Stratton Mountain Tragedy [Laws G18]

DESCRIPTION: A young woman and her baby are trapped in a cold blizzard. When they are found, the mother is dead but the baby alive; the mother had wrapped it in her cloak
AUTHOR: Seba Smith (? -1843)
EARLIEST DATE: broadside (1843)
KEYWORDS: mother baby death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1821- Death of Lucy Blake and her daughter Rebecca, whose fate is believed to have inspired this ballad
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Laws G18, "Stratton Mountain Tragedy"
Flanders/Brown-VermontFolkSongsAndBallads, pp. 27-28, "Stratton Mountain Tragedy" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia1, pp. 32-35, "The Stratton Mountain Tragedy," "The Snowstorm" (2 texts, one of them being Seba Smith's original; also a copy of the original sheet music cover)
DT 638, STRATMTN*
Roud #5442
NOTES [260 words]: Seba Smith is also widely credited with "Young Charlotte (Fair Charlotte)" [Laws G17], which is obviously far more popular than this.
Smith's greatest claim to fame, at least in his lifetime, was for the creation of a Maine character named "Major Jack Downing." Charles E. Clark, Maine: A History, Norton, 1977, pp. 74-75, describes the origin of this character as follows:
"In January 1830, by contrast, the readers of the new Portland Daily Courier were introduced to an amusing caricature of themselves named Maj. Jac Downing. Jack Downing of Downingville, 'about three miles from the main road as you go back into the country, and... jest about in the middle of down east' was the creation of the Courier's thirty-seven-year-old publisher, Seba Smith, a native of Buckfield, [Maine] and a boyhood resident of Bridgton. Smith's self-taught pioneering childood, marked by various manual jobs and a stint at teaching school, had led finally to Bowdoin College and an honors degree, some coastwise and transatlantic travel, and the beginning of a newspaper career with the Eastern Argus.... His Courier, begun in 1829, was to be nonpartisan. His main object in creating Jack Downing, a rustic character who made folksy and often hilariously naive observations in Maine dialect on state and national politics, was political satire.... But in addition to creating the prototype for every cracker barrel philosopher and country oracle who has enlivened American journalism ever since, Smith created a regional character, the Downeast Yankee." - RBW
Last updated in version 5.3
File: LG18

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