If we could go back to pioneer Springfield, Chicago or Shawneetown, we would be immersed in sound. In the background we could hear the rumble of wagon wheels, creak and jingle of harness, nickering and cackle of domestic creatures, and ... everywhere ... people's voices raised in song, singing gently to themselves as they worked a loom near an open window, more boisterously as circuit-riding lawyers relaxed after their day in court and loudest of all as the faithful and fervent gathered at an outlying camp meeting ground. We'd hear songs like "Barb'ry Allen," the Anglo-Celtic ballad of love turned wrong, or "Goin' Down to Cairo," an old fiddle tune with new words for people who shipped their produce out by boat and reveled in the easy pleasures of a wide-open river town:

Going down to Cairo,
Goodbye, goodbye.
Going down to Cairo ...

Gonna black them boots
And make 'em shine,
Goodbye, Liza Jane.

As minstrel shows grew popular in the 1840s, their songs were printed and sheet music sold in practically every village and crossroads store ... songs like "Old Dan Tucker" and "Jimmy crack corn, and I don't care, my master's gone away."

What we now know as American popular culture had its beginnings in the same years that Illinois was settled. If we lingered on a residential street in Springfield or Chicago, we might hear a pianoforte playing an air like "Ye Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon" by Robert Burns or "The Minstrel Boy" by Irish poet Thomas Moore. We would hear the old shape-note hymns, words by Isaac Watts or Charles Wesley, often set to Anglo-Celtic folk tunes. Everywhere we would hear hymns, and not just on Sundays. At the first public hanging in Sangamon County, in 1828, a convicted murderer sang a sturdy text by Watts:

Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound!
Mine ears, attend the cry:
'Ye living men, come view the ground
Where you must shortly lie ...'

No doubt the crowd gathered in the public square (now Springfield's Old State Capitol Plaza) to watch the hanging was suitably edified. More commonly, of course, sacred songs were heard at services and camp meetings. But it was a religious age, and hymns were sung everywhere ... often to the same melodies as secular ballads and fiddle tunes ... as they were learned in singing schools once the crops were in.

The world of 19th-century Illinois music is recreated by Peter Ellertsen, who teaches English and journalism at Springfield College in Illinois, in two presentations orinigallly crafted for the Road Scholars program of the Illinois Humanities Council. Pete now gives the talks on a free-lance basis for a negotiable fee. A shape-note singer, he developed a longstanding interest in early American music and popular culture as a graduate student at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he earned an M.A. in history and a Ph.D. in English. He has studied traditional music and mountain dulcimer at Appalachian State University, Western Carolina University, the John C. Campbell Folk School and the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College, as well as Sacred Harp shape-note singing schools.

The presentations

• Ballads, Bobby Burns, Hymns and Show Tunes. Before the day of electronic media, people made their own music. Illinois' old settlers loved dances, corn shuckings, "play parties," singing schools, camp meetings and making music at home after the crops were in. Like their contemporaries nationwide, early 19th-century Illinoisans enjoyed Anglo-Celtic ballads fiddle tunes, folk hymns, minstrel show ditties, arrangements by songsters like Robert Burns and Thomas Moore, and the parlor music that came to shape the nation's taste in the early days of American popular culture.In this presentation, I demonstrate songs and other musical points on the Appalachian dulcimer.
• Shape-Note Singing Schools in Frontier Illinois. During the early 1800s, southern Appalachian folk hymns and compositions in four-part harmony by New England "tunesmiths" flourished in Illinois, as young people flirted and learned to sing from shape-note tune books like The Missouri Harmony. Typically held at night after the crops were in, singing schools were an important social outlet. Out of the shape-note tradition came standards like as "Amazing Grace" and "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name." The music later was celebrated by Illinois authors Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg, and by 20th-century American composers like Charles Ives and Virgil Thompson. I demonstrate how youngsters learned to "sing the shapes" and lead the audience in a folk hymn and a camp meeting song.

Want to see more about popular music in 19th-century Illinois? Click here for links, sources and basic references on the music of the day. The links below will take you to other pages on my faculty Web site.

Appalachian dulcimer and music at New Salem

• Pick 'n Noter Page. Web page on playing the Appalachian dulcimer as it was heard in the Southern highlands before the folk revival.
• Historical notes on the dulcimer. From 1618 (on a German forerunner called the scheitholt) until the folk revivals of the 1950s and '60s.
• 'Dulcimer: Home-made Southern upland music.' Reprinted from The Picayune, volunteer newsletter at Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site.
• Prairieland Dulcimer Strings. Information on a group of mountain dulcimer players who gather Thursday nights Veterans Parkway and Jefferson in Springfield.

Shape-note music and Sacred Harp singing in Illinois

• Singing the Sacred Harp in downstate Illinois. Web page with links to resources on the World Wide Web in several related shape-note singing traditions.
• Shape-note singing in the Sangamon country. An account of singing at New Salem from The Missouri Harmony in the 1800s and The Sacred Harp in the 1990s.
• American Folk Hymnody in Illinois, 1800-1850. A paper I delivered in October 2000 at the Conference on Illinois History sponsored by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.

By Peter Ellertsen. Click here for a bio sheet and photo. Please feel free to contact me at peterellertsen@yahoo.com or by snail mail/telephone at: Springfield College in Illinois, 1500 N. 5th St., Springfield, IL 62702, tel. 217 525-1420 ext. 519.

The contents of this page reflect the work and opinions of the faculty member who constructed it and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Springfield College in Illinois. The hymn Bound for Canaan ("When shall I be delivered ...") is from the on-line Southern Harmony in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at http://www.ccel.org/s/southern_harmony/sharm/home.html. Dennis Hanks remembered singing it as a boy growing up in Abraham Lincoln's family. Photo of Sacred Harp singing on Oct. 29, 2000, in Beardstown courtesy of Mike Veech