1
20
78
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https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1219/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-001_charming-beauty-bright_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=0a0c20485957b350fc530e7a259903cf000e7a2e2c26b8c3375d347319ca654e
89918c4eadfbbd2a40ce7518e7f6959f
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Charming Beauty Bright
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
Charming Beauty Bright
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)
Transcription
["Is that recorded on a gramophone?" "Yes, sort of"]<br /><br />I left a<br /><br />[Atwood has difficulty recalling lyrics]<br /> <br />Twas once that I courted a charming lady bright<br />and one her I fixed my own heart delight<br />I coutred her for love, her love I did obtain<br />I scarcely has a reason in love to complain<br /><br />He father proved cruel, so cruel unto me<br />He scarcely would allow me to keep her company<br />He locked her up so tight, he kept her so severe<br />I scarcely had a chance for meet with my dear<br /><br />So then I resolved a soldier for to go<br />To see whether I could forget my love or no<br />But when I got there the army shone so bright<br />It caused me to think of my own heart delight<br /><br />For seven long years I served my king<br />For seven long years I returned home again<br />My heart so full of joy<br /><br />So then I resolved her father's house to go<br />To see whether my love was yet alive or no<br />Her father saw me coming, and said to me and cried,<br />My daugher loves you dearly, but for love she died
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
3:03
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Charming Beauty Bright (OT2003-3014-001)
Alternative Title
An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific.
First Girl I Courted
Charming Beauty Bride
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
MacArthur, Margaret
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-001
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1203/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014b-016_rawsberry-lane_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=9de8656cfa5b54677fcfd0ba56e3bff3b6657d714a2ed39b87b437e01890eba9
a5519bbf4342957689958f86b51289b8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Rawsberry Lane
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
Home Dearie, Home
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)
Transcription
Once as I was walking<br />Through Raspberry Lane<br />I chanced for to meet<br />With a mistress of fame<br />The oak<br /><br />One day [Atwood starts over] one<br /><br />[Atwood sings to himself quietly, MacArthur suggests the version he is singing differs from that which he remembers]<br /><br />Once as I was walking<br />Through Raspberry Lane<br />I chanced for to meet<br />With a mistress of fame<br />The oak<br /><br />One day<br /><br />[Atwood continues singing to self]<br /><br />One day I was walking through Raspberry Lane<br />I chanced for to meet with a mistress of fame<br />For the oak [Atwood: "Now I get it"] is a pretty plant and tree<br />Are now growing green<br />In the North Amerikee<br /><br /> 'Tis home dearie home<br /> And home it shall be<br /> The oak [Atwood stumbles] the oak and the aloe<br /> In our own country<br /><br />It was near midnight<br />And what could he want more<br />When she showed him the way<br />To the old tavern door<br />He called for a candle<br />To light him to bed<br />And likewise a napkin<br />To bind around his head<br /><br /> 'Tis home dearie home<br /> And home it shall be<br /> 'Tis now growing green<br /> In North Amerikee<br /><br />But earl<br /><br />But early next morning<br />This sailor grew bold<br />And into her apron<br />Threw a handful of gold<br />The gold it did glitter<br />Which dazzled her eye<br />She said "Won't you marry me"<br />"Oh no" said he "not I"<br /><br /> Home dearie home<br /> And home it shall be<br /> [Atwood stumbles over this line] The oak and the aloe<br /> In our own country<br /><br />You [Atwood backtracks] so keep yourself single<br />Until the next spring<br />And hear the larks whistle<br />And the nightengale sing<br />My ship is now waiting<br />And in it I must go<br />To my own friend<br />And the friends that I know<br /><br />Now here luck to the sailor<br />Who roam the [Atwood backtracks] who roam o'er the sea<br />Don't wed a foreign lady<br />But keep yourself free<br />With your sky [Atwood backtracks, slightly changing melody] with your sky blue jacket and wide tarpaulin on<br />You reign the salt sea<br />As I often have done<br /><br />[MacArthur suggests that he might have sung an "expurgated version"]<br /><br />References<br /><ul><li>"Raspberry Lane" or "Home, Dearie, Home," typewritten Atwood family lyrics transcribed by Edith Sturgis, owned by Margaret MacArthur, archived at the Vermont Folklife Center.<br /><br /></li>
</ul>
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
3:05
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Rawsberry Lane (OT2003-3014-016)
Alternative Title
An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific.
Raspberry Lane
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-015
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1202/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014b-015_william-ismael_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=49f59fc5693aee9a071c8daf9e561c17e5bab867eced91cd046e6be8bef2d336
7323c334b8e2636c913728ce09d73957
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
William Ismael
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
William Ismael
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
3:05
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
William Ismael (OT2003-3014-015)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-015
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1201/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014b-014_jim-fisk_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=cc7c9cd1bcd8fb2cdd5a11ff4a8b8ee97b09e601734efd3b6e891ece0f15f066
a4235065c182f27c4d971ae40e8c95cc
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Jim Fisk
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
Jim Fisk/Fiske
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)
Laws, Malcolm. <em>Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus. </em>American Folklore Society (Philadelphia, 1950). 195-6.
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
3:25
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jim Fisk (OT2003-3014-014)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-014
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1200/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-013_brave-grant_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=267aab1f50338a143b1a2a7d7738d663c5386f12b5233dfc19254e7c782d1dbf
81f1d4271386d622b567cd7544d0588a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Brave Grant
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
2:29
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Brave Grant (OT2003-3014-013)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-013
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1199/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-012_lord-thomas_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=cbcca37e363c315b54d6306b41fa1886cf1ff63cef031d14040f1c329d026a57
21e1a12aab05ef00fb02190fcb8ce32d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Lord Thomas
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
Lord Thomas
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)
Coffin, Tristam. <em>The British Traditional Ballad in North America</em>. American Folklore Society (Philadelphia, 1950). 74-6.
Transcription
[Singing starts at 0:16]<br /><br />Lord Thomas was a bold forester<br />And a chaser of the king's deer<br />Fair Eleanor was a find woman<br />Lord Thomas loved her dear<br /><br />"Come riddle my riddle dear mother" he said<br />"And riddle us both in one<br />Whether I shall marry with fair Eleanor<br />Or and let the brown girl alone"<br /><br />"The brown girl has got money<br />Fair Eleanor she has none<br />Therefore I charge thee on my blessing<br />To bring the brown girl home"<br /><br />And it befell on a holiday<br />And many more do beside<br />Lord Thomas went to see fair Eleanor<br />That should have been his bride<br /><br />And when he came to fair Eleanor's bower<br />He knocked at the ring<br />Then who was so ready as fair Eleanor<br />To let Lord Thomas in<br /><br />"What news what news Lord Thomas" she said<br />"What news has thou brough unto me"<br />"I've come to bid you to my wedding<br />And that is sad news for thee"<br /><br />"O God forbid Lord Thomas" she said<br />"That such thing should be done<br />I thought to have been the bride myself<br />And thou to have been the bridegroom"<br /><br />"Come riddle my riddle dear mother" she said<br />"And riddle it all in one<br />Whether I shall go to Lord Thomas wedding<br />Or whether I let it alone"<br /><br />"There's many that are our friends daughter<br />And many that are our foes<br />Therefore I charge you on my blessing<br />To Lord Thomas wedding don't go"<br /><br />"There's many that are our friends mother<br />If a thousand were our foes<br />Betide me life betide me death<br />To Lord Thomas wedding I'll go"<br /><br />She clothed herself in gallant attire<br />And her merry men all were seen<br />And as she rode through every place<br />They took her to be some queen<br /><br />When she came to Lord Thomas gate<br />She knocked at the ring<br />And who was so ready as Lord Thomas<br />To let fair Eleanor in<br /><br />He took her by the lily-white hand<br />And lead through the hall<br />And he sat her in the noblest chair<br />Among the ladies all<br /><br />"Is this your bride" fair Eleanor said<br />"Methinks she looks wondrous brown<br />Thou mightest had as fair a woman<br />As 'er trod on the ground"<br /><br />"Despise her not" Lord Thomas he said<br />"Despise her not unto me<br />For better do I love her little finger<br />Than all you of her body"<br /><br />That brown girl had a little pen knife<br />White was both keen and sharp<br />Betwixt the short rib and the long<br />She pricked fair Eleanor's heart<br /><br />"Christ now save me Lord Thomas" she said<br />"Methinks you look wondrous wan<br />Thou used to look as good a color<br />As ever sun shone on"<br /><br />"O art thou blind Lord Thomas" she said<br />"Or can't thou not very well see<br />O dost thou not see mine own heart's blood<br />Run trickling down my knee"<br /><br />"O dig my grave" Lord Thomas replied<br />"Dig it both wide and deep<br />And lay fair Eleanor by my side<br />And the brown girl at my feet"<br /><br />Lord Thomas had a sword by his side<br />And he walked about the hall<br />[Atwood stumbles, then continues] He cutted bride's head from off her shoulders<br />And flung it against the wall<br /><br />He set his sword upon the ground<br />And the point against his heart<br />There never was two lovers true<br />That sooner did depart<br /><br />And out of his grave grew a bright red rose<br />And out of hers grew a briar<br />They grew up to the tall steeple top<br />And withered away together<br /><br />References:<br /><ul><li>"Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor," typewritten lyrics owned by Margaret MacArthur, archived at the Vermont Folklife Center.</li>
</ul>
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
4:16
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lord Thomas (OT2003-3014-012)
Alternative Title
An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific.
Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor
Lord Thomas and Fair Annet
Fair Ellen and the Brown Girl
Lord Thomas's Wedding
The Brown Bride
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-012
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1198/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-011_bird-song_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=24e0bab0c1ed69dcc10daa75e7bd8580528daab9767416ef450aa83fdb9f1a80
e6909eae5a57a78429cc7a390829ee04
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Bird Song
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
The Leatherwing Bat
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)
Transcription
<strong>References</strong>
<ul><li>Laws index number L9. Laws, G. Malcolm. <em>Native American Balladry.</em> University of Texas Press (1964).</li>
<li>Macarthur, Margaret. 2011. "The Search for More Songs from the Hills of Vermont." CDSS News, Summer 2011. <a href="http://www.cdss.org/tl_files/cdss/newsletter_archives/supplements/summer%202011_coldbrook_macarthur.pdf">http://www.cdss.org/tl_files/cdss/newsletter_archives/supplements/summer%202011_coldbrook_macarthur.pdf</a>Last accessed on 04/03/2013.</li>
</ul>
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:23
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bird Song -- Woody Queristers (OT2003-3014-011)
Alternative Title
An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific.
Old Man at the Mill
Crow Song
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-011
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1197/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-010_hard-time_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=92ec88ea024762681f5304f03ceea8b4e091b7dd786558e9f86130c01c3148a9
747d76e330a1e650790527988b8a3e6c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Hard Times
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:46
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Hard Times (OT2003-3014-010)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-010
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1196/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-009_young-charlotte_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=edcf487d1ca645261abb0cc9dd04bd71a316c1a4cc03da9686640640c1e05394
dc041196b87c95ef4dacf450a905c725
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Young Charlotte
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
Young Charlotte
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)
Laws, Malcolm. <em>Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus. </em>American Folklore Society (Philadelphia, 1950). 214-5.
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
3:00
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Young Charlotte (OT2003-3014-009)
Alternative Title
An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific.
Fair Charlotte
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-009
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1195/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-008_willie-at-sea-%5Bblow-gentle-wind-oer-the-dark-blue-sea%5D_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=a88fc5f1b8ee3636c7cad1ebdb3ee3de06d0caae91c786294c49a3bbcfc05ee3
6e9dc04cadafd5d98713c8d9d4d515b9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Willie at Sea -- Blow Gentle Wind O'er the Dark Blue Sea
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:36
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Willie at Sea -- Blow Gentle Wind O'er the Dark Blue Sea (OT2003-3014-008)
Alternative Title
An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific.
Willie's On The Dark Blue Sea
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-008
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1194/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-007_sparrow-told-to-robin_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=f9c71bf2be0cef1a0a3dc1989da521cd644202e0737b602ff60d93cd6354b347
dfe767198114489b617b1de517c8cdb8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Sparrow Told to Robin
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:39
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Sparrow Told to Robin (OT2003-3014-007)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-007
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1193/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-006_springfield-mountain_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=38366f18c82884a165f5f858688ba27d7a21a1b2d947410d79cfb08f1f9057e1
8f07019bc97413e955fe87e1364f1d18
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
The Only Son
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
Springfield Mountain
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)
Laws, Malcolm. <em>Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus</em>. American Folklore Society (Philadelphia, 1950). 213-4.
Transcription
[Singing starts at 0:16]<br /><br />On Springfield Mountain there did dwell<br />A pretty youth I knew full well<br />'Twas elder Merritt's only son<br />A phantom youth near twenty one<br /><br />On Monday morning he did go<br />Into the meadow for to mow<br />He had not mowed quite round the field<br />When a poison serpent bit his heel<br /><br />For he recovered received to see his fatal wound<br />He dropped his scythe upon the ground<br />And straight for home was his intent<br />He cried alound all as he went<br /><br />His friends around him all did hear<br />And none of them to him came near<br />Thinking he did some unknown call<br />He quite quite alone was doom did fall<br /><br />He laid him down composed to rest<br />And crossed his arms upon his breast<br />His mouth and eyes were closen fast<br />And time and thus poor lad he slept at last<br /><br />As as dark and darksome night was coming on<br />The father went to see his son<br />And then his dearest boy was found<br />Dead as a stone upon the ground<br /><br />No consolation did he did he did<br /><br />Not consolation did her him leave<br />That angels might his soul receive<br />He could but know that he was gone<br />His hopes and pride his only son<br /><br /><strong>References:</strong><br /><ul><li>"The only son," typewritten Atwood family lyrics owned by Margaret MacArthur, archived at the Vermont Folklife Center.</li>
<li>Tristam Coffin. In <em>A Good Tale and a Bonnie Tune</em>. Dallas, Texas: Southern Methodist University Press. 1964. p. 202-3.</li>
<li>"The Springfield Ballad". <em>The Middlebury Register</em> (Middlebury, Vermont). May 30, 1855. p. 1.</li>
</ul>
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
2:30
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Springfield Mountain (OT2003-3014-006)
Alternative Title
An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific.
The Only Son
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-006
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1192/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-005_the-day-is-spent-and-gone-mary_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=d2682223c9ecbbb5dac38061236de533c7dc599c667a3be89ea014f19b90fe87
d99dcee5c160151b9703e49084147294
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
The Day is Spent and Gone Mary
The Emigrant's Last Farewell
Transcription
I'm sitting on the stile Mary<br />Where we sat side by side<br />On a bright morning long ago<br />When first you were my bride<br /><br />The grass is springing fresh and green<br />And a lark sang loud and high<br />The red was on your cheek Mary<br />And the love-light in your eye<br /><br />They day is spent and gone Manry<br />The little church stands near<br />The place where we were wed Mary<br />I see the spire from here<br /><br />But the churchyard lies between Mary<br />And my step might break your rest<br />For I've laid you darling down to sleep<br />With your baby on your breast<br /><br />I'm bidding you a long fairwell<br />My Mary kind and true<br />But I'll not forget your darling<br />In the land I'm going to<br /><br />They say there's bread and work for all<br />And the sun shines always there<br />But I'll not forget old Ireland<br />Where it twenty times as fair<br /><br />And oft at evening as I stray<br />I sit and shut my eyes<br />And my thoughts will travel back again<br />To the place where Mary lies<br /><br />And I think I see the little stile<br />While we sat side by side<br />That spring that springing corn and bright May morn<br />When first you were my bride<br /><br />References:<br /><ul><li>"The Emigrant's Last Farewell," typewritten lyrics owned by Margaret MacArthur, archived at the Vermont Folklife Center.</li>
</ul>
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
2:30
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Day is Spent and Gone Mary (OT2003-3014-005)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-005
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1191/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-004_old-mr-grumble_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=6b50bfe91c6d8ca638e620c09e39fab3127d35415737deff4dfceb67e28e964d
7775571d0982ea85d4eca0760826ba22
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Old Mr. Grumble
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
Father Grumble
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
2:05
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Old Mr. Grumble (OT2003-3014-004)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-004
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1190/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-003_johnny-bull_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=44a71c92a99deef41092fcaaaf7af98949cbad4f5e5ca481d532553b175f9f9f
915be59c488827588fbaed071c9f2645
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Johnny Bull
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
Heenan and Sayers
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)
Transcription
[Singing begins at 0:15]<br /><br />It was in merry England, the home of Johnny Bull<br />Where the Briton filled their glasses and drank them brimming full<br />This toast they drank a-saying "He's to the British Brave<br />To the champion of the world over land and over wave"<br /><br />Then Uncle Sam rose up and he look across the main<br />"Is that old Bull I hear a-bellowing out again<br />And does he not remember the giant on in the pond<br />That used to play with lightening when his day's work was done"<br /><br />[Atwood begins line several times unsuccessfully] It was in merry England all in the bloom of spring<br />When the brave British heroes stood ready in the ring<br />To fight with noble Heenan our gallant son of Troy<br />And to try the British muscle on the brave Benetia boy<br /><br />There were two heavy flags that floated o'er the rings<br />On the English was a lion a-ready for a spring<br />On the Yankees was an eagle and a terrible bird she was<br />For she held a bunch of thunderbolts securely in her claw<br /><br />The coppers being thrown out it was then the fight began<br />Two to one on Sears the bets came rushing in<br />They fought light noble heroes til one received a blow<br />And the red crimson tide from the Yankees nose did flow<br /><br />First blood was Johnny Bull and the British shout for joy<br />Which cheers our noble Heenan and our gallant son of Troy<br />A tiger rose within him and the lightning in his eyes<br />Saying "Smile away old English but Tommy mind your eye"<br /><br />That last round of all that this world can never beat<br />The son of Uncle Sam rose champion on his feet<br />His fellows looked upon him as he held him in the air<br />And from his grasp he threw him which made old England stare<br /><br />"Now Uncle Bull remember old Bunker Hill of old<br />Likewise at like Erie twas there you cried so bold<br />Remember too at Yorktown twas there we made you sigh<br />Then beware of a-Yankee muscle Johnny Bull mind your eye"<br /><br />Now all of you brank Yankees that have fame and fortune made<br />Look upon this lofty eagle and never be afraid<br />May the Union stand forever and our flag be unfurled<br />While the Star Spangled Banner floats proudly over the world<br /><br />References:<br /><ul><li>"Johnny Bull," typewritten lyrics owned by Margaret MacArthur, archived at the Vermont Folklife Center.</li>
</ul>
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
4:00
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Johnny Bull (OT2003-3014-003)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-003
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1189/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3014a-002_soldier_s-return_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=8c590a94454d28c9ed7266a98360feb8f21f9c5023f96b9c4079b9185f213ba0
0f5e4cace588378db34230d57af9d675
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Soldier's Return
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
The Soldier's Return
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Burns, Robert. <em>The Complete Works of Robert Burns</em>. Gebbie & Co. (Philadelphia), v. 4, pp. 151-2.
Tune
Name of the musical tune lyrics are sung to. Use when a tune titles is supplied by Scribe only. Maps to DC Alternative Title
The Mill, mill, O.
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
5:42
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Soldier's Return (OT2003-3014-002)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3014, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014-002
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1187">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3014</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1170/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3013a-032_henry-green_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=f05c32b17c8a3bf3c954cfdb7cd26ecb798479deba8ee9f1ce5dc15e971b031f
b3f18979ed87d5f61c4834937077bf3e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Henry Green
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
Henry Green
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)
Laws, G. Malcolm. Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus. The American Folklore Society (Philadelphia, 1950).
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
4:17
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Henry Green (OT2003-3013-032)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3013, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-16
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3013-032
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1138">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3013</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1168/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3013a-030_in-the-township-of-danville_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165450Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=e1d398cb7ed5aaf1658fe60cf18fa508bbabfa21323986592b60ff6b6b6bdcff
7f803241f0dfe751e4328fed0d9e7e50
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
In the Township of Danville
Standard Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by the standard
reference work employed in cataloging or by Composer or Lyricist. Maps to DC Title
Queenstown Warning
Standard Title Reference
Citation, in standard format, for the Standard Title. Maps to DC Relation/IsReferencedBy
Folk Music Index (http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex)<br />Helen Hartness Flanders, George Brown, and Horace Beck. <em>Vermont Folk-songs & Ballads</em>. Folklore Associates, Inc (Hatboro, Pennsylvania, 1968). 29-33.
Laws, G. Malcolm. Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus. The American Folklore Society (Philadelphia, 1950).
Transcription
In the township of Danville I courted my love<br />The truth that I told her, not worthy I was<br />If she looked for riches to turn me away<br />And not to encourage my suit for a day<br /><br />She pause a few moments and made this reply<br />"I look not for riches what take wings and fly<br />"To marry for riches I do not uphold<br />"But wait for contentment more precious than gold"<br /><br />She gave her consent and shortly they came<br />The wife of a poor man and bride of the same<br />Her father and mother both gave their consent<br />And seemed to be willing and likewise content<br /><br />On the eleventh of June she gave me her hand<br />And before Elder Palmer we boldly did stand<br />And like as an angel she stood by my side<br />And promised to take me as her friend and guide<br /><br />References:<br /><ul><li>Helen Hartness Flanders, George Brown, and Horace Beck. <em>Vermont Folk-songs & Ballads</em>. Folklore Associates, Inc (Hatboro, Pennsylvania, 1968). 29-33.</li>
</ul>
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
2:35
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
In the Township of Danville (OT2003-3013-030)
Alternative Title
An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific.
The Queenstown Mourner
Queenstown Warning
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3013, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-16
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3013-030
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1138">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3013</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1166/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3013a-028_school-days_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165451Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=689ab07de72d67d3dfd173ea3da08cb7902183dbdb0d127b8a02ed93adbbae31
4300b4b933da26b420757400c3f04c49
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
School Days
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:36
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
School Days (OT2003-3013-028)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3013, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-16
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3013-028
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1138">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3013</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.
-
https://vtfolklife-collections.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/6/1165/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3013a-027_almost-there_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240328%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240328T165451Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=82ea6fe36b916b5da1f40881a47189e7e04858e7e026fb1331e3588389c07464
1638a7c01684495119ca6e78d9b240f8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Description
An account of the resource
The Margaret MacArthur Collection consists of 16 audio field recordings on analog reel-to-reel tape, approximately 20 linear feet of manuscripts, and over 250 print volumes created and collected by Marlboro, Vermont-based field recordist and performer, Margaret MacArthur (May 7, 1928 – May 26, 2006). The Vermont Folklife Center Archive also holds additional unaccessioned audio recordings, papers and books donated by the MacArthur family.
SCOPE AND CONTENT OF THE COLLECTION
The content of the Margaret MacArthur collection focuses on narrative and lyrical song from New England, the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as materials on dulcimer, harp and zither.
Included among the print materials are scholarly works on folk song, popular song books, sheet music collections, songsters and pamphlets ranging in date from the mid 19th century through the late 20th century.
Manuscript holdings include teaching materials, performance-related notebooks and a complete set of lyric transcriptions given to Margaret by Helen Hartness Flanders drawn from Flanders own collection.
The audio recordings represent Margaret’s work to document and preserve regional song tradition in Vermont and New England. Most of these recordings are performances, although a handful are extended interviews and stories. Between 1960 and 1968 Margaret regularly travelled Vermont and New England with her Wollensak reel-to-reel tape deck in tow with the goal of collecting New England songs and ballads that had been passed down through family lineage and social occasion. In her first months of creating field recording she focused on the older generation’s first-hand knowledge, eliciting performances from Vermonters like John Hooper, James Farrington, and Minnie Stetson–-all over eighty years old at the time. But soon she began interviewing the subsequent generation, asking if they could recall any songs sung by their own parents, friends, or relatives.
During her interviews, Margaret duly noted the geographic origin of the songs she collected, and often attempted to make sense of their narrative meaning and historical context. She recorded people of all ages and backgrounds. From some interviewees, she made only a few recordings; others (such as Lester Fairbanks and Winfred Landman) she revisited to fill additional reels. The performances she captured vary greatly in style and represent many genres: English broadside ballads, yeoman poetry, early American popular music and minstrelsy, schoolyard rhymes, juba dance, and others.
Fred Atwood is the best-represented performer in the collection; his sessions comprise eighty-one of the tracks. His parents, James and Mary Atwood of Dover, knew many old English songs and several American ballads. Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes transcribed some seventy songs which the Atwoods knew, and published twelve of the arrangements in the 1919 collection Songs from the Hills of Vermont. Margaret was well-acquainted with the slim book and aspired to locate the unpublished songs. The daughter of Edith Sturgis, Susan Goodale, was able to provide her with some of their texts and melodies. Ultimately, Margaret tracked down the surviving Atwood sons, Frank and Ernest, in search of a first-hand source.
By recalling his father’s singing and referencing his own longhand lyrical transcriptions, Fred Atwood was able to provide MacArthur with the melodies and words to many songs, ballads, and poems which might have otherwise have been lost along with their historical context. Margaret initially corresponded with him for several months. In 1964 he stayed at her family home in Marlboro for a three-day visit, during which she recorded over sixty songs. Atwood was eighty at the time. She recorded him a second time in 1967, this time at his residence: now an assisted living home in Windham, Connecticut. Upon visiting him again later that year, she was informed by his ex-wife that Atwood had since passed away.
At this time the online version of Margaret MacArthur Collection includes only the content of the 16 field recordings. Each audio recording is available in its entirety as well as in the form of 282 individual entries.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY
In 2003 MacArthur gifted 16 audio tapes to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. Following MacArthur’s death in 2006, her family donated MacArthur’s manuscripts and books to the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. The following year a box of audio recordings, including studio recordings and a large number of identified tapes, were donated as well.
PROCESSING HISTORY
In 2004 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities all 16 of MacArthur’s original field recordings were digitized. VFC Archivist Andy Kolovos worked with MacArthur to identify individual songs and performers on the recordings and created a rough index to the content of the recordings.
In 2010 Middlebury College student Caroline Grego re-housed the materials gifted to MacArthur by Helen Hartness Flanders, removing them from binders and placing them in acid free folders and boxes.
In 2013, we revisited this index, correcting errors, addressing oversights and expanding the descriptions of individual songs to include references to standard song titles. In addition, we used the revised index to create new audio excerpts of individual song performances.
RELATED MATERIALS
A collection of several analog reel-to-reel tapes of recordings made in Kentucky with singer Florence Fowler reside at the Kentucky Historical Society.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) was an American folk musician and a field collector of traditional music in Vermont, Kentucky and New England. Over the course of her life MacArthur, along with her children and friends, released over 10 commercial recordings.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, her family moved multiple times during her childhood following her step-father’s employment in the US Forest Service. As a girl Margaret spent time in Northern Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana Southern Missouri and Southern California, absorbing traditional music in all the communities in which her family lived. In 1944 Margaret entered the University of Chicago where she met, and eventually married, fellow student John MacArthur. In 1948 John accepted a teaching position at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret first moved to Newfane, VT and ultimately settled in a 200 year old farmhouse Marlboro, VT. John and Margaret had five children, John, Patrick, Dan, Gary and Megan. Margaret died at home Tuesday, May 23rd 2006.
As a performer Margaret toured nationally and internationally, appearing regularly at many festivals including Inverness, University of Chicago, Mariposa, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Old Songs, Champlain, Eistedfod at University of Southern Massachusetts, Louisville, Fox Hollow, Southern Acoustic Music, and Pine Mountain, Cranberry, Black Swamp, and Memphis Dulcimer Festivals. Margaret twice performed at the Kennedy Center at the Library Congress, in 2006 and 1997.
In 2002 she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Vermont Arts Council. Yankee Magazine, July/August 2001, selected her CD Vermont Ballads & Broadsides as one of the Yankee Top 40 of all time. In 1988 she received a commendation from the American Association of State and Local History, an honor from the California Traditional Music Society, and the Eistedfod Award from the University of Southern Massachusetts, North Dartmouth. The 1985 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Art Biennial Committee named her a ‘New England Living Art Treasure.’ She received the Midsummer Festival Award in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1984, and a Citation of Recognition from the Vermont Council of the Arts in 1973.
NAMES
Allen, Nellie
Atwood, Fred
Bailey, Alice Snow
Bills, Gertie (Mrs. Emery)
Blanchard, Shirley Curtis
Brown, Hildreth
Bruce, Natalie
Chase, Jean
Chase, Mrs. Philip
Chase, Philip
Clogston, Mary
Curtis, Josiah
Derry, Olive
Edson, Delia Harding
Fairbanks, Lester
Farrington, James
Fish, Lena Bourne
Fletcher, Edna
Graves, Charles
Greenwood, Florence
Hastings, Ethel
Hicks, Dawn
Hinman, Bernice Mrs.
Hooper, John
Humphries, Mrs.
Ingram, Helen
Kuhn, Anna
Lamorder, Henry (Pete)
Landman, Winfred
Linden, Barbara
MacArthur, Megan
Manchester, Letitia
McGinn, Barbara Landman
McGinn, Phyllis Landman
Mondel, Leone
New, Lillian
Nichols, Austin
Nichols, May
Palmer, James
Pierce, Timmis
Putnam, Karma
Reed, Jane
Robinson, Ruby
Schroeder, Henry
Stetson, Minnie
Swain, Martha
Toomey, David
Turner, Frederick
Turner, Tinkie (Katherine)
Waters, Lela
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
West, Mrs.
White, Nora
Wilbur, Frank
Wright, John
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Magaret
Song
Local Title
Title assigned to the song or poem by singer, interviewer or scribe. Maps to DC Title
Almost There
Location
The location of the interview.
Marlboro, Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
3:43
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Almost There (OT2003-3013-027)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Song excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3013, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1964-07-16
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound tape reel (analog)
digital audio file (MP3)
Language
A language of the resource
en
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound recording
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3013-027
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
New England (general region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1138">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3013</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/collections/show/6">Margaret MacArthur Collection -- VFC2003-0007</a>. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.