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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
Sound
A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio.
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
OT2003-3002
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Mondel, Leone
Robinson, Ruby
Stetson, Minnie
Watson, Mrs. George
Watson, Susan
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
sound recording -- 1 sound tape reel (Polyester) : analog ; full track, mono. ; 4 in., 1/4 in. tape
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 OT2003-3002
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 (region)
Vermont (state)
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Vermont Folklife Center
Has Part
A related resource that is included either physically or logically in the described resource.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/926" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">OT2003-3002-001 -- Pony Boy</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/927" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">OT2003-3002-002 -- On the Banks of the Old Green River</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/928" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">OT2003-3002-003 -- The Dumb Wife</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/929" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">OT2003-3002-004 -- Old Mr. Grumble</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/930" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">OT2003-3002-005 -- Behind the Parlor Door</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/931" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">OT2003-3002-006 -- She Said She Wasn't Hungry</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/932" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">OT2003-3002-007 -- Merry Musician</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/933" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">OT2003-3002-008 -- Uncle Jacob</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/934" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">OT2003-3002-009 -- Confirmed Old Maid</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/935" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">OT2003-3002-010 -- And a Little Child Shall Lead Them</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.
-
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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/6/1210/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3016-006_i-love-you-mandy_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045807Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=c04969fce858324214c08d236ae932030374efc1c0a31879d5dc173871d97adf
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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
I Love You Mandy
Location
The location of the interview.
Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:50
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
I Love You Mandy (OT2003-3016-006)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3016, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fletcher, Edna
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1968-05-06
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 OT2003-3016-006
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/1204">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3016</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/6/1209/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3016-005_cannibal-queen_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045807Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=120b74cbe31b37ea156cdcfc7fc41a6a491dce61b81b682028bc7384c7906d8e
affdf662ff8686dd0982aebc7089aeeb
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
Cannibal Queen
Location
The location of the interview.
Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:52
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
Cannibal Queen (OT2003-3016-005)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3016, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fletcher, Edna
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1968-05-06
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 OT2003-3016-005
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/1204">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3016</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/6/1208/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3016-004_under-the-umbrella-tree_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045807Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=30f2df1003eca252b9e9578593de7d2801dd101c94e08185914b2a6fa5c029f7
8d70d666365b8522a265bab4219f8a28
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
Under the Umbrella Tree
Location
The location of the interview.
Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:08
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
Under the Umbrella Tree (OT2003-3016-004)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3016, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fletcher, Edna
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1968-05-06
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 OT2003-3016-004
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/1204">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3016</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/6/1207/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3016-003_hush-here-comes-the-dream-train_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045807Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=1c334869072569e6311caa45039859c22b6f4cc086daf7d294a4ab84d730be4a
adf34a065711ff0014146003621350c5
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
Hush! Here Comes the Dream Train
Location
The location of the interview.
Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:40
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
Hush! Here Comes the Dream Train (OT2003-3016-003)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3016, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fletcher, Edna
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1968-05-06
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 OT2003-3016-003
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/1204">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3016</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/6/1206/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3016-002_little-black-moustache_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045807Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=959d8f280e5589cc48da30c09560dccd2f29775a747d172690e1f9cf638ace5b
f9328b0e4539cd23906b4620dd54f760
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
Little Black Moustache
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
Little Black Mustache
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.
Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:12
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
Little Black Moustache (OT2003-3016-002)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3016, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fletcher, Edna
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1968-05-06
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 OT2003-3016-002
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/1204">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3016</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/6/1205/vfc2003-0007_ot2003-3016-001_handsome-jimmy-brown_sh.mp3?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAW2BZMHQCSRC2LNUC%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045807Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=63ee8c61a690ddc489615a37bcb0f6db6ca4f0ecd5e169e5848bc92a956c94dd
3fc39b623fb64f9a4d29148f4407c775
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
Handsome Jimmy Brown
Location
The location of the interview.
Vermont
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:41
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
Handsome Jimmy Brown (OT2003-3016-001)
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview excerpted from audio recording OT2003-3016, part of VFC2003-0007 Margaret MacArthur Collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fletcher, Edna
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1968-05-06
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 OT2003-3016-001
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/1204">VFC2003-0007 OT2003-3016</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.
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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
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
OT2003-3016
Subject
The topic of the resource
folksongs (AFS ET)
Folk songs, English--Vermont (LCSH)
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording created by Margaret MacArthur as a part of her ongoing project to document traditional song in Vermont. Part of the Margaret MacArthur Collection (VFC2003-0007)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Atwood, Fred
MacArthur, Margaret
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1968-05-06
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
MacArthur, Margaret
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
1 sound tape reel (Polyester) : analog ; full track, mono. ; 4 in., 1/4 in. tape
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 OT2003-3016
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
Has Part
A related resource that is included either physically or logically in the described resource.
<a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1205" target="_blank">OT2003-3016-001 -- Handsome Jimmy Brown</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1206" target="_blank">OT2003-3016-002 -- Little Black Moustache</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1207" target="_blank">OT2003-3016-003 -- Hush! Here Comes the Dream Train</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1208" target="_blank">OT2003-3016-004 -- Under the Umbrella Tree</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1209" target="_blank">OT2003-3016-005 -- Cannibal Queen</a> <br /><a href="https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/1210" target="_blank">OT2003-3016-006 -- I Love You Mandy</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.
-
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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%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045807Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=7b44103aa9d763899093d2d389de833d39af6b1b0599bacc2b09cad11ce78b10
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%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045807Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=40ca51d2edb98901a9ee4354312f730cac768c8c981ccfe0a9022c3a5e9e5bdb
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%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045807Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=7b3ba1562e57aca1fb3450e830ad66dda98e6254dfbc7192ceaf3c10f7a42b8c
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%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045807Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=6d6ab0197b321fc15a178d15126ce7643ebe4c43f9d37afb331b4151095cc3e9
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%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045807Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=f560fdbbfeb783b8f2fe96ac2cb98e4307270d6c432d6fde5917a9dc991769ad
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%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045808Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=5197c2e22d1f74e44b1cd40c731204a7a441d023f3b22623dc14c48fa43b59a5
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%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045808Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=23f4d45ad07f1d7d9a07e57f2043eb5abcd6e74a2938b0f1c9d1865a2fff0d37
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%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045808Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=ec406fc3162f08a3a546e5d0b0f263221ec5d4f92730656fea9c44eaaf128526
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%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045808Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=92a96145bed31b2e7e38cfe67482ce97325a6b2a69b6190ba73bd0a5a27a99aa
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%2F20240329%2Fus-east-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240329T045808Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=1afcf7133e33204bf3f755e5370d760a06f2d47805ce03b13e0517ca9f8a22d5
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.