Henry Clay Work

Many of Work's compositions were performed at minstrel shows. Work's father, Alanson, was an abolitionist who strove to free fugitive slaves. While a youth, Henry initiated a career in printing, one that lasted his entire life. Although lacking formal music training, his penchant for song showed itself clearly as he wrote poems for newspapers and set them to music. Work first published a complete musical piece in 1853, and his career came of age at the Civil War's outbreak. Work collaborated with the Chicagoan publishing firm Root & Cady to compose twenty-seven Unionist tunes, some of which, such as "Kingdom Coming" (1862) and "Marching Through Georgia" (1865), were among the most popular of the war. After the war, Work ventured in often somber balladry, but familial and financial woes and Root & Cady's closure would drain his motivation. He quit songwriting altogether for a few years. After deciding to work with Chauncey M. Cady in 1876, his output briefly resurged; this yielded a single major hit, "Grandfather's Clock" (1876), the best-selling song of his career and possibly the best-known American song of the decade. Nonetheless, Work could not resurrect his wartime fame and fortune, and he died nearly forgotten at age 51. Work was one of the most successful American musicians of the 1860s and 1870s. Sometimes crowned the bard of Union song alongside George F. Root, he expressed deftness in African-American dialect, comedy, melody, and social consciousness. His work built on the popular verse-chorus form, and the music historian Kent A. Bowman argues that his minstrel pieces written in dialect, along with those of other writers, influenced ragtime and jazz.

Henry Clay Work, named for the statesman and former House speaker Henry Clay, was born on October 1, 1832, in Middletown, Connecticut. The Work family was of Scottish origin; their surname derived from Auld Wark, an important stronghold during the Anglo-Scottish wars. To evade religious persecution, some of the family migrated to the north of Ireland. Joseph Work moved to the United States soon after, in 1720, and settled in Ashford, Connecticut. All the family patriarchs descended from him, at least until Henry, were born in Connecticut. • Illustration — Routes of the Underground Railroad, through which Alanson Work helped manumit fugitive slaves Henry grew up poor and had little formal education. When he was three, his father Alanson shifted the family near Quincy, Illinois, in hopes of finding better fortune. Alanson was an antislavery advocate who fashioned the family home into a station of the Underground Railroad, a network for fugitive slaves to escape to freedom. He helped thousands of slaves flee from bondage, and for this, the authorities sentenced him to twelve years' hard labor in Missouri in 1841. He received a conditional pardon four years later, whereby he had to return to Connecticut and forsake the Railroad. Having spent plenty of time with the freed slaves, the efforts of Henry's father left a stirring impression on him. He became familiar with the African-American dialect and minstrelsy and came to terms with slaves' routine agonies; such experiences sowed in him his father's staunch abolitionism that would come to suffuse many of his songs. While in Illinois, he irregularly attended Latin and Greek courses at Mission Institute. These bred his interest in philology. In music, Work was largely self-taught, save for some lessons at a church singing school and exposure to camp meetings in his neighborhood. He quickly grew acquainted with the laws of musical notation and conceived original melodies while laboring at the family pasture. For a time, he heartedly sang hymns during Mass but quit after being told his voice was not fit for singing. Obliged by the terms of Alanson's release from prison, the Work family migrated back to Middletown in 1845, but Henry stayed a year longer. Aged fourteen, he reluctantly began his apprenticeship as a tailor at his parents' insistence. However, his father soon allowed him to pursue a career that better suited his tastes: printing, especially typesetting music. Typesetting granted Work further knowledge of the English language, which, according to the writer George Birdseye, would prove necessary for his future songwriting practice. He never abandoned his trade from then on. Outside work, writing and music occupied him most; he would pen poems, equip them with melodies, and contribute them to various newspapers in his spare time.

In 1853, Work composed his first song with original lyrics and melody, "We Are Coming, Sister Mary". Instead of submitting it to the poetry section of a gazette, he sent it to Edwin P. Christy, founder of the New York minstrel troupe that had launched Stephen Foster's career. Christy was content and decided to perform it at his shows, where it met respectable praise. He later sold it to the local publishing firm Firth, Pond & Co. for $25; he bestowed them on Work. This sum, very generous in those days, thrust Work toward more ambitious songwriting efforts. He published a comic song, "Lilly-Wily Woken", under William Hall & Son two years later. While his career in music had been moderately fruitful so far, Work started doubting his ability. He passed the rest of the decade without publishing any songs, choosing to focus solely on printing. For this reason, he migrated to Chicago in 1855, aged twenty-three, and took up a new printing job. He married Sarah Parker two years later and bought a cottage at Hyde Park. However, in March 1861, his enthusiasm for songwriting revived; Work published a song commemorating the steamer Lady Elgins shipwreck, "Lost on the Lady Elgin", earning little success.

• Illustration — George F. Root of Root & Cady in 1860, with whom Work collaborated throughout the Civil War The following month, the American Civil War broke out. After the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12 and 13, President Abraham Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to suppress the Southern rebellion. Music "aroused herself to meet the exigencies of the times", as a contemporary newspaper declared, and raised the Union's spirits by rallying both black and white civilians round their nation's cause. The foremost site hosting music shifted from the theater to the home because families of soldiers needed an immediate, domestic medium to convey and understand their feelings sparked by war, hence the popularity of parlor music around this time. Being in such high demand, patriotic song submissions began pouring into local newspapers and music labels; approximately two thousand were published as sheet music in 1861 alone. But the Union still lacked much antislavery vigor. Having just been remotivated to write music, Work was drawn to Root & Cady, the preeminent Northern publishing firm of the time operated by the songwriter George F. Root. He partnered with the firm throughout the war and in subsequent years. From 1861 to 1865, he penned twenty-seven patriotic pieces and published them for Root & Cady. This period marked Work's songwriting efforts at their most fertile and palmy; Root & Cady's fortunes too crested during the war. His songs generally reflect the Union's progress and civilian wartime struggles. "Brave Boys Are They", a grim overview of army life, opened Work's wartime career, but it was not until March that his music started leaving an impression; conversely, the scholar Richard S. Hill indicates that "Brave Boys Are They" was a great success and pushed Work to "take his composing seriously" for the first time. That month, Root bought out another of his Unionist compositions, "Our Captain's Last Words". Root met him in person a short while after as Work presented the manuscript for a new song; his autobiography recounts the encounter: However, it was "Brave Boys Are They", which Work gave to Root after "Kingdom Coming", that secured his contract with Root & Cady. Root saw potential in Work's adeptness at composing and, during a time that demanded thoroughly pro-Union patriotic songs, assigned him a songwriting post lasting until the Civil War's end. • Illustration — "Kingdom Coming" sung by Frank Crumit in 1927. The music historian David Ewen deems "Kingdom Coming" "the first of his important songs"; and it became a wartime favorite of African-American troops. A gutless, hypocritical slave owner, fearing capture by incoming Union military forces, escapes his plantation, then taken over by his slaves who lock their overseer up as retribution for his cruelty. It appealed to African-American Union troops who sang it regularly as they marched to the South. First advertised by Christy in April 1862, "Kingdom Coming" quickly became a linchpin of minstrel show repertoires. Root could not keep up with orders for the song, claiming it to be his firm's most profitable composition for almost one and a half years. Up until the nineteenth century's close, it was reportedly as popular as "Dixie". While Work generally supported President Lincoln's handling of the war, he spoofed a provision of the Enrollment Act whereby citizens could pay $300 and dodge service, in his 1862 comic song "Grafted into the Army". It is narrated by a widowed mother whose son was drafted into the Union army under the law; her speech and linguistic slips hint at their lowly social status. He conveyed fear about the Union's wartime progress against the Confederacy in "God Save the Nation" (1862/1863); Theodore Tilton wrote its words. In 1863, Root began issuing a periodical, the Song Messenger, with Work as its editor. They agreed that Work would be "independent and untrammeled in the expression of his views on all subjects", but his conduct promptly sparked controversy. In a June article, he admonished compilers of church music books for altering traditional tunes and corrupting them, followed up by another in July declaring one of the changed hymns "hardly recognizable [and] mutilated". Many compilers saw these articles as defamatory and demanded an apology. While the periodical survived the dispute, Work's editing post did not; he was fired in August. Three months earlier, he had published "Song of a Thousand Years" in response to the Confederate Gettysberg campaign. He issued a sequel of "Kingdom Coming" in July 1863 titled "Babylon is Fallen". Also written in vernacular, "Babylon is Fallen" aroused African Americans recruited for the Union army; their numbers had grown since the Emancipation Proclamation's passage. Another favorite among abolitionists and soldiers, it sold more first-month copies than its prequel. In 1864, Work published "Wake Nicodemus", a minstrel show hit, and "Corporal Schnapps", a tragic yet humorous lament noted for its employment of German dialect; the Chicago Tribune said upon its release that it enables "the difficult feat of laughing and crying at the same time". Besides the Union struggle, Work devoted himself to the temperance movement and wrote several songs sounding the dangers of alcohol. The movement gained traction after the Civil War's close as many moralistic fraternities, especially the Women's Christian Temperance Union, called for public education on drinking alcohol. Published around this time in 1864, Work's "Come Home, Father" is a young girl's plea for her father, then trifling away his pay and time in a bar getting drunk, to return home while her brother is slowly dying. It was one of the best known temperance songs of the time; in an 1879 profile of the composer, George Birdseye considered it "the pioneer and pattern for all the many temperance pieces now in the market, not a few of which are very palpable imitations". Work wrote other temperance songs after the war, including "Lillie of the Snowstorm" (1866) and "Shadows on the Floor" (1877), although "Come Home, Father" remained the most famous. • Illustration — "Marching Through Georgia" sung by Harlan & Stanley in 1904 Of all Work's Civil War compositions, none were as fruitful or sold as well as "Marching Through Georgia". The end of 1864 saw the March to the Sea, in which Union forces crippled Confederate resources in Georgia and took over the coastal city of Savannah; Work celebrated the campaign with "Marching Through Georgia", published in January 1865. Regarded as an icon of the Civil War, it sold five-hundred thousand copies in its first twelve years. "Marching Through Georgia" proved one of the few wartime compositions to outlast the conflict, no less outstanding a feat considering that civilians had grown weary of war. The writer Edwin Tribble opines that the song singlehandedly sustained Work's fame after the war—the little he had. In February 1865, Work set P. G. T. Beauregard's evacuation of Charleston, South Carolina, to music; the result, "Ring the Bell, Watchman", reflected the successive toppling of Confederate cities during the war's final weeks. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9 marked the Civil War's end; Work published one final war hymn in June, Tis Finished!, or Sing Hallelujah", that thankfully celebrates the end of fighting and calls upon listeners to "sing the vict'ry won".

• Illustration — Sheet music cover of "The Ship That Never Returned" With the Civil War over, Work's motivation for songwriting and musical output declined considerably. Turning away from patriotic songs which, as Root writes, became outdated, he settled into sentimental balladry. The scholars Dale Cockrell and Andrew M. Zinck observe that American popular music matured in the fifteen years following the Civil War; songs, often written to be performed at home, were generally "stylized" and cemented the values of the middle class. Melancholy hardly features in Work's wartime music, but "Come Home, Father" suggested a turn toward sentimentality. His postbellum songs focus on somber themes owing to the personal tragedies engulfing his later life, as Dean Nelson notes in a 2008 Connecticut Explored article: "... in his lyrics, children die, soldiers die, ships sink, love goes unreturned, poor folks starve, and the lonely remain so." Newly enriched by his war efforts, Work embarked on a tour around Europe in 1865, during which he wrote the first of his postbellum songs, "The Ship That Never Returned". It narrates the departure of a ship from a harbor that never come back, with a mother and the captain's wife lamenting the loss of their loved ones on board. The song cemented itself as a folk standard, and parodies started burgeoning as late as the 1880s; one of the most significant songs to borrow its melody or theme is "The Wreck of the Old 97". Upon returning to the United States, Work and his brother invested most of their wealth in hundreds of acres of land in Vineland, New Jersey, to establish a profitable fruit farm. Their expectations promptly crumbled as the farm failed, bankrupting them both. This was the first of several personal tragedies to befall him. His everyday life shaken—although he himself not especially disturbed—Work left Vineland and vanished from the public eye. In 1868, he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, living in seclusion since his wife had become insane for reasons unspecified; still, the family seemed to blame him. He was cut off from his children, who were residing with Sarah in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Two years later, meanwhile having passed some time in California, he resettled in Brooklyn and spent the next twelve years isolated in a boarding house. A letter composed in the early 1870s to his correspondent Susie Mitchell paints a grim picture of the depression consuming his postbellum life, worsened by the loss of his son Waldo in 1871: "My nerves seem to be gradually gaining an ascendancy over me—the fastenings which connect the mind and body seem to be growing loose and getting detached." In the postwar years until 1872, Work penned seventeen songs, fewer than the twenty-seven authored during the Civil War. Others include "Andy Veto" (1866), a satire of then-President Andrew Johnson's vetoing of Reconstruction legislation, and "Crossing the Grand Sierras" (1870), describing a train voyage across the nation set just after the Transcontinental Railroad's completion. The latter was Work's last song published for Root & Cady—personal differences between him and Root as well as the business' abrupt closure brought their partnership to an end.

• Illustration — Destruction of Root & Cady's music store in the first floor of Crosby's Opera House during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 In the fall of 1871, Root & Cady's firm burnt down in the Great Chicago Fire. It raged on from October 8 till October 10, destroying all waterworks, banking houses, and railway depots, and caused a small depression in the national stock market. All of Work's original music plates fell victim to the conflagration. Unable to continue the business, Root & Cady's music copyrights were sold to the Ohioan publishers S. Brainard Sons and John Church & Co. The firm filed for bankruptcy in 1872. Root continued his former teaching profession, and Chauncey. M. Cady left Chicago for New York City. This withered any possibility of Work returning to songwriting soon; from 1873 until 1876, he published no music. His life became mangled by boredom and depression; in an 1875 letter, he wrote: "I am no longer a printer—am now a proof-reader. Nothing to do all day, but to read and criticize, find fault or mark errors...." Only printing, the career he held since his youth, and attendance at local church services absorbed him. After Root & Cady shut down, Cady too sought to revive his fortunes as a music publisher. He established a business in New York, in 1875, lasting five years until shutting it down owing to fatigue from old age. In 1876, Cady chanced to encounter Work while strolling in Broadway and, sensing a lucrative opportunity, offered him a post at his business. Eager to pick up songwriting once again, Work accepted; he published nine songs for Cady from 1876 to 1879, ending his retirement. Throughout this time, he also wrote for John Church & Co., William A. Pond & Co., and Root's firm. • Illustration — "Grandfather's Clock" performed by the Edison Quartet in 1905 Work's most profitable and last hit was "Grandfather's Clock", issued by Cady in January 1876 and made popular by the entertainer Sam Lucas in New Haven, Connecticut. Inspired by his sympathetic attitude toward disaffected individuals, he anthropomorphizes a clock to signify its owner; it had stood for ninety years throughout the old man's life and accompanied him. The song secured anywhere from eight-hundred thousand to a million sheet music sales. After Work sold the copyright to "Grandfather's Clock", Cady paid him a $4,000 royalty, helping to lift him out of poverty but not enough to sustain him during lulls in his songwriting output. According to The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, it was "perhaps" the most popular American song of the 1870s, and in his 1879 biography, George Birdseye declared it "without doubt the most popular song in this country". The author Philip Furia suggests it was the first song to become famous through a national marketing campaign.

None of Work's compositions after "Grandfather's Clock" reproduced its success. An unhappy marriage and family life drove him further into despair, as the health problems of his wife—who was in a mental asylum—overcast his final years. He tried his hand at a long-distance relationship with Pennsylvanian Susie Mitchell but eventually called it off after a decade of corresponding with her. Work's passion for songwriting also took another hit; following its revival in early 1876, he would only issue two compositions before another hiatus in 1879. Some songs of this period are the "California Bird Song" (1878) and "Mac O' Macorkity" (1877). • Illustration — A bust of Work near his birthplace in Middletown, Connecticut In 1882, Work left Brooklyn for the more serene Bath in upstate New York, longing for an abode where he "could find a still nook in this still noisy world... engage in literary and musical work, and at the same time find repose for over-strung nerves". A letter written after his move to Bath recalls that he had seized the attention of numerous citizens; he credits this to the success of "Marching Through Georgia". That year, he briefly picked up composition again, writing roughly ten songs until 1883 such as "The Lost Letter" and "The Prayer on the Pier", but by then he could only hope to approach the fame he once had. He died abruptly of heart disease on June 8, 1884, while visiting his mother's residence at Chestnut Street, Hartford, Connecticut. He was survived by one of his four children, Nellie. As writes Richard Hill, obituaries brushed off his legacy. He is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Hartford. A monument in his honor was erected in the same cemetery twenty-five years after his death.

• Illustration — The sinking of the Lady Elgin in 1860, for which Work penned one of his numerous sentimental ballads In his 1891 autobiography, Root stressed Work's poetic talent and mastery of melody. Another writer remarked: According to Song of America, Work's catalog features "love songs and moralistic, tragic, and humorous pieces of music". The musicologist Jon W. Finson writes that many of his songs teem with "a pronounced moralistic zeal", and the writers John Tasker Howard and George Kent Bellows underline the "fiery partisanship" of his wartime pieces. The latter have been noted for communicating the feelings of Union civilians—to a greater extent than any other songwriter did, according to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. David Nelson writes: "Work, a deeply religious man, sought solace and [consolation] for himself and society through his songs. Victorian America embraced such sentimental conceits." David Cockrell and Andrew Zinck describe Work as a "master" of parlor music, writing of his parlor song "Grandfather's Clock": "It affirmed social values such as family, home, religion, and more abstract notions like the work ethic and materialism." Ewen writes that Work was "a gifted writer of comedy or novelty songs in which he usually had a chorus interject amusing or illustrative comments", naming the "Meyow!" opening the chorus of "Poor Kitty Popcorn" was an example. The Grove Dictionary notes that Work was a prodigious writer of tragic compositions.

• Illustration — Thomas D. Rice as Jim Crow, a leading stereotypical portrayal of black people in nineteenth-century minstrel shows Many of Work's songs present slaves' routine undertakings on the plantation and incorporate African-American dialect, thus falling in the minstrelsy genre. In Florine Thayer McCray's words, they evoke "the very atmosphere of awakening plantation life" and echo "the cottonpicker's musing hum and the roustabout's refrain". The minstrel show generally displayed the black person as "ludicrous, stupid, tasteless, ugly, sexually adventorous, a dancer of wild abandon" and, at least in its early days, borrowed no influence from African-American music. Intended as social commentary, these unsophisticated, false images catered to northern audiences' tastes; an early Stephen Foster song, "Massa's in de Cold Ground" (1852), narrates the sorrow felt by a helpless group of slaves after the death of their gracious master. On the other hand, Work exposes African Americans' actual struggles rather than belittling or exalting them as most antebellum musicians had done. Having come face to face with their hardships while in the Underground Railroad, Work understood the plight of slaves. He resorted to minstrelsy not for entertainment but to endorse emancipation and black enlistment. "Kingdom Coming" strays from the mockery of blackface minstrelsy, portraying a realistic picture of plantation life and humanizing slaves rather than presenting them as blithe, docile servants. Instead of the oppressive master reigning supreme over his subjects as generally observed in minstrel songs, these roles are inverted; the slaves take over the plantation and overcome their overseer. The song's allure was bolstered by its employment of African-American dialect.

• Illustration — Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, which Work routinely attended while residing there One of Work's obituaries summed up his persona as an "invalid-like fellow with sadness in his voice and bearing poverty in his dress". Reportedly handsome, he stood at about five feet ten inches, having brown hair, full whiskers, and bluish-grey eyes. He was quiet and unassuming, to the extent that his nephew said he refused to expose those who plagiarized his music. Work made few intimate friends. Practicing what his temperance songs preached, he was a committed teetotaler and Prohibition activist and even called for tobacco to be outlawed. Work was a Christian disciple and regularly attended Mass. While residing in Brooklyn, he frequented services at Henry Ward Beecher's Plymouth Church; an 1871 letter mentions his devotion to it: "One radical struck deep into the ground where Plymouth Church stands, and for months that was all that held me." That year, he composed a brief oratorio dedicated to his congregation, Joy in Heaven!, or The Returning Wanderer's Welcome.

In 1857, Work married the Bay Stater Sarah Parker. He had four children with her: Waldo Franklin (1857–1871), Willie Lovejoy (1861–1862), Ellen "Nellie" Louisa (1863–1895), and Clara Etta (1878). The Works spent a few years in Chicago and Hubbardston, Massachusetts before permanently moving to Greenwich Village sometime before 1865. After his wife spiraled into degeneracy, Work lived apart from his family. They chided him, without sound grounds, for Sarah's mental instability as well as Waldo's sudden death. The only saving grace of such a tumultuous family life was his daughter Nellie, his only child to outlive him; he was exceedingly fond of Nellie and depended on her for solace in his final years. Having to endure a distressing marriage, and ruling out divorce, Work hungered for a romantic relationship. In 1868, while searching for a home in Philadelphia, he came across one owned by the Mitchell family in the Ledger Residences. While greeting the family, he became enchanted by the eighteen-year-old Susie and soon fell in love with her. Assuming she reciprocated his affection but also desperate for a gratifying relationship, Work established a correspondence with her, writing forty lengthy letters from 1869 to 1883 that "concealed his feelings in the formal style of the day". The vast majority were written in his early New York years, from 1870 to 1874. While Susie invited him over several times during this period such as for Christmas, she did not share his enthusiasm. Work even dedicated a song to her, "No Letters From Home" (1871), a plea for more letters from the Mitchell family to remedy the loneliness eclipsing him. Being nearly double her age, he knew this relationship stood no chance at being fulfilled; in fact, she got married in 1877. Upon hearing of Susie's intentions to wed, Work thought it best to close off the correspondence and thereafter only wrote terse, stilted notes on occasion. One of his final long letters reads:

• Illustration — Work's cottage at Hyde Park Work migrated to Chicago in 1855 to further his trade as a printer. In 1859, after Paul Cornell established the new community of Hyde Park in the city's southern part, Work purchased a plot of land from him for $175. Roughly a year later, he oversaw the construction of his home at 5317 Dorchester Avenue, a small, humble cottage "hardly [looking] big enough to house a piano", in the writer John Drury's view. He and his wife Sarah devoted themselves to the Chicagoan community and were among the first organizers of the First Presbyterian Church. Work also served as township clerk from 1864 to 1866. In 1867, he sold the cottage and land and took up a new residence in Philadelphia, later moving to New York City.

Work delighted himself in mechanical studies and experiments, and he filled pauses in his musical career almost wholly by devising mechanical inventions. He invented and patented a knitting machine, a walking doll, and a rotary engine. In 1868, he wrote a once popular seriocomic poem, The Upshot Family. Work often designed the title pages of his songs. While a committed songwriter, he once told a reporter: "The man who writes songs doesn't generally feel like singing them." However, he made an exception at an annual Grand Army of the Republic encampment in 1883, where he casually sang "Marching Through Georgia" to satisfy the crowd: "I do not sing the Solo well; but I have usually a magnificent chorus, and the auditors seem greatly pleased... [I made] it understood that I do not claim to be a singer, but comply with these requests rather than to appear disobliging." From that day on, he felt "compelled to repeat it at almost every social gathering I have attended".

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