the post for 23 January 2022.

28.  Coggeshall.  173.
29.  “Prospect Hill.”
30.  Nyland.  32.
31.  Coggeshall.  173.
32.  Nyland.  34.
33.  Michie.  11.

34.  Lucas, James Jonathan.  Letter dated 20 April 1904 reprinted by The Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, volume 32, 1904.

35.  Elizabeth Allston married Thomas Lynch.  She was the granddaughter of the immigrant Allston, sister of his sons William and Joseph, and great-aunt of Joseph’s grandson Joseph.  Their granddaughter Sabina Lynch married Bowman.

36.  Michie.  30.

37.  Lesley M. Drucker.  A Cultural Resources Inventory of Selected Areas of The Oaks and Laurel Hill Plantations, Brookgreen Gardens, Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina: Carolina Archaeological Services, 1980.  70.  Her source was Robert Mills.  Atlas Of The State Of South Carolina.  Baltimore, Maryland: F. Lucas Jr, 1825.  Reprinted by Silas Emmett Lucas, Jr. as Mill’s Atlas: Atlas of the State of South Carolina, 1825.  Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1980.  Georgetown District.  Cited by Michie.  48.

38.  Michie.  48.
39.  Rogers.  60.

40.  Sonya Suzann Beckenbach Manderson.  “James Coachman.”  Page of Beckenbach Simons genealogy on RootsWeb website.

41.  “Joseph de Marbeuf La Bruce, 1705 - 1751.”  My Heritage website.
42.  Coggeshall.  174.
43.  “ Josiah Quincy II.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 14 July 2023.

Waccamaw Claims

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The Waccamaw Neck along the northeastern coast of South Carolina extends 60 miles from the North Carolina border to Winyah Bay at Georgetown. [1]  The distance Genevieve Willcox Chandler covered when she conducting interview with former slaves for the WPA was measured in distances people could walk to Murrells Inlet where she lived. [2]  They mentioned five plantations along the left bank from Richmond Hill to Oatland.

The chart below lists the names and plantations of individuals interviewed by Chandler.  As mentioned in the post for 25 December 2022, Hagar Brown is one of the three most likely sources for Chandler’s variant of “Come by Here.”

Roads did not exist in 1700, and rivers were the only means of transportation.  The value of land increased the shorter the distance to a port.  The Waccamaw was one of three rivers that emptied into Winyah Bay, and the only one that did not provide access to the interior. [3]  Land near the bay along all the rivers was the first to be claimed.

Land grants still were tightly controlled by the men in England who owned the colony.  As mentioned in the post for 8 January 2023, one landgrave, Robert Daniel, was given the 24,000 acre Winyah Barony in 1711, which he promptly sold to another landgrave.  Thomas Smith, [4] in turn, sold 1,280 acres to John Crofts [5] and 1,490 acres to Percival Pawley. [6]  He retained land around Murrells Inlet.

A descendant believes Crofts was related to John Crofts of Virginia.  He was deputy to the naval collector and his wife, Mary, owned land in Charles Town.  [7]  His son, also John Crofts, was a ship’s captain who married a wealthy woman in Jamaica in 1697. [8]  The son of this Crofts, also John, was a Charleston merchant when he bought the land that eventually would be Oatland. [9]

George Pawley arrived in Charles Town in 1685 [10] at age 53. [11]  Family tradition thinks his wife somehow was related to Andrew Percivell, [12] who came from England in 1674 [13] as an agent for Anthony Ashley Cooper, [14] one of the original Proprietors.  He was a joiner, [15] and his son, Percivell, was a shipwright.  Emma Hart believes Percivell bought land because of “the precarious urban economy, and the sorry state of shipbuilding in the province.” [16]  His land eventually became Turkey Hill.

Land produced little wealth at the time.  Smith was involved with the Indian trade.[17]  Pawley began raising cattle, which he was selling by 1717 [18].  Rice was grown in inland swamps until England imposed so many taxes it was not profitable after 1705. [19]

The value of naval stores increased in 1705, when England began paying a bounty.  [20]  It relied upon longleaf pine trees, [21] which grew in the uplands. [22]  Kilns used to extract tar were built on slight elevations, [23] not on shifting landscape of the neck.  Most of the research on tar kilns has been done in the Francis Marion National Forest, south of Winyah Bay.  Maps show the industry was concentrated along the southwestern boundary and along the Santee River, with little found in the swamps or on the boundary with the coast. [24].

These are not the kinds of lands Smith sold.  Crofts and Pawley probably were just accumulating land for its unknown, future value.

The political landscape changed in 1714 when the Hanoverian George I replaced the Stuart Anne on the English throne.  Crofts sold the Oatland land to William Branford that year. [25]  Little is known about him, although Henry Smith thought his father might be connected to the John Branford who came south from Dorchester, Massachusetts. [26]  Branford died in 1717, and the land was deeded to his daughter, Martha Bryan. [27]

1717 was the beginning of a new crisis in South Carolina’s relations with the Proprietors who owned the colony.  The men in England were unhappy that they were not receiving their rents, and ordered their governor, Robert Johnson, to rewrite laws in their favor. [28]  The next year the Proprietors closed the land office, so no new land could be granted. [29]  This led the colonists to ask George I to take over the colony in 1719. [30]

Pawley apparently became friends with John Allston, who arrived in Charleston in 1682 as an apprentice to the merchant James Jones. [31]  Seven years later Allston established himself in Saint Johns. [32]  Around 1795, he married the widow of a tanner, and fathered six children. [33]  When John died in 1719, Pawley executed his will, and his son George married Allston’s daughter Mary. [34]  Pawley drowned in 1723, [35] and George inherited the land on Waccamaw Neck. [36]

The economy grew worse when the Crown stopped subsidizing naval stores in 1724, and collapsed in 1727. [37]  George moved to the Waccamaw neck that year, and became associated with Smith. [38]  His brother Percival was among those who fell into debt, and moved to North Carolina [39] where Smith was living.

The Proprietors responded to the chaos and depression in South Carolina by asking George I to buy them out. [40]  Negotiations lasted until late 1729 when Robert Johnson was appointed royal governor. [41]  That same year, Samuel Wragg convinced the Parliament to resume paying the bounty for naval stores and allow Charleston to export rice directly to Spain and Portugal. [42]

Johnson proposed creating frontier townships to protect the area around Charleston. [43]  One was centered in the north around Winyah Bay, where the Baptist minister, William Screven, had purchased land in 1710. [44]  His son, Elisha, laid out Georgetown in 1729. [45]  Men moved to the area hoping it would become an official port. [46]  One was Mary Allston Pawley’s brother John who purchased Turkey Hill from her husband George’s niece. [47]

Mary’s brother William purchased land upriver from Turkey Hill from Percival in 1730.  [48]  His wife was Esther LaBruce.  Their sister Elizabeth married Esther’s brother Joseph. [49]  The immigrant LaBruce had arrived from France in 1687, [50] and was raising hogs and cattle on the Cooper River by 1696. [51]  The marriages occurred in 1721. [52]  William’s land became The Oaks.

Once rice and naval stores were reestablished as profitable crops, and the land office was reopened in 1732 under the King, [53] men borrowed money to buy slaves [54] knowing they would receive 50 acres for each slave. [55]  John Allston received royal grants in 1733 and 1734 for 137, 490, and 700 acres. [56]  That would suggest he also was able to purchase three slaves in 1733, ten in early 1734, and another fourteen later the same year.  William received royal grants between 1732 and 1737 for 785 acres (for fifteen slaves) and three tracts on Sandy Island. [57]  Mary and William’s LaBruce brother-in-law was granted 727 acres north of the Pawley land in 1733. [58]

Johnson tried to ensure the new lands offered by the Crown did not go to speculators, and was successful enough that when Smith laid out a rival town to Georgetown at what became Murrells Inlet, no one was interested. [59]  He willed some of the town lots to his children. [60]

The prosperity lasted until a new war with Native Americans broke out in 1739. [61]  The best lands on the east side of the Waccamaw had been purchased or claimed by 1734.

Graphics
Base map: “Map of the Pee Dee River Basin in South Carolina.”  15 in An Overview of the Eight Major River Basins on South Carolina.  South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, 2013.

End Notes
1.  Clarke Willcox.  “Preface to Historical Sketches.”  1967.  105 in Clarke A. Willcox.  Musings of a Hermit.  Charleston, South Carolina: Walker, Evans and Cogswell Company, seventh edition, second printing, 1986.  iv.  The geography is discussed in the post for 1 January 2023.

2.  Genevieve is introduced in the post for 15 December 2022.  The people she interviewed are introduced in the post for 25 December 2022

3.  The Black and and PeeDee rivers parallel the Waccamaw for short distances, then each turns inland.

4.  Thomas Smith, son of the original landgrave Thomas Smith, is discussed in the post for 8 January 2023.

5.  Rowena Nyland.  “Historical Analysis of the Willbrook, Oatland, and Turkey Hill Plantations.”  14-60 in Archaeological and Historical Examinations of Three Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Rice Plantations on the Waccamaw Neck, edited by Michael Trinkley.  Columbia, South Carolina: Chicora Foundation, May 1993.

6.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  1.

7.  Harold Cross.  “John (Croft) Crosse (abt. 1630 - 1709).”  Wiki Tree website, 1 Apr 2021; last updated 24 April 2021.  This is John’s father.

8.  Harold Cross.  “John Crosse (abt. 1670 - 1736).”  Wiki Tree website 9 March 2021; last updated 26 August 2022.

9.  Harold Cross.  “John Croft (bef. 1698 - aft. 1745).”  Wiki Tree website, last updated 24 April 2021. This is John’s son.

10.  Agnes Leland Baldwin.  First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670–1700.  Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1985.  180.

11.  Robert Walden Coggeshall.  Ancestors and Kin.  Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988.  151.

12.  Coggeshall.  152.
13.  Baldwin.  183.
14.  Coggeshall.  152.
15.  Baldwin.  180.

16.  Emma Hart.  Building Charleston: Town and Society in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World.  Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010.  31.

17.  Smith’s business interests are discussed in the post for 8 January 2023.
18.  Rogers.  1.

19.  Walter Edgar.  South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.  138.

20.  Edgar.  138.

Grant Snitker, Jason D. Moser, Bobby Southerlin, and Christina Stewart.  “Detecting Historic Tar Kilns and Tar Production Sites Using High-resolution, Aerial LiDAR-Derived Digital Elevation Models: Introducing the Tar Kiln Feature Detection Workflow (TKFD) Using Open-Access R and FIJI Software.”  Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 41(103340):2022.  2.

21.  Michael A. Harmon and Rodney J. Snedeker.  “The Archaeological Record of Tar and Pitch
Production in Coastal Carolina.”  100-122 in Historic Landscapes in South Carolina: Historical
Archaeological Perspectives on the Land and Its People, edited by Linda F. Stine, Lesley M.
Drucker, Martha Zierden, and Christopher Judge.  Columbia, South Carolina: Council of South Carolina Professional Archaeologists, 1993.  145.

Snitker.  2.

22.  W. E. McLendon, G. A. Crabb, Earl Carr, and F. S. Welsh.  “Soil Survey of Georgetown County, South Carolina.”  513-562 in Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils, 1911.  Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, 1914.  518.

23.  Harmon.  153-154.
24.  Snitker.  11, 13.

25.  “Willbrook Plantation – Pawleys Island – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

26.  Henry A. M. Smith.  “Old Charles Town and Its Vicinity, Accabee and Wappoo Where Indigo Was First Cultivated, with Some Adjoining Places in Old St. Andrews Parish.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 16(1):1-15:January 1915.  7-8.

27.  Nyland.  26.

28.  M. Eugene Sirmans.  Colonial South Carolina: A Political History 1663–1764.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966.  120.

29.  Sirmans.  123.
30.  Sirmans.  129.

31.  A. S. Salley.  “John Alston.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 6(3):114-116:July 1905.  114.

32.  Nyland.  24.
33.  Coggeshall.  171.  Allston married Elizabeth Turgis, widow of John Harris.
34.  Coggeshall.  171.
35.  Coggeshall.  152.
36.  Coggeshall.  153.
37.  Sirmans.  155.
38.  Coggeshall.  153.

39.  Sirmans.  146.  Sirmans only says Percival, so I assume he is referring to the brother of George.  Robert Walden Coggeshall says he was a gunsmith. [62]

40.  Sirmans.  160.
41.  Sirmans.  161.

42.  Sirmans.  162.  Technically, South Carolina merchants could ship to any port south of Cape Finisterre. [63]

43.  Sirmans.  162.
44.  Rogers.  17.
45.  Rogers.  33.

46.  David Duncan Wallace.  The History of South Carolina.  New York: American Historical Society, 1934.  1:340.  Georgetown became a port in 1732. [64]

47.  Nyland.  26.  Percival Pawley had given the 490 acres that became Turkey Hill to the daughters of his brother John in 1722. [65]  One niece died in 1725, [65] and the husband of the other sold the land to Allston. [67]

48.  James L. Michie.  The Oaks Plantation Revealed: An Archaeological Survey of the Home of Joseph and Theodosia Burr Alston, Brookgreen Gardens, Georgetown County, South Carolina.
Columbia, South Carolina: Waccamaw Center for Historical and Cultural Studies, 1993.  10.

49.  Coggeshall.  171.
50.  Baldwin.  153.  The original name was LaBrosse de Marboeuf.

51.  A. S. Salley, Jr.  “Stock Marks Recorded in South Carolina, 1695-1721.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 8(3):126-131:July 1912.  130.

52.  Coggeshall.  171, 173.
53.  Sirmans.  172.
54.  Sirmans.  167.
55.  Wallace.  1:331.
56.  Nyland.  26.

57.  William Alston Sen.  Will, 29 January 1743.  Transcribed on “Yauhannah Wills.”  RootsWeb website.

58.  Rogers.  277.
59.  Sirmans.  174.
60.  Smith and Murrells Inlet will be discusses in a future post.

61.  Sirmans.  167.  The War of Jenkin’s Ear was part of the War over Austrian Succession.

62.  Coggeshall.  152
63.  Wallace.  1:324.
64.  Rogers.  32.
65.  Nyland.  26.
66.  Coggeshall.  152.  The niece was Ann.
67.  Nyland.  26.  The niece who married Joseph Allen was Susanna.

Lake Poinsett - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The American Camping Association’s 1958 songbook, Let’s All Sing, [1] met a need for camps without their own singing traditions or without mimeograph machines to produce their own collections.  For, before song publishers started enforcing the copyright law in the 1970s, the most common camp songsters were a few sheets of paper produced by local volunteers.

Larry Holcomb’s appendix of custom songbooks produced by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) was 14 pages long.  But, only 28 were identifiable as camp books, as distinct from organizations superintending camps.  Most were sponsored by the Methodist church or Girl Scouts. [2]  There no doubt were more that were not preserved in CRS’s archives.  They often were given out, and disappeared with other souvenirs of summer.  I found few for sale online.

Lake Poinsett produced one in 1958, the same year as the ACA songbook, which included “Kum Ba Yah.”  The South Dakota Methodist camp was organized to hold institutes for older campers to bind them to the church, and to recruit future ministers. [3]  In that, it was no different than the Wisconsin Lutheran camp attended by Janet Lynn, mentioned in the post for 16 October 2018, or the Methodist’s Epworth Forest in Indiana, mentioned in the post for 30 May 2021.

Lake Poinsett Fellowship Songs contains 138 songs, of which more than half are religious.  Two thirds of those are hymns, with fourteen spirituals and four graces.  “Kum Ba Yah” is the first selection in the spirituals section.

The songbook seems to have been part of an ambitious project of the local Methodist churches, who then were at their peak of influence.  Marshall Reed, Bishop of the Detroit and Michigan Annual Conferences, [4] believed the church needed 3,000 new ministers each year to replace men who retired and serve new congregations.  The church already was having problems recruiting men, [5] and in a few years would acknowledge its membership was dropping. [6]

The Northern and Southern Districts in South Dakota had established their church without funds from the Annual Conference. [7]  However, by 1957, it was hoping to grow from a local camp into a regional center. [8]  It produced a film about the camp in 1955, [9] commissioned a history in 1956, [10] and published the songbook in 1958.

The camp still exists as a retreat and conference center. [11]  However, it no longer was a member of the American Camping Association in 1974. [12]

Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line
Instrumental Accompaniment: guitar

Credits
Spiritual

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: no note

Verses: those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) – kumbaya, praying, crying, singing

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: 4-verse song

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
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”

Notes on Performance
Cover: outline drawing of tree branches at top and heads of a boy and girl at bottom right; title between

Color Scheme: black ink on maroon paper; inside blue ink on white paper

Plate: made by music typewriter

Audience Perceptions
A member of MYF, the Methodist Youth Fellowship, recalled in 1956: “Bible study groups, studies about Christian living and Christian vocations, and the singing of hymns and spirituals fill a day.  Each evening, weather permitting, the young people gather at the campfire and singing with meditation they thank God for another wonderful day.” [13]

This was before Lake Poinsett Fellowship Songs was published.  Thus, it cannot indicate if “Kumbaya” was sung at the camp, but does suggest a singing tradition existed which would have favored the song.

Notes on Performers
Lewis Reimann, the author of the Lake Poinsett Story, graduated from the University of Michigan around 1916, and went to work for the YMCA in Barry County, Michigan.  In 1921 he established a fresh air camp for the university, then opened a private camp in Michigan in 1928.  Later, he became a camp consultant for the ACA. [14]  This probably led him to assist Poinsett.

The camp’s song, “Shores of Poinsett Waters” was written by his wife. [15]  The former Pearle Shewell, [16] said she had set “numerous songs and verses of noted authors” to music in a 1961 interview. [17]

Availability
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  50 in Lake Poinsett Fellowship Songs.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service Cooperative Song Service, revised 1958.

End Notes
1.  Let’s All Sing is discussed in the posts for 4 June 2023, 18 June 2023, and 2 July 2023.

2.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  “Appendix B.  Custom Songbooks, 1954-1972.”  222-235 in A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service.  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.

3.  Lewis C. Reimann.  The Lake Poinsett Story: A Venture in Faith.  Ann Arbor, Michigan: Edwards Brothers, Inc, for Lake Poinsett Methodist Camp, Arlington, South Dakota, 1957.  94.

4.  “Marshall Russell Reed.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 3 July 2023.
5.  Marshall R. Reed.  Quoted by Reimann.  94.

6.  The membership decline in the Methodist Church is discussed in the post for 14 March 2021.

7.  Reimann.  7, 39.
8.  Reimann.  139.
9.  Reimann.  147.
10.  Reimann.  168.

11.  “Lake Poinsett Camp & Living Waters Retreat Center.”  Dakotas United Methodist Church website.

12.  National Directory of Accredited Camps for Boys and Girls.  Martinsville, Indiana: American Camping Association, 14th edition, 1974.

13.  Quoted by Reimann.  92.  No name given.

14.  “Lewis Reimann.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 3 July 2023.  The camp was Charlevoix.

15.  Lake Poinsett.  Inside front cover.
16.  “Lewis Reimann.”

17.  “Pearle S. Reimann and Tea Table Menu.”  Ann Arbor News, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1 June 1961.

Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) was the second religious group to publish “Kumbaya” after it appeared in the American Camping Association’s Lets All Sing in 1958. [1]  As mentioned in several posts, the denomination broke from Presbyterians following the Cane Ridge Revival, and was distinguished by its refusal to use musical instruments. [2]

Its Chapbook was intended for youth group meetings, as well as summer camps.  As such, it contained more religious material than a typical Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) publication or the Southern Baptist Convention collection mention in the post for 18 June 2023.  Just over a quarter of the songs in the ACA songbook were religious and nearly 44% in Songs for Fun and Fellowship.  More than 75% of the ones in the Christian Church book had sacred content.

The denomination’s musical aesthetic was formed in the 1800s when the two denominations, the Christian Church and the Disciples of Christ, were spreading.  More than 60% of the hymns are from that century, with less than a quarter from the 1900s.  The earlier ones were written by Martin Luther, [3] Isaac Watts, [4] and Charles [5] and Samuel Wesley. [6]

Almost none are popular religious songs from the late 1800s [7]  Instead, like CRS and the Baptists, the editorial committee used spirituals as a less solemn alternative to hymns.  They represented about 30% of the ACA songbook, and 18% of this one. [8]  The number in the Baptist book represented 16% of the total.

The editors obviously expected the songbook to be used in camps: it contained eleven graces while the Baptists only had one.  However, sung graces were not an indigenous traditions: six were in Let’s All Sing. [9]

The songbook wished to include “fun songs,” but again had no tradition to draw upon.  Of the 31 secular songs with no religious content, 22, or nearly 60%, were in the CRS songbook.  “Kumbaya” falls into the group of songs it considers secular, but, in fact, have religious content.

The editors took their version from the Song Sampler published by CRS in 1956. [10]  It not only had the same headnote on an Angolan origin and the same pronunciation footnote, but it italicized “Kum Ba Yah” that way Jane Keen had.  Let’s All Sing said it was a “Spiritual,” and had no footnote or special typography.

The song was accepted: it was one of the ones that was reprinted in Chapbook 2 in 1966.  That collection “picks up some of the best songs, hymns, and worship resources from The Chapbook.”

Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
 
Credits
African (Angola)

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: koom-bah-yah, like that published by CRS Song Sampler

Verses: those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) in Song Sampler – kumbaya, praying, crying, singing

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Basic Form: four-verse song

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
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”

Notes on Performance
Cover: 4.25" x 5.75" spiral bound; drawings of thee Gothic church windows enclosing music notes

Color Scheme: white with red print; windows and music notes in shades of black, white, and gray

Plate: exactly like that in CRS’s Song Sampler; this includes italicizing “Kum Ba Yah”

Audience Perceptions
The person who owned the copy I purchased online checked “Kumbaya” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain” in pencil; “Are You Sleeping” was checked in ink.  The C-F-G chords were written in; this is the only song so marked.

Notes on Performers
Guin Tuckett worked for the Christian Board of Education from 1953 until 1990.  Born Guinevere Ream in Indiana, [11] she was a descendant of Johann Eberhard Reihm who migrated to Conestoga, Pennsylvania, from the Palatine in 1717. [12]  Count Zinzendorf, leader of the Moravians in Germany, stayed with Eberhard in 1742. [13]  When her branch joined the Christian Church is unknown, but her father’s mother was a member when the family lived in Nebraska [14].

Besides the Martin Luther hymn, the Chapbook contains lyrics set to old German tunes.  The setting for Saint Francis of Asisi’s “All Creatures of Our God and King” is from Geistliche Kirchengesäng. [15]  The tune for “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” is in Straslund Gesanbuch. [16]  The melody for “Fairest Lord Jesus” is from Schlesische Volkslieder. [17]

Availability
Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  150 in Christian Youth Chapbook: Hymns, Fun Songs, Worship Resources for Young People.  Saint Louis: Bethany Press, 1955.

Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  151 in Chapbook 2, edited by a “joint youth committee from The American Baptist Board of Publication and Education and the publishing and program divisions of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) chaired by Guin Tuckett.  Saint Louis: The Bethany Press, 1966, and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: The Judson Press, 1966.

End Notes
1.  Let’s All Sing is discussed in the post for 4 June 2023.

2.  The Christian Church and Disciples of Christ are mentioned in a number of posts, including one for 8 November 2020.  The Disciples of Christ in Pamlico County, North Carolina, were mentioned in posts about Minnie Lee, especially the one for 26 January 2020.

3.  “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
4.  “Jesus Shall Reign.”
5.  “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” and “Love Divine, All Love Exceeding.”
6.  “The Church’s One Foundation.”

7.  The one possibility is “Take Time To Be Holy,” which was published by Ira Sankey. [18] Sankey is discussed in the post for 17 January 2021.

8.  The church segregated after the Civil War, but did not expel freed slaves as the Methodists and Baptists did.  Its attitudes toward Blacks are mentioned in the posts for 18 July 2021 and 30 October 2022.

9.  “Chimes Grace,” the Girl Scouts’ “God Has Created a New Day,” “Gratitude Grace,” “O Give Thanks,” “Praise for Bread,” and “Round of Thanks.”  The Baptists adopted the “Round of Thanks.”

10.  Song Sampler, number 1, is discussed in the posts for 31 July 2022 and 7 August 2022.

11.  Lynn.  “Guinivere (Tuckett) ‘Guin’ Ream Stemmler.”  Find a Grave website, 24 October 2009.

12.  John Ream. “Ream Family History: 9 Generations.”  His website.

13.  Norman Whisler Ream.  “Riehm-Ream Genealogy.”  1930.  248.  Reprinted by John Ream.

14.  “Mrs. J. S. Ream Funeral Held.”  The Minden Courier, Minden, Nebraska, 27 Mary 1948.  11.  Reprinted by Rose Marie Brown on “Maggie Mae Simon Ream.”  Find a Grave website, 7 August 2013.

15.  Friedrich Spee.  Geistliche Kirchengesäng.  Kohn: 1623.
16.  Ernewertes Gesangbuch.  Stralsund: 1665.

17.  August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben.  Schlesische Volkslieder mit Melodien.  Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1842.

18.  Laura Lee Leathers.  “Who Wrote the Hymn ‘Take Time to be Holy’?”  Christianity website, 5 December 2022.