D. H. Mansfield and The American Vocalist by David William Deacon A Thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Curriculum of Folklore. Chapel Hill 1991 Approved by: ______________ Advisor ______________ Reader ______________ Reader 2 Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction ................................ 3 Chapter Two: D. H. Mansfield's Background, Life, and Character ................................................ 24 Chapter Three: The Social Context of The American Vocalist ......................................................... 54 Chapter Four: The Religious Context of D. H. Mansfield and The American Vocalist .................................... 73 Chapter FIVE: The American Vocalist: Publication and Contents ................................................. 95 APPENDIX A .............................................. 157 Index of Tunes ........................................ 157 Index of First Lines .................................. 170 WORKS CITED ............................................. 182 3 Chapter One: Introduction Peru, Vermont lies on the old turnpike that cut across the northern parts of Windham and Bennington Counties. At the eastern end of the highway is Bellows Falls, an old industrial and transportation center and gateway to the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River; at the western end is Manchester, the northern shire town of Bennington County. Along the way the traveler passes through agricultural and lumbering towns (Chester, Andover, Londonderry, Landgrove, and Peru) and over the Green Mountains at Bromley Mountain. Peru, the last stop before the old resort town of Manchester, is tucked snugly against the eastern slope of the mountains. Nancy M. Haynes, who contributed the article on Peru to Abby Maria Hemenway's Vermont Historical Gazetteer, wrote, "The West part of the town is a primeval wilderness; the mountains high, rugged and broken upon the summit," (Hemenway 206). Haynes continued: From some parts of the town the view of the surrounding country is exceedingly grand. Wachusett Mountain in Mass., and Monadnock in N.H., are discernible in the far distance, while near, billow upon billow of the Green Mountain Range rises. Between the latter and us lies a vast 4 basin, miles in extent, comprising woodland and meadow, cornfields and pastures dotted with farmhouses, humble it is true, but full of happiness withal. There years pass gently and peacefully, each telling its tale of births and deaths, of change and decay, but all so quietly that to learn the history of one is to know the history of all. (Hemenway 208). Indeed, the history of Peru speaks quietly. I became acquainted with Peru through the Long Trail, the leg of the Appalachian Trail which passes through Vermont. The Peru station of the trail is at the end of a narrow, unimproved town highway. Here are mossy, wooded highlands, with soft beds of shamrocks, and tangled, lush woods, well-suited to contemplative hikes, but hard country off of which to live. Less than a mile from the access of the Long Trail, there is a single grave, set back several feet from the road. The inscription reads: Johnnie M. Son of J. T. & L. Howard Crushed to death by a load of logs here Sept. 21, 1887 Æ. 13 yrs. This grave quietly tells a story of the hard country around Peru. This was a town that, even in Vermont's golden age of the late nineteenth century, was still poor. One day I went to visit Johnny Howard's grave, to walk a stretch of the Long Trail, and to visit the Johnny Appleseed Bookshop (once owned 5 by the poet Walter Hard) in Manchester. The book I found this day was an oblong hymnal (about six and one-quarter by nine and one-half inches), titled The American Vocalist, compiled by the Rev. D. H. Mansfield, and published in Boston in 1849. The title page announced ambitiously that the book embraced "a greater variety of music for congregations, societies, singing schools, and choirs, than any other collection extant." In its format, The American Vocalist resembles contemporary Northern tunebooks, for like Lowell Mason's Carmina Sacra and the Hallelujah, it presents the tunes in open scores with the air above the bass. The book contains 522 tunes separated into three sections, in the common "Watts and Select" format with the most formal "Church Music" in the first section, the "more important Vestry Music" in the middle, and "the lighter kind of Vestry Music" (including camp-meeting spirituals) at the end. The first section is the largest, with 352 tunes, including a wealth of material from the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth- century composers from New England such as William Billings, Abraham Maxim, and Daniel Read; it also contains fifty-seven fuging tunes. While the first section is heavy on old, genteel music, the second and third sections (containing 170 tunes between them) have a folky tone. The second section 6 contains tunes such as "When Marshalled on the Nightly Plain" (a setting of the popular "Bonny Doon") and "Star in the East," which are common in Southern as well as other folky Northern tunebooks. Moreover, the harmonies of these tunes, while not contrapuntal or polyphonic like Southern harmonies, are often stark and open; Mansfield harmonized twenty-two songs with fewer than four voices. This book, well-used, with its broken covers mended with plaid fabric on the inside, and protected with a handmade leather cover on the outside, held for me another quiet story. Several things about the book impressed me: immediately, I was impressed by how well used the book was, but also by the good condition in which it had remained through more than one hundred and thirty years, including a half century of regular use. The book was signed in several places with faded pencil; inside the back cover the inscription was still legible: H arvey Stone P eru Vermont A .D. 1850 December 5 In the first section of the book, penciled "X"s marked favorite hymns. One of the Stones had used shreds of a Windham County Reformer dated Friday, September 29, 1893, to mark other favorites, and on a page in the second section of 7 the book was a shopping list with materials for clothing and curtains (cloth, hooks, calico, indigo, and so on). What sort of family and community used The American Vocalist? The book's original owner, Harvey Stone, was one of the leaders of Peru's Methodist society. Peru had only two churches: Congregational and Methodist (Hemenway 101, 106). Its neighbor on the east, the tiny gore (a small tract of land that because of rugged terrain could not be included in any of the adjoining towns) of Landgrove, had only a Methodist church, while Manchester, on the west, had only Congregational (Hemenway 198). On the eastern side of Landgrove, Londonderry, which as its name suggests was originally Presbyterian, was still split between Calvinism, in its Congregational form, and Arminian Methodism (Child 247-8). Because of "death and removal" (specifically the great western exodus started by the cold year of 1816), Methodism was failing in this region by 1850, when Harvey Stone acquired his copy of The American Vocalist (Batchelder 106). But Harvey, his brother Hezekiah, and his sister Lenora (whose shopping list, I assume, marks the page in the hymnal) remained Methodists throughout their lives. Ira K. Batchelder, in his Reunion Celebration Together with an Historical Sketch of Peru, Bennington County, Vermont, and 8 Its Inhabitants from the First Settlement of the Town, described the Stone family in 1891: Harvey and Hezekiah Stone, sons of Joseph Stone, were born on the farm where they now live, and received their education in the town. They inherited the farm from their father, and have always lived on it, their only sister keeping house for them. They attend strictly to their own business, although financially they stand among the highest in town. They are the only representatives of the large family which existed in town sixty years ago. Harvey Stone has been an active citizen, and has been elected to important offices. He is a hearty supporter of the Methodist Church (133-4). Batchelder recorded other details about the Stones. Their father, Joseph Stone, was one of three brothers who settled in Peru between 1802 and 1808. The first, Samuel, came from Gardner, Massachusetts in 1802, and "commenced clearing the unbroken forest with strong hands and determined will that overcomes all obstacles, having soon a clearing large enough to build a log house" (68). Joseph Stone, father of Harvey, came two years later. Batchelder writes: He made cardboards, which were used for carding wool and tow in the domestic factories of the land, transporting his goods to Gardner by team. Uncle Joe would inspect the wilderness to find smooth beech, of which he made his cardboards, and no landmarks interfered with his right to do this. Mr. Stone married Polly Stiles in 1828, and moved on to the place which his children now occupy. He began new on this place, erected all the buildings and made the road. Mr. Stone died in 1856, aged 75 years, leaving three children, Harvey, Hezekiah and Lenora, who are all unmarried and living on the old homestead (69). 9 Finally, Capt. Josiah Stone: Capt. Josiah Stone came from Gardner in 1808, and began on a new lot east of his brother Samuel's. He built the best log house in the town, it being made of peeled spruce, long and straight, nicely laid up, and all made square at the corners. The house had two large rooms, with a stone fireplace in the centre of each, and a comfortable chamber. The house was shingled, and the family occupied it about thirty years as it was first built. Capt. Stone soon had cultivated land in the place of the forest, and planted an orchard, where he had a quantity of grafted fruit, which the boys would watch and sometimes take.