Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions (7 page)

Figure 2.7. Scheitholt made by Samuel Shank in 1861, with list of songs lightly penciled inside the lid. (Carilyn Vice)

I devoted the August 2006 issue of my
Dulcimer Players News
column, “Dulcimer Tales and Traditions,” to this instrument and included the song list, and the jungle telegraph sprang into action. The November 2006 issue of
Dulcimer Players News
carried a letter from Ruth Randle of Manas-sas, Virginia, which read in part:

I was successful in identifying a few [of the songs on the list] with the help of a
Christian Harmony
shape-note hymnal; some of the others I found in various hymn books or online. Following are the numbers I was able to identify:

2. “Come Away to the Skies, My Beloved, Arise.” “Middlebury,”
Christian Harmony
.

3. “Arise, My Tend'rest Thoughts, Arise.” Words by Philip Doddridge, 1739. Music: “Tender Thought,” by Ananias Davisson,
Kentucky Harmony
, 1816.

6. “Oh When Shall I See Jesus.” Words by John Leland, 1793,
Sacred Harp.
Various tune names: “Griffin,” “Autauga,” “The Lost City,” “Religion Is a Fortune,” “Bound for Canaan,” and “Ecstasy.”

8. “Samanthra.”
Christian Harmony
.

10. “Green Meadows.”
Christian Harmony
, and “My Refuge is the God of Love: Solitude New,”
Southern Harmony
.

12. “There is a Happy Land.” Words by Andrew Young, 1838. Music: “Happy Land.”

14. “Children of the Heavenly King.” Words by John Cennick,
Sacred Hymns for the Children of God
, 1742. Music: “Pleyel's Hymn,” by Ignatz Pleyel, 1791.

15. Supposedly alternative chorus for “At the Cross.” [Ruth wrote: “I question this one, as it does not seem to fit the tune at all.”]

16. “Oh Heaven, Sweet Heaven, I long for thee; Oh when shall I get there?” “Sweet Heaven,”
Southern Harmony.

17.  “Dismiss Us With They Blessing, Lord.” By Joseph Hart (1712–1768).

18. “O Happy Day.” By Philip Doddridge, 1755.

In the next chapter, we will follow three great migrating groups—the Germans, English, and Scotch-Irish—from the Eastern Seaboard to the frontier, where they all played roles in the history of the dulcimer. Germans took the scheitholt with them, and the English and Scotch-Irish liked what they saw.

3 Early Traces and Trails
Early Traces and Trails

The quest for land shaped much of American history. The earliest arrivals got the best land, or the most. Later arrivals moved west. Such a pattern could not be followed in Europe, where there was no longer much available open land—no “west”—but the vastness of America made it possible.

Soon after Pennsylvania was created in 1682, movement to the west began. Year by year and mile by mile, a road came into being during the 18th century that led from Philadelphia to the “west,” that is, toward and into the mountains, which were our first frontier. The path of the road, which was called the Philadelphia Wagon Road, the Great Valley Road, or just the Great Wagon Road, is shown in figure 3.1. It was not the only path that one could follow to the mountains, but it was the principal one, and it became the most heavily traveled road in Colonial America.

Early immigrants, largely Germans, moved west from Philadelphia before 1700. By the early 18th century, the “Pennsylvania Dutch” country in eastern Pennsylvania had received many settlers, and settlement had proceeded as far west as present-day York. However, continuation directly west, into the Pennsylvania Alleghenies, was impractical. Through most of the 18th century, there were no roads or established trails through the Pennsylvania portion of the Allegheny Mountains. In addition, the Indians were hostile (justifiably, we would say today), and travel was dangerous.

 

Figure 3.1. Maps of the Philadelphia Wagon Road and the Wilderness Road.

Avoiding the mountains, therefore, the road turned southwest, crossed the Potomac River, and entered the northern end of the Valley of Virginia, known as the Shenandoah Valley. The Valley of Virginia lies between two parallel, northeast–southwest mountain chains, the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies. The road traversed the valley's easy terrain to its southern end at Big Lick, now called Roanoke. Some travelers settled in the valley, to the east or west of the road. A few, leaving the road at various points, traveled directly toward or into the mountains.

German settlers were on the road by the early 18th century. In 1726, an Alsatian named Jost Hite built a house near Winchester, at the head of the Shenandoah Valley, which beckoned German settlers and provided them with a welcoming presence and a staging location.

At Big Lick, the road divided. The eastern branch crossed the Blue Ridge from west to east through the gap created by the headwaters of the Roanoke River, and then proceeded southward down the Virginia and North Carolina piedmont. Pioneering this route, a group of German Moravian settlers created a settlement at present-day Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1753.

The western branch of the road reached the New River before travel and settlement were halted and forced back by Indian hostilities during the French and Indian War. When the war was ended by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, westward movement proceeded, and by 1775, a few log cabins stood in clearings on the eastern side of the Holston River. They constituted, by far, the most western settlement in the Colonies.

In April of that year, Daniel Boone, accompanied by 30 axmen, finished the job. They crossed the Holston and marked a 200-mile trail into Kentucky, through the virgin world of the mountains. The trail passed through three mountain passes that had been previously traversed by Boone in hunting trips to the west: Big Moccasin Gap in Virginia, the Cumberland Gap on the Virginia-Tennessee-Kentucky border, and Pine Mountain Gap in Kentucky (see figure 3.1). Emerging from Pine Mountain Gap, the trail crossed the Cumberland River at a waist-deep ford and proceeded through thick, tangled growths of laurel to the rich land of the Kentucky bluegrass. Boone's road from the Holston to Fort Boonesboro in Kentucky was called the Wilderness Road, although that name is sometimes applied to the entire road west of Roanoke.

From the earliest days, the Germans were joined along the road by the English, the Scotch-Irish, and a smattering of other nationalities. Many of the English came from the north of England and shared a common culture with their Scottish neighbors directly over the border. The Scotch-Irish contingent was large, and by the mid-18th century had surpassed the Germans in numbers. The Scotch-Irish were lowland Scots from the border country, who, in the early 17th century, had been resettled on estates in northern Ireland that had been confiscated by the British Crown. Subsequently mistreated by the English authorities, then ravaged by crop failures and famine, they migrated to America in large numbers beginning in the early 18th century.

In the 60-year period from 1715 to 1785, an estimated 250,000 emigrants of all nationalities moved west, a majority of them traveling the Great Road for part or most of their journey.

The scheitholt accompanied German settlers down the Wagon Road and to the frontier. Many specimens have been found in the Shenandoah Valley, southwestern Virginia, West Virginia, northeastern Tennessee, and Kentucky. No dated scheitholts have thus far been found west and south of Pennsylvania, but the early ones probably belong to the first half of the 19th century. Virginia's last traditional scheitholt maker, Junior Davis of Linville, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, died in 2002.

The instrument illustrated in figure 3.2 has a narrow, untapered body, exactly three inches wide and three inches high, and three strings, of which two pass over the frets. It is beautifully designed and extremely well made, suggesting the work of a cabinetmaker. The instrument entered the shop of Janita Baker of Santa Margarita, California, maker of Blue Lion Dulcimers, for repair. Baker alerted me and put me in touch with its owner, Bob Grove, who lived nearby. “Everything I know about it isn't much, I'm afraid,” Grove wrote,

but the history is solid back to my great grandma, Nanny C. Landes, born near Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the mid-1800s. My uncle thought it was made for the wedding of Nanny's father, John (or possibly Daniel) Landes. If so, that would be in the mid-1800s. The Landeses came to the Shenandoah Valley, as I understand it, most likely in the early 1800s.

Nanny married Mose Wenger from the same area and they had a daughter, Emma, born in 1885. Emma married Isaac E. Grove, my grandfather, who was born in the area between Staunton and Harrisonburg, Virginia. The Groves had come from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah Valley (Augusta County) earlier. There is evidence that Martin Grove bought land near New Hope, Virginia in 1793. Martin Grove was the great grandfather of Isaac E. Grove.

Three things happened to the scheitholt as it filtered down the Shenan-doah Valley and into the mountains.

First, the instrument lost its name. It had never been known as the
scheitholt
in America, and, after it left Pennsylvania, the name
zitter
also disappears from all records of which I am aware. Kimberly Burnette-Dean, in her search of early wills and estate records in southern and southwestern Virginia, which we will soon describe, never encountered a “zitter” in any records. And I never encountered the word in my fieldwork in the Appalachians.

 

Figure 3.2. Scheitholt with untapered body and three strings, from the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. (Janita Baker)

Second, a physical change was introduced. With the zitter or scheitholt, the frets are placed on top of the body, along the edge that faces the player. With the changed instrument, a raised and centered fretboard was mounted on top of the body, and the frets were placed along the fretboard.