Yet Another Joe Bowers
by Louise Pound
Western Folklore, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Apr., 1957), pp. 111-120
Yet Another Joe Bowers
by LOUISE POUND
PROBABLY NO AMERICAN SONG in folk tradition, with the possible exception of "Frankie and Johnny," has had so many divergent origins attributed to it as "Joe Bowers," an overlanders' song of "The Girl I Left Behind Me" pattern. It was widely known in the Gold Rush era and still lingers here and there in folk memory. Some have thought Joe Bowers a real person from Pike County, Missouri, who crossed the plains to California with the gold seekers. Others believe him to be merely a typical figure of the time popularized by the ballad. "Joe Bowers" has been termed "the best-known song of its day" and as such its authorship has intrigued folklorists. By this time it has developed a sizable bibliography of newspaper, magazine and other matter. Yet the facts of its composition and launching have never been established.
Now comes yet another candidate on the horizon for acceptance as its composer and popularizer. His credentials are good but, as for other originators brought up, they are not final. Meantime, while looking for evidence regarding the hero of the ballad and its composer, I have found that the author of "Betsy from Pike"-often called its companion piece, the authorship of which has been termed unknown-can be stated with certainty; and also with certainty can be named the originator of the so-called "Molly group" of comic versions of the familiar old "Springfield Mountain" ballad telling of the death of a youth from the bite of a "pizen sarpent." More about these two identifications later.
In two notes in the Southern Folklore Quarterly[1] I reviewed the ascriptions of authorship that had been brought forward for "Joe Bowers" and added a new one found in Merwin's Life of Bret Harte (1911). Perhaps it is in place here to repeat briefly in a preliminary way the leading possibilities hitherto advanced.
In the Pike County, Missouri, News of June 17, 1899, Judge T. J. C. Fagg of Louisiana, Missouri, identified as the composer of the song a man named Johnson, who was the head of a minstrel troupe known as Johnson's Pennsylvanians. Johnson was a composer and singer of songs and a comedian, and he was the author of a small paper publication, Johnson's Original Comic Songs. He states in the Preface of his first edition (1858, dated from the Melodeon Theater, one of the oldest in San Francisco) that his troupe toured the mining camps; this was in addition to their singing in the Melodeon Theater. This edition does not contain "Joe Bowers," but his second edition (1860) does, and this has been assumed to be its first appearance in print. Johnson's texts give words but not airs. In general the composers of popular songs of the day fitted their words to well-known tunes; the creators of the music need not be sought. Later, in a letter to W. E. Connelley dated October 5, 1906, Judge Fagg shifted his position from Johnson himself to a member of his troupe, a John Woodward, a variety actor and singer associated with Johnson's Pennsylvanians.
Judge Fagg went to California early in this century and while there he tried hard to find the author of the song. He said he had the testimony in a sworn statement of an old actor connected with the Melodeon Theater who said that Woodward, a member of Johnson's minstrels in 1849 and the early fifties, wrote the song for Johnson and that it was first brought out in the Melodeon in 1850. The old actor declared himself to be well acquainted with Woodward, who was a variety actor and singer. Later Woodward sang the song up and down the coast. Fagg said that he got the same statement from another man connected with the minstrel troupe.
To continue the list of conjectures, Harry Norman affirmed in the St. Louis Republic for May 27, 1900, about a year after Judge Fagg's first statement, that there was an ox driver Joe Bowers who did have a brother Ike and a sweetheart named Sally, as in the ballad, and who joined the Argonauts from Pike County. Frank Smith, he said, a fellow traveler, composed the song concerning Joe. Evidently Judge Fagg did not accept this account but, as just stated, transferred his ascription to a member of Johnson's troupe. Of late years Fagg's ascription has reigned in favor.[2]
Fullest treatment of the song is to be found in W. E. Connelley's Doniphan's Expedition to California and Mexico, an ambitious and rather ebullient book printed at Topeka, Kansas in 1907. The first chapter is headed "Joe Bowers," whom Connelley characterizes as the hero of the era, personifying the typical qualities of the western adventurer.[3] Connelley even reprints a hypothetical, idealized picture of Bowers, made by the artist P. B. McCord for an article on Joe Bowers by the former Congressman from Missouri, Champ Clark (1851-1924) in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. In a footnote to his first chapter Connelley states that William Kinkaid of Bowling Green, Missouri, told Clark that Joe Bowers was drawn from a man named Abner McElwee of Pike County who went to California in 1849. With him were two of his nephews, one of whom was the brother Ike of the song. The plot of the song, he said, was imaginary. Champ Clark himself felt sure that Mark Twain was the author, but his belief found no acceptance. Mark did not cross the plains until after 1861 and the song was already floated and popular before this; and he was not in California until 1864. Except for the dates he need not have been ruled out summarily; he could have composed the song from Pike County, Missouri, stimulus. There is no mention of the trek itself in the song. Mark composed humorous songs; but he was involved in other activities in the later forties and early fifties and did not yet have western interests. I have not been able to see Clark's newspaper article in the Globe-Democrat, or to learn its exact date, but I would like to know his grounds for his belief in Mark Twain's authorship. Had Mark written so well-known a song, mention of it would hardly have escaped his many biographers and bibliographers.
Connelley stated further in his footnote that Meredith T. Moore of Cedar City, Missouri, who crossed the plains in 1849 and again in 1852, heard the song at least as early as 1854 and perhaps a long time before that. Moore thought it possible that a man known as Squibob ("true name unknown") may have written the song. He also gave Connelley a statement by a friend of his that the song was written by a Piker Joe Bowers, whose name is not remembered and who went to California and Mexico with Doniphan; that it was sung by soldiers; and that afterward one English of New Jersey rewrote the poem, changing it to suit him, and retained the old tune that the Piker had used. He said further that the man from Pike County known as Joe Bowers is buried in Chillicothe, Missouri. Connelley could not verify this.
When reading Merwin's Life of Bret Harte, 1911, I came on a passage stating that a certain Frank Swift composed the song when he was a member of a party of two hundred from Pike County, Missouri. The organizer and leader of the expedition was Captain McPike and among the men was an ox driver named Joe Bowers, an "original," a "greenhorn," and a "goodfellow" who was seeking a fortune for his Missouri sweetheart. Frank Swift, who afterward attained a reputation as a journalist, made the song about Bowers during a day's journey. It caught the fancy of the party, was sung by them, and was carried to California where the men dispersed in all directions, carrying it with them. It was printed in cheap form in San Francisco in 1856 and was sung by Johnson's minstrels in the Melodeon. The date of the composition was 1849 and the date of its printing, in Merwin's account, is four years earlier than Johnson's printing of it in the second edition of his song book, 1860.
Merwin's account of the date of composition of the poem and Meredith Moore's account to Connelley agree well with that of Francis Withee of Stella, Nebraska, from whom I had a good text of the ballad in 1915. Withee crossed the plains in 1849 and later as a freighter on the Nebraska City-Denver trail. He said the song was certainly in existence as early as 1854 and was a freighter's favorite in the sixties. Now comes still another candidate for whom a good case can be made as the singer and popularizer of the song. A letter from Mr. Robert E. Kerr of Lake Charles, Louisiana, suggested my writing for information about "Joe Bowers" to John W. Winkley of Walnut Creek, California, a Methodist clergyman who is interested in the history and lore of his region. Mr. Winkley is curator at the Pacific School of Religion at Berkeley and has been active in the Cailfornia-Nevada Methodist Historical Society. From him I learned of a candidate with excellent credentials as the composer of "Joe Bowers"; yet difficulty as to dates and the failure to find the ballad included in his published songsters leave his authorship unestablished.
This candidate is John A. Stone, known as "Old Put" ("put it here, put it there"). His small group of singers called themselves the Sierra Nevada Rangers, toured the mining camps as did Johnson's Pennsylvanians, and sang at the Melodeon Theater. Stone issued two small paper songsters, printed in San Francisco, that contained his original songs fitted to popular airs. That the songs were unmistakably of his own composition is clear from his prefaces and from references to him as a contributor in the songbooks of others. Stone entered his booklets for registry, according to the practice of the time, established by Act of Congress.
Here is information given me by J. W. Winkley after my letter of inquiry. I was surprised to learn that there was any question as to the authorship of the "Joe Bowers" song. The author is well established in the little town of Greenwood on the Nevada border and in that area of the Motherlode country as John A. Stone. Some years ago I knew some old people who knew and heard "Joe Bowers" sing his songs. He lies buried in Greenwood Cemetery. Until a few years ago a tiny slab of slate marked the grave.... It simply had three letters on it- J.A.S., for John A. Stone. I put a story in the Oakland Tribune Feature page, remarking that it was a shame that the grave did not have an appropriate headstone. A Monument owner wrote to me saying that if I would furnish the inscription for it he would provide a granite marker and erect it on the grave. This was done and I went with him to Greenwood where a small company of neighboring folk assembled. They knew through their parents of "Joe Bowers" and thanked me for obtaining the beautiful marker for his grave. My wording was as follows: John A. Stone, Early California Song Writer; Author of Put's Golden Songster, and Put's Early California Songster. Crossed the Plains from Pike County, Missouri in 1849.[4] Died January 23, 1864.
Many of his neighbors never knew that he had any other name. Once in a while "Joe Bowers" would take part in a community social affair for which he would put on a song and dance. His songs were sung by thousands of the gold miners at their work and in their lonely cabins. A passage from the Preface to Old Put's Original California Songster, entered in 1854 and issued in 1855, repeated in his second edition, reads:
Having been a miner himself for a number of years, he (the author) has had ample opportunities of observing, as he has equally shared, the many trials and hardships to which his brethren of the pick and shovel have been exposed, and to which, and in general they have so patiently and so cheerfully submitted .... Hence ever since the time of his crossing the plains, in the memorable year of '50, he has been in the habit of noting down a few of the leading items of his experience, and clothing them in the garb of humorous though not irreverent verse.... In conclusion he would state, that after having sung them himself at various times and places, and latterly with the assistance of a few gentlemen known by the name of the Sierra Nevada Rangers, the songs have been published at the request of a number of friends; and if the author should thereby succeed in contributing to the amusement of those he is anxious to please, enlivening the long tedious hours of a miner's winter fireside, his pains will not be unrewarded.
Margaret Kelly, deceased, of Greenwood, California, was said to be collecting material concerning Stone ("Joe Bowers") perhaps with a view to writing of his life and work. Her sister, living at Greenwood, stated that her manuscript was at an attorney's office at Placerville. Mr. Winkley looked it up in the summer of 1955 and found it to be mainly a copy of old songs which John A. Stone, under the names of "Joe Bowers" and, at times, "Old Put," sang at Murderer's Bar on the middle American River in the 1850's. Miss Kelly had collected them under the title "Murderer's Bar Collection of California Folk Songs as sung by John A. Stone." She briefly added the opinion of a number of old-timers in the Motherlode country that Stone, known everywhere as "Joe Bowers," wrote the song by that name but after the publication of his "Old Put" songsters. This seems unlikely since it would postpone the advent and currency of the song till near the sixties instead of in the earlier fifties.
The chief consideration barring ready acceptance of Old Put's authorship of "Joe Bowers" is that in neither his first songbook of twenty-nine pieces (1855), nor in its second edition (1858), which adds eleven new songs, nor in his Golden Songster (1858), made up of more new songs does "Joe Bowers" appear. Apparently the song was first printed, by Johnson, in 1860. Old Put's songsters were very popular. His second edition of his Original California Songster advertises the first as selling 18,000 copies, and there was a fifth edition of his songs in 1868. Unlike other mid-century songsters, Stone's included no popular favorites of the period such as "Darling Nellie Gray," "The Dying Californian" ("by permission of Oliver Ditson, Boston"), "Marching through Georgia," etc. Stone printed texts of his own authorship only. When "Joe Bowers" appeared in Johnson's booklet of 1860 it was capitalized in the Table of Contents as were a few other songs, among them Stone's "Poker Jim," a testimony, no doubt, to their especial popularity. "Joe Bowers" appeared also in Pacific Song Book, an independent publication in 1861. Both books printing it announced that songs by Old Put were included, but they did not state which were his or the airs to which they were sung. Old Put's pieces may be identified by their inclusion in his own publications.
If Stone wrote "Joe Bowers" after the publication of his songsters then the testimony of Connelley's Meredith Moore who gave its composition as in 1849, of the Nebraskan Francis Withee, of the Merwin account, which assigned it to 1849 and its printing to 1856, and Judge Fagg's date for Woodward's singing of it in 1850 must be rejected. In view of its popularity it is hard to believe that the song was not printed until 1860. The likeliest and most acceptable possibility, it seems to me, when all the conflicts of testimony are examined, is that the song was printed in the early fifties in broadside or penny song-sheet form; that is, printed independently, text not air. This would account for Stone's omission of it, had he composed it, from his Original California Songster in 1855 and his Golden Songster in 1858.
As stated already, he did not repeat what had been printed but included only his new songs. Or, of course, he might have omitted the song because it was not his, or not wholly his. Broadside ballads were printed liberally throughout the century. Even in our time I have seen them on sale here and there or have had single sheets given to me. With the coming of the radio and the phonograph the institution is probably obsolete now. And it is broadside ballad texts that perish soonest in comparison with those in songbooks. Accepting the hypothesis of its early printing, that so popular a song should be reprinted in a songbook of 1860 and in many later ones seems inevitable.[5]
The versions of the ballad gathered in our century from many western and southern states do not vary much. The song as recovered has been pretty stable; the variations are mainly in length and language.[6] The texts might well derive from a single printed source which, though no longer preserved, launched it into tradition. It seems unlikely that the ballad was of group composition such as is pictured in some accounts of it, an origin once believed in for most traditional folk pieces. If it was of spontaneous multiple composition by overlanders or miners it is possible of course that professional singers such as Woodward or Stone might have taken it over in its shifting, drifting state, given it stable and available shape, sung it up and down the coast, and popularized it. But songs of group launching and scattered regional traditionalizing result at best in such variable plotless pieces as the soldiers' "Hinky Dinky Parlez-vous" of World War I. That "Joe Bowers" was floated by minstrel singers seems much more likely.
The songbooks that print "Joe Bowers" do not identify the air to which it was sung. The opening "My name it is Joe Bowers" follows a stock line in first-person narrative pieces, such as "My name it is John T. Williams," "My name it is Sam Hall," or "My name it is Charles Guiteau," in the later song on the death of Garfield.
Whether or not we can be certain that Old Put composed "Joe Bowers," it is certain that he composed "Betsy from Pike" which appears in his Golden Songster of 1858. He enters it as to be sung to the air of "Villikens and His Dinah."[7] Both "Betsy from Pike" and "Joe Bowers" were sung at the Melodeon by Old Put as well as by Johnson's Minstrels. It has long been noted by collectors that "Betsy from Pike" was printed in Old Put's Golden Songster, but it was not realized that this testified that the song was of his composition. It escaped notice that, unlike other songsters of the day, Old Put's included only his own pieces.
The "Squibob" mentioned by Champ Clark's friend Meredith T. Moore was not "a miner." He was, of course, George H. Derby, 1823-1861, who was known as a wit and practical joker and as the West Coast's premier humorist before Mark Twain. Moore's mention of him deserved following up, I thought. Derby was a member of the U. S. Bureau of Topography. He was sent to California early in 1849 and he conducted several exploring expeditions in the gold country of California. In 1853 he went to San Diego and in 1856 he was transferred to the East. Some of his newspaper and other sketches appeared as early as 1853. He signed himself then as John P. Squibob. He printed characteristic sketches in Phoenixiana, published in New York in 1855, now signing himself John Phoenix. Other matter by him was published posthumously in Squibob Papers, 1864, in New York. Had Derby composed "Joe Bowers," however, it would not have escaped his biographers and bibliographers; and it would have appeared, since it was so popular, in either of his books, Phoenixiana or Squibob Papers. Curiously one of the papers in the former work was entitled "Life and Times of Joseph Bowers.
Collated from the unpublished papers by John P. Squibob. By J. Bowers Jr. Vallecitos, Hyde and Seekim, 1854." This hoax piece seems to have no connection, however, save the name, with the Argonaut hero. Derby was quite capable of composing and floating the "Joe Bowers" ballad. He was interested in comic songs and composed some himself. In Squibob Papers was printed a comic version of the old "Springfield Mountain" ballad in which a youth died from being bitten by a "pizen sarpent." Seemingly Derby's travesty was the parent, or perhaps merely another example, of the "Molly group" (socalled by Phillips Barry) of comic variants of the ballad.
The singing of parody versions of well-known songs seems to have had great popularity on the variety stage of the middle of the century. Another instance is the comic version of the old song of "The Frog and the Mouse." The ballad of "Young Charlotte" or "The Frozen Girl" long thought to be a "folk product" and treated as such by ballad specialists turned out to be-as shown by Phillips Barry, changing an earlier view advanced by him-the work, at least in part, of the professional humorist, Seba Smith. Probably more attention should be given to Merwin's Frank Swift as a possible competitor for Old Put as the author of the western ballad. Swift seems to be, as we have seen, the same person as the Frank Smith of the St. Louis newspaper account of 1900. The Missouri Historical Review, XXXVI (January, 1942), 206-208, reprints in its section headed "History not Found in Text Books" an account previously published by R. S. Hawkins in the Independence Kansas City Spirit of March, 1909.
Hawkins goes back to the St. Louis newspaper statement by Harry Norman in 1900 that the persons of the song and their story were real. Elaborating, he serves up a pretty and romantic story of Joe Bowers, aged 20, and Sally Black, aged 16, youthful neighbors along Salt River in Pike County. Joe, he said, joined the Argonauts in 1849, hoping to make a fortune for Sally. He started as a bull driver, but was soon promoted to be a sort of aide-de-camp to Captain McPike, organizer of the expedition. In the company, it is said, were "men of intelligence and learning such as Dr. James W. Campbell perhaps the most noted divine of his day in Missouri and Frank Smith afterward governor of California."
The Merwin version of the story has, as we have seen, Frank Swift instead of the Frank Smith of Harry Norman. Young Joe told his troubles to his fellow traveler, Frank Swift, and the latter wrote the verses "perhaps as a joke on Joe." Judge Fagg (1900) and Connelley (1907) did not accept the early newspaper account but brought up other identifications; for instance, the naming by Connelley's friend William Kinkaid of an Abner McElwee, "a tall old bachelor" who went west with the Pikers and was the leader of the expedition and who served as the original of the hero of the ballad. The Merwin account, like that of Hawkins, named Captain McPike as the leader. It termed Joe Bowers, who joined the party, an "original," a "greenhorn," a "goodfellow," and stated that the song telling of him was made by Frank Swift, a brilliant youth, later a journalist, who recited or sang to a popular air the stanzas of the ballad.
Of especial interest is the naming in the Hawkins account of Frank Smith (Swift) as later a "governor of California." There never was a governor of California named Swift; but the Dictionary of American Biography recounts the life of a John Franklin Swift, 1829-1891, who was born in Bowling Green, Pike County, Missouri, who crossed the plains in 1852, became prominent and influential and was nominated for governor in 1880, losing the election by a few hundred votes. He was later ambassador to Japan. Swift was a regent of the University of California, 1872-1888. The life of Ambassador Swift might well have further examination. One could understand that as a dignified political personage he might not care to play up his possible part in the composition and launching of "Joe Bowers." There seems, however, to be nothing in the materials about Swift in the California State Library to connect him with the popular ballad. Nor did California have a governor named Frank Smith.
Stone deserves his tombstone and epitaph at Greenwood, California, but whether he was called "Joe Bowers" by his fellow villagers for his authorship of the song, or because of his singing of it, or because all Missourians from Pike County were likely to be called Joe Bowers in those days is not certain. If it was printed in broadside form early in the fifties, as was more than likely, it could have emerged with especial appropriateness from the author of the later "Betsy from Pike." The tales of Frank Smith and Frank Swift are not far apart; they seem to be of the same person. Woodward may have been a stage name taken by a member of a minstrel troupe; witness "Old Put" taken by Stone. Both Woodward and Stone sang at the Melodeon in the early fifties; but they were more likely to have been rivals than the same person.
Mark Twain is out, "Squibob" is out, English is out, Smith or Swift has never won acceptance. Stone now seems the likeliest candidate. Demonstrably a composer and singer of humorous songs of the Gold Rush era and of miners' life, with years of conspicuous recognition at Greenwood and now a tombstone there, he is well in the foreground. Since Judge Fagg's John Woodward had but two vouchers and Stone many times that number, the latter seems now to deserve primary recognition, with Woodward and Smith-Swift perhaps next in preference. Stone was easily eligible as a fertile composer of comic songs and, whether or not he made it, he certainly popularized the song.
Additional evidence may turn up someday. Or the real origin of the song may never be known. All that we can yet term established is that the floating of "Joe Bowers" is especially associated with the old Melodeon Theater in San Francisco, that it was remarkably successful on the minstrel stage, and that it made its way into many regions, carried there by professional singers and their broadsides and songbooks and by singing freighters, travelers, and soldiers.[8]
Lincoln, Nebraska
------------------------------
Footnotes:
1. Southern Folklore Quarterly, I (September, 1937), 13-15; and II (1938), 131-133.
2. See H. M. Belden, Ballads and Songs of Missouri (Columbia, Mo., 1940), pp. 341-343, and MacEdward Leach, The Ballad Book, 1955, pp. 751-752.
3. In his enthusiasm for Joe Bowers Connelley wrote (p. 13): "Whether he ever lived or not, as a character in the history of the West Joe Bowers is the greatest Missourian."
4. Stone himself gave the date as 1850.
5. In his Folk-Songs of the South (Cambridge, 1925), J. W. Cox cites Professor G. L. Kittredge as informing him that "Joe Bowers" was printed as a De Marsan broadside, list 11, no. 483, by Wehman No. 455, and by A. W. Auner (Philadelphia). It appeared in Singer's Journal, I, 143; Howe's Comic Songs (Boston, p. 98), in all these not dated, and in Carncross and Sharpley's Minstrel (Philadelphia, 1860, p. 38), Tony Pastor's Comic and Eccentric Songster (cop. 1862, p. 39), J. S. Comic Song Book (cop. 1863, p. 60), etc.
6. According to C. L. Sabin, Buffalo Bill and the Overland Trail (1914), p. 253. "There were so many verses that some bull whackers professed to sing "Joe Bowers" all the way from Fort Leavenworth to the Rockies without a repetition.
7. Kittredge, Journal of American Folklore, XXIV (1911), 190, and XXV, (1912), 409, showed that "Villikens and His Dinah" was a parody popular on the variety stage in the middle of last century of "William and Diana," a tragic ballad. For humorous parodies of the old song of "The Frog and the Mouse" see the special study of this song made by Professor L. W. Payne, Publications of the Texas Folklore Society I (Austin, 1916).
8 The Overland Monthly, II (June, 1869), 538-544, printed a hoax appraisal by J. P. Caldwell of the remarkably literary quality of the Lament of Joseph Bowers composed by the great American poet Jobouers, only a fragment of whose work, a song mourning the loss of Sallyblac, has been preserved. He is termed the Father of Lyric Poetry and his lament is made the subject of extravagant interpretation and eulogy.
In addition to the main articles and studies cited in this paper as dealing with the song or its author, passing mention or comment appear in the Missouri Historical Review, XXII (1928) and XXIV (1929), 135-137; Vance Randolph, Ozark Folk Song (1948), p. 19'; Edna B. Buckbee's Saga of Old Tuolumne, 104-105; and the History of Music Project: A San Francisco Songster, 1849-1939. Dolph's Sound Off (New York, 1929), p. 314, includes the ballad as a soldier's song and adds, "It has been credited to Mark Twain, to a miner named Squibob, and to a man named English."