Dear Prairie Home

DESCRIPTION: "There's a dear old homestead on Nebraska's fertile plain, Where I toiled my manhood's strength away, All that labor now is lost to me, but it is Shylock's gain." The unsuccessful farmer tells how bankers and lawyers combined to destroy his home
AUTHOR: Words: Luna E. (Mrs. J. T.) Kellie (1857-1940)
EARLIEST DATE: 1890 (Farmer's Alliance, September 27, 1890 edition, according to Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore)
KEYWORDS: farming hardtimes lawyer commerce
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia2, p. 491, "Dear Prairie Home" (1 text)
Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore, pp. 65-66, "Dear Prairie Home" (1 text, tune referenced)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, pp. 478-479, "Dear Prairie Home" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Luna Kellie, _A Prairie Populist: The Memoirs of Luna Kellie_, edited by Jane Taylor Nelsen with a Foreword by Albert E. Stone, University of Iowa Press, 1992, pp. 172-173, "My Prairie Home" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Darling Nelly Gray" (tune)
NOTES [97 words]: For background on Luna Kellie, see the notes to "Marching for Freedom." Kellie for several years published a Farmers' Alliance newsletter called "The Prairie Home." but it appears this song is older. Luna Kellie, A Prairie Populist: The Memoirs of Lune Kellie, edited by Jane Taylor Nelsen with a Foreword by Albert E. Stone, University of Iowa Press, 1992, p. 172, seems to imply that the song also appeared in "The Prairie Home," and "later received wide distribution." But there seem to be no traditional collections; it shows up mostly in histories of Nebraska populism. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: CAFS491A

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