Gold Rush Songs

[AZReenactor]

The 1849 discovery of Gold in California prompted a migration of approximately 85,000 people from every state and territory of the United States as well as from virtually every area of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. Between 1849 and 1852 the non-Indian population of California went from 14,000 to 223,856. with another 67, 000 people (20,000 of which were Chinese) immigrating to California in 1852. The exodus caused by California "gold fever" impacted countless families and communities in the decade before the Civil War and is something that should be at least more familiar to most Civil War Reenactors.

During the war California contributed more troops per capita than any other state in the Union and effectively Garrisoned and helped open the West after Federal troops were withdrawn. Additionally, countless men in the ranks had made the trip to California and returned home before the war. California was "the great adventure" for Americans between the War with Mexico and the Civil War and many an adventurous soul either made the journey or wished they had.

A few people have seen me or other members of my unit singing songs from the Pre-War California Gold Rush at events out here as well as at events back East. Some of the songs sung in the gold camps became popular back East and were even war time favorites (Joe Blowers, Betsey From Pike, etc.) and many more would have been favorites of men who had been out West. They are good songs for anyone to know and help to explore the culture of California and the nation at large in a unique way.

Many of the old Civil War favorites are not yet written for early war events and often our backgrounds preclude us from familiarity with many of the old Irish and Nautical favorites so hopefully this will help to provide some more options when choosing period music to sing.

I've recently placed a page of Favorite Songs of the 1st California Infantry online at http://www.manifest-history.org/music. When I can find them I've added links to the scores and midi files as well. Most of the songs there so far are from Put's California Songsters published in 1854 and 1858. I will be adding more as I locate and transcribe them.

If you have any suggestions for links, resources, additional songs, etc. I would appreciate your sharing them.

[Danny]

Re: Gold Rush Songs

Troy -

What a cool resource you've pulled together, thanks. Of course the soldiers came to the field with the songs they grew up with from before the war. It's interesting to see what the Californians brought to the mix. We should hear some of these in camp.

As an aside, it's probable many of these seemingly nonsense lyrics in antebellum and CW songs actually had a real story behind them, from people who lived in the times and places written about.

One popular pre-war song a good example: Foster's "Camptown Races" (do-dah, do-dah). Just nonsense lyrics to fit the lively music, right? Well no. Turns out that besides horse-racing being a very popular pastime, this song refers to a particular "race-track 5-miles long", the one between Camptown and Wyalusing Penn., near where Foster's dad worked.

There was an annual race held there, Standard Breed harness racing, and a favorite horse was named Flora Temple, the first horse to complete a mile in under two minutes and 20 sec.

It was thought her tail was docked shortly after birth. She apparently was unusual in that respect thus the nickname "bob-tailed nag." Flora Temple was well known in the Country at the time. Children were named for her, and she was the topic of Currier & Ives prints that we can see today.

In 1852 a New Jersey village (near Newark), also named Camptown, actually changed it's name because of the widespread popularity of the song "Camptown Races." The village didn't want to be associated with horse-racing and betting. It changed to the more respectable name Irvington after Washington Irving. That's the power of these songs in the age of the first pop music.

I digress though, this thread is on California music in particular, but I felt the same factors perhaps apply to some of the California songster lyrics. Perhaps there's a real story behind a few of those song lyrics as well.

-Dan Wykes

(source: a chapter on Gottshalk's "Banjo" composition in a dissertation by Laura Moore Pruett, copyright 2007, entitled: "Louis Moreau Gottschalk, John Sullivan Dwight, and the Development of Musical Culture in the United States, 1853-1865", which also has another interesting chapter on the impact of the CW on music, and music performance in the CW).

[Old Cremona]

Re: Gold Rush Songs

The song about the SS Central America certaintly is a bitter one! http://www.manifest-history.org/musi...ralAmerica.htm The author seems a trifle peevish towards the "suits" on that one. Little could he imagine all that treasure would be raised 140 years or so later.

[AZReenactor]

Re: Gold Rush Songs

There is quite a lot of social criticism in the music of the California Gold Rush and business who profited from selling services to the Gold Miners were a common target. Transportation companies were a common target and some other songs along this them are:
Steam Navigation Thieves (1858)
A Ripping Trip (1858)
Coming Around The Horn(1854)
California Stage Company(1858)

[gilham]

Re: Gold Rush Songs

The song about the SS Central America certaintly is a bitter one! http://www.manifest-history.org/musi...ralAmerica.htm The author seems a trifle peevish towards the "suits" on that one. Little could he imagine all that treasure would be raised 140 years or so later.

This was my favorite line from the song.

{And their souls be at Satan's commands}

those are stong words for the time.

[David Swarens]

Re: Gold Rush Songs

What a lovely compilation!

I was going to say "piece of work," as it certainly is, but that is too often used as an insult, so I dodged that.

There are a couple of relatively obtainable works which bring early tune sources together with the words from California songsters, which I would like to recommend.

"The Gold Rush Song Book," Eleanora Black and Sidney Robertson, Colt Press 1940, is mostly from the two Put's songsters (along with some other material), but includes music transcriptions

and

"Songs of the American West" Richard Lingenfelter & Richard A. Dwyer (University of California Press, 1968) has much good material, with early tune sources matched with songster texts, and does a through job of listing sources.

This work is not limited to California, or to the earlier period, but does have a lot of great early material, including songs of and about the Mormans (LDS) and other topical matters!

Both should be in libraries, and are "good 'uns," in my book.

Yours,
David Swarens

[AZReenactor]

Re: Gold Rush Songs

David,
Thank you, that "piece of work" is continuing to grow and develop and should only get better.

I'll have to check out the sources you suggest and really appreciate the suggestion. Right now I am just starting reading Music of the Gold Rush Era (History of Music Project, 1939). I also have checked out from my local public Library Dwyer & Lingenfelter's The Songs Of The Gold Rush (University of California Press, 1965) and Sibler & Robinson's Songs Of the Great American West (Macmillan, 1967).

There is a wealth of pre-war popular music out there just waiting for those willing to mine it out.

[Old Cremona]

Re: Gold Rush Songs

There is a wealth of pre-war popular music out there just waiting for those willing to mine it out.

Well and cleverly put, Troy. I think properly rendered music is a more effective tool for producing the "moment" than just about anything else.

One neat thing about quite a bit of the music and lyrics you've amassed is that they're often set to popular and familiar airs.

[amity]

Re: Gold Rush Songs

Here is a song about the dark side of the Gold Rush. It is called The Dying Californian and was first published in 1850 by Kate Harris, and concerns the arduous sea voyages undertaken to reach California.

Lay up nearer, brother, nearer,
For my limbs are growing cold,
And thy presence seemeth nearer
When thine arms around me fold.
I am dying, brother, dying,
Soon you'll miss me in your berth;
For my form will soon be lying,
'Neath the ocean's briny surf.

Hearken, brother, closely hearken:
I have something I would say,
Ere the vale my visions darken
And I go from hence away.
I am going, surely going,
But my hope in God is strong;
I am willing, brother, knowing
That He doeth nothing wrong.

Tell my father, when you see him,
How in death I prayed for him,
Prayed that I might some day meet him
In a world that's free from sin.
Tell my mother--God assist her,
Now that she is growing old--
That her son would glad have kissed her,
When his lips grew pale and cold.

Listen, brother, catch each whisper
'Tis my wife I speak of now,
Tell, oh tell her how I missed her
When the fever burned my brow.
Hearken, brother, closely listen,
Don't forget a single word:
How in death my eyes did glisten
At the tears her memory stirred.

Tell her she must kiss my children
Like the kiss I last impressed,
Hold them as when last I held them
Held them closely to my breast.
Give them early to their Maker,
Putting all her trust in God,
And he never will forsake her,
For he said so in his Word.

Oh! my children, Heaven bless them,
They were all my life to me:
Would I could once caress them,
Ere I'd sink beneath the sea!
'Twas for them I crossed the ocean,
What my hopes were I'll not tell;
But they gained an orphan's portion,
Yet He doeth all things well;

Tell my sisters I remember
Every kind and parting word,
And my heart has been kept tender,
By the thoughts its memory stirred.
Tell them I ne'er reached the haven
Where I sought the precious dust,
But I gained a port called Heaven
Where the gold will never rust.

Urge them to secure an entrance,
They will find their brother there,
Faith in Jesus and repentance
Will secure for them a share.
Hark, I hear my Saviour speaking,
'Tis--I know his voice so well;
When I'm gone, oh don't be weeping,
Brother, hear my last farewell!


"The lyrics of this tune are based on a letter which told of a New Englander's death at sea while on the way to California. It first appeared in December 1854 in the New England Diadem. The words were set to many different melodies. This one was collected by George Pullman Jackson and printed in his collection Down-East Spirituals and Others (1940).
When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848 it began a national mania and a race for the California Gold fields. There were three main routes; overland via the Oregon and California Trails, by ship to Panama where travelers had to cross the swamps of the isthmus to take another ship, and a sea voyage around Cape Horn. Many adventurers died from starvation, disease, accident, exhaustion or shipwreck. Thousands of others who went in search of gold never found it. The population of California swelled. In 1848 California (then a Mexican province) had a population of approximately 30,000, most of whom were Mexican or Indian. Two years later the population was nearly 200,000 and a state constitution had been adopted."

http://www.contemplator.com/america/dycalif.html

In the Sacred Harp this song is still sung to a different tune, one written in 1859n (not sure the tune on this website is period...)

[Danny]

Re: Gold Rush Songs

David,
Thank you, that "piece of work" is continuing to grow and develop and should only get better...

Not music, so keep or toss, but here's a California story from "The Camp Jester, or, Amusement for the Mess", 71 p., Augusta, Ga. Published by Blackmar & Brother 1864:

A CALIFORNIA STORY.
In the northern part of this State, (California,) is a stream called Yuba river. Across it some enterprising individual built a bridge, and on the banks somebody else built three or four houses. The inhabitants called the place Yuba Dam. Three bars were instantly erected, and the town increased rapidly. About noon one cool day a sojourner in the land passed this flourishing locality, and seeing a long legged specimen of humanity in a red shirt smoking before one of the bars, thus addressed him:

"Hello!"

"Hello!" replied the shirt with vigor, removing his pipe from his mouth.

"What place is this?" demanded the traveller, whose name was Thompson.

The answer of the shirt was unexpected:

"Yuba Dam!"

There was about fifty yards between them and the wind was blowing. Mr. Thompson thought he had been mistaken.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"Yuba Dam," replied the shirt cheerfully.

"What place is this?" roared Mr. Thompson.

"Yuba Dam!" said the shirt in a slightly elevated tone of voice.

"Lookee here!" yelled the irate Thompson. "I asked you politely what place this was, why in thunder don't you answer?"

The stranger became excited. He rose and replied with the voice of an eighty pounder:

"Yuba Dam! Don't you hear that?"

In a minute Thompson, burning with the wrath of the righteous, jumped off his horse and advanced on the stranger with an expression not to be mistaken. The shirt arose and assumed a posture of offence and defence.

Arrived within a yard of him, Thompson said:

"I ask you, for the last time what place is this?"

Putting his hand to his mouth his opponent roared:

"Yuba Dam!"

- Dan Wykes