Hallelujah! editor, John H. Dickson <
[email protected]> A Bicentennial Tribute to William Walker by Harry Eskew The year 1809 was a stellar year for the South Carolina, 1866.” This aroused my cu- newly founded Spartanburg Male Academy, birth of several famous Americans, including riosity, years later leading to a masters thesis and in the same year, he was among eleven President Abraham Lincoln and the poet on Walker and research on the shape-note subscribers who pledged $1300 to establish Edger Allen Poe. It is also the birth year of singing school tradition. the Female Seminary in Spartanburg. On July the British scientist Charles Darwin and the Although Walker lived his adult years in 4, 1851, William Walker participated in laying German composer Felix Mendelssohn. In the Spartanburg, he was born in Union County the cornerstone of Wofford College. midst of this time, vibrant with new ideas, on the Tiger River, about three miles from Along with his musical activities, Walker experiments, and discoveries, William Walker, the village of Cross Keys. His exact birthplace operated a bookstore in Spartanburg, a popularly known as “Singing Billy Walker,” has not yet been determined. Walker’s fam- store that functioned as both a book and was born, the second generation of Ameri- ily included the Rev. John Landrum, the fi rst stationary store. Walker’s publication of cans. Walker is perhaps the most infl uential pastor of the First Baptist Church of Spartan- Southern Harmony was an important factor musician South Carolina has ever produced, burg, and the Rev. Newton Pinckney Walker, in the success of his bookstore, enabling creating and preserving for Americans music founder of South Carolina’s Institution for him to sell merchandise at lower prices, as that evinced the culture of the new nation the Deaf and Blind at Cedar Springs.