Early Childhood faculty attended a presentation during the first week of school on how to use classroom websites to communicate with parents while involving students in the process.
The book Tech Tonic was referenced to emphasize when and how it is appropriate for young children to use technology, taking into consideration that it should support, not compete, with building relationships and a knowledge of nature. We also reviewed the Ten Principles For A New Literacy of Technology.
PK5 students have been learning about how they're similar and different from each other. We used the projector to view photos of children around the world and notice their characteristics. When we asked our students what they noticed, they said:
Students concluded we all have different hair, eyes, face, skin color, and clothes, but even though we look different on the outside, we are similar on inside; we all have a heart, a brain, lungs, a stomach, and bones.
Finally, we used Google Maps to find Guadalajara and then we zoomed out to find the countries the children in the photos where from. This app gave children the opportunity to travel to Japan, Africa, Alaska, South America, among other places. Once we found each country, we used street view so students could imagine standing on the streets of each place and have a quick look at the buildings and cities there.
Throughout the school year, our class enjoyed starring in videos about the children in K10. Recently, our students decided they were no longer satisfied with being the actors. They announced they wanted to be the ones to create the videos that are produced in K10.
We discussed how to record a video using the iPad, what requirements were needed for the video to be of a good quality, and how to work as a team to create the best videos.
In small groups we went even more in depth, discussing how the director helps the “star”. The students decided to work out a “thumbs up” signal for when the recording began so the students being recorded would know when to begin speaking. Finally, we learned how to edit the footage!
These are some of the children's comments:
In Nursery 3 we noticed it is not easy to explain to nursery students what Earth is. For children to understand this concept we gave them a visual image of Earth. With the help of Google Earth we could provide students with the opportunity to see Earth “from space” and zoom in on our school.
After checking out ASFG, we went back out into space and let the children choose where to go. Many of them wanted to see their homes, others Disney World, others the beach. We took several quick “trips” to these different places. Students saw the Earth from a different perspective and noticed how daytime was on one side of the planet while night time was on another. Google Earth provided the children with the chance to see how all the different places they know exist in one single place; Planet Earth. This was the perfect introduction to begin our “Earth Week Unit”
For a storytelling project in PK-K8, students were divided into two groups. Each group created their own story with everybody’s participation. Once the stories were finished and edited, each child made a drawing of their own part. These drawings were digitized and uploaded into iMovie. The children used a snowball microphone to input their voices for the video. They each had several try-outs and were able to choose their favorite piece of audio. We added titles and background music. The children enjoyed watching their story video several times.
How can the classroom teacher use technology to more deeply explore children’s thinking? Encourage their reflection? Support the practice of thinking about their thinking (metacognition)? And how can technology be used so it is authentic and unique? These are questions we wrestle with as we use technology with young children.
Currently PK-K 11 students are exploring the concept of cities. Children worked in groups to create a negotiated representation of a city or a facet of a city.
Using a photograph of their finished construction, children reflected on what they had created together, while the teacher recorded their stories. They were encouraged to think about their thinking in the retelling of the experience.
We then generated a list of commonalities based on these group constructions and began the phase of combining the elements into a paper city.
Children referred to their photographed construction when drawing. They also used the iPad to support the translation from mental model to a concrete representation recognizable by all.
Once all city landmarks were represented we took the drawings to the copy center. With the help of the copier we could reproduce our elements as well as size them according to the scale that was necessary.
These were some questions we asked our students...
●Should a butterfly be half the size of a building?
●Are bicycles as large as cars?
●How can we make our cruise ship be scaled to fit the designated city space in the classroom?
Our handy photocopier allowed us to tackle spatial relations and manipulate our drawings so that there was proportion and scale.
PK-9 students have been learning about patterns. We went out in small groups around campus to look for patterns in our environment and children photographed these patterns with the iPad. After selecting which photographs they wanted to share with their classmates and parents on the Pk-9 website, we uploaded the pictures into a slideshow. The students’ homework was to have parents check the website to see the slideshow and to look for patterns in their home or garden and have parents email these photographs to the teacher.
After about a week, we looked at the photographs the children took with their parents and shared the photographs with the rest of the class on the overhead projector. Children explained to their friends the patterns they found, saying:
In K7 students have been using technology to enhance their learning about trees. Students watched various children’s videos about the parts of trees, about animals that live in trees, and about different types of forests. Students were able to use the Smart Board to draw the parts of a tree and drag words to label these parts. Students used the classroom iPad to take pictures of leaves and of a tree dwelling. They used these photographs when writing descriptive words about trees and creating a classroom tree display.
N1 students explored and used WhatsApp to send and receive messages from their teacher, who has been absent due to a surgery. They have been in communication with her, sending good wishes and telling her all about their winter vacation.
Children have learned a new way of communication and have used technology to be close to their teacher.
PK5 students have been learning about winter, the animals that live in the Arctic and the Antarctica, and the type of clothes we can use for cold weather. For this project children engaged in many different activities, made winter crafts and checked out books from the library to learn more about Arctic and Antarctic animals, icebergs and snow.
We set up an environment with music and animal sounds, winter/snowy photos on the SMART Board and some paper puppets for students to explore this topic further.
To finalize this project, children used the Google Cardboard viewers to experience virtual reality and get immersed in a journey full of fun environments and experiences in the Arctic!
Some of their comments were:
In a vertical meeting with pre-first teachers, we agreed it would be a good idea to teach a common song for letter names and sounds. We also agreed that it would be helpful for children to represent each letter and a word that started with that letter, using their bodies.
We recorded children’s movements and voices and are now ready to share our video with all children in EC and pre-first.
Some comments from children were:
Coming up with ideas for the movements was easy for all children, recording the video was challenging for some of them and trying to match our voices to the video was challenging for everyone, including us. We all enjoyed, got frustrated, got over our frustration, learned, had fun and are very proud to be able to show the video to our loved ones.
Children, parents, and PK-K 11 teachers helped create our classroom eBook, “Watch Me Grow”, by using the app Book Creator and a voice recorder. Parents were given directions on how to download the classroom eBook on their own devices through our classroom website.
In this video Marcelo and Mateo look at the book and guess whose baby photo they see, listening to the voice recording and then verifying their guess by swiping the page to see if that friend indeed appeared. Mateo and Marcelo independently began repeating the English sentences they heard. They also found similarities between classmates as they listened carefully to their friends speak in English all the while having fun!
This experience allowed children to use technology in a transformative way, as they used the eBook to self-direct meaningful learning.
Monarch butterflies in Nursery 3
It was a busy day at school, and we did not want to take our eyes off the Monarch butterfly chrysalis in the science area, since we suspected the butterfly was going to emerge soon. We had to continue with our daily activities, but “what could we do to not miss out on the birth?”
We let our iPad record the process as a “time lapse” as we continued with our activities. After an hour the butterfly was born. We did not notice until later but luckily, we had everything recorded on video! We reviewed our iPad to see the butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.
Then we played it on the TV and children asked to see it over and over again. It was amazing! Children were able to capture these incredible changes in their environment thanks to the technology available to us.
In PK4 children have been learning that shapes can be used to draw different things and that things are also made out of different shapes. So they went walking on a “Shape Hunt” around the section and using the Doodle Buddy App in the iPad, children took photos of different things they found that were shaped like a circle or were round.
Back in the classroom, they took turns to choose a photo from the gallery, add it to the app, and then look for the circles in the picture and trace over them using the different tools the App offered. Most children were able to notice other shapes in the pictures they took. This was done with other shapes as well.
In K7 students have been learning about how they can use technology to enhance their learning. Students had the opportunity to be recorded speaking about their favorite thing to do at school. They then watched the videos and were able to change what they said or how they said it. These short videos were made into a classroom video that all students viewed and discussed.
Also, students were recorded singing an alphabet song. The song was then posted to the classroom website. Parents were invited to sit down with their children and learn the song together at home.
After attending a RedSOLARE’s conference called Viajando con los niños a través de mundos digitales, early childhood teachers presented a workshop for our section’s faculty meant to provoke curiosity and interest in the use of technology with young children.
Teachers were brought to a magical, awe inspiring environment created with different materials (flashlights, mirrors, pieces of fabric, plastic shapes, toys) and technological resources (smart board, webcam, an LCD projector, an overhead projector, desktop, and laptop) and asked to interact and explore the possibilities these materials offer young children. For the first few minutes we asked teachers to do this in silence so that the materials could speak for themselves.
By playing and manipulating light, shadow, shapes, perspective, and movement, teachers created stories, moods, and surroundings and learned how to introduce and better use different technological resources in their classrooms.
Nursery students have been exploring with the section’s copy machine, making copies of drawings and objects like shoes and pencils, …even their own hands! The children were shown how the machine is turned on and off, how to re-fill the paper container, and how to make copies.
They developed theories about how the copier works, what it can do, and what a copy is:
After this introduction, we made copies of the children’s fingers showing numbers 1-10, thus linking math and technology.
Nursery 3 has been using technology as an assessment tool. The SMART board was recently used to make a final nursery evaluation of letter skills.
The next step will be to print the images of what they did in the SMART board and classify their names in groups based on the quantity of letters or initial sound. These can be grouped in the form of a chart or graph for children to analyze and manipulate.The SMART board was also used to support students practicing their name. They counted the number of letters in their names and wrote the number.
In PK4 we have been encouraging our students to become authors and illustrators. We asked them to write their own book with their parents. They brought their books to school and shared them with the rest of the class and then began interviewing one another and recording each other reading their books with the classroom iPad. They had so much fun!
This month, PK5 has been working with the phrase “What do you see?”. We have been focusing on the idea of what makes up the world around us. The things and people that we see are a part of our learning environment. Several “expert photographers” have learned how to use a camera independently and they are teaching their peers how to turn on the camera, zoom in and out and review the photos that they have taken.
Children in K6 chose a song to learn for Mother’s Day. We watched the original video of the song and children got excited about making their own video. We then talked about the things we needed to know to make the video and the first thing they came up with was that they needed to learn the lyrics for the song, so we looked for them in Google and printed them.
Most of the children were very excited to know they could get the lyrics for most songs and then download them in print. We talked about the importance of using Google and YouTube only with adult supervision.
The next thing they wanted to know was the steps to dance along with the song. We watched some dancing lessons on YouTube and some children made a video to share some ideas with their friends of the steps they could use for the Mother’s Day presentation.
Students in K7 used technology to assist them in a unit on homes. Families sent a photo of the child’s own home that students used to draw a realistic picture. We also used the photos to describe parts of a house and practice speaking in complete sentences in English.
Then, we used the computer to map where the children lived in relation to ASFG and in relation to the rest of the world, and finally, the students used the SMART board to draw realistic houses.
We have been studying airplanes for several weeks and wanted to use this theme for our Father’s Day gift. We decided to have the children make a special drawing of themselves and their father, flying in a plane/helicopter.
The students were presented with a wide assortment of previously downloaded landscape photos. Each student selected his/her favorite and pasted the drawing on it. Our students then dictated a story based on this work to their teacher. They gave each story a title and chose their favorite part of story event to write a sentence.
We brought in a special microphone and after practicing their sentence, the children recorded their voice into the computer. We created a video in iMovie using the children’s artwork, written work, and voice recordings together with special sound effects:
This is an example of one of the stories:
Looking at the World - by Elena
“Once upon a time, my dad and me were in a helicopter looking at the whole world. We saw our tower where my dad lived with me. I went to his office, to where he works. I did a little of his job. He had a meeting. I ate a little bit of his chocolate. Then I was hungry again, and ate another one of his chocolates. Then I ate dinner at my house.”
K10 finished their eBook "The Pigeon Goes to School" and can independently access it on the classroom’s iPad in iBook.
En la clase de español, nos hemos enfocado en analizar las diversas formas que un libro es presentado de manera electrónica. Para lograr este objetivo, se les explicó a los alumnos el título de un eBook y qué componentes o aplicaciones vienen inmersas en el mismo para que ellos puedan manipularlo y aprovechar todas las ventajas que ofrece.
Uno de los eBooks en español estudiados tiene por título “Tab, el murciélago blanco”. Los alumnos de kínder tuvieron la oportunidad de escuchar la historia por parte de la maestra , analizar las diferencias con la lectura e imágenes interactivas, y también disfrutar de los juegos incluidos diseñados para un mejor raciocinio.
Varios de los alumnos decidieron llevar más allá su aprendizaje y realizar diversas actividades que involucran al personaje principal “Tab”.
“The most powerful and effective way for children to begin learning the complex
process of learning about letters is by writing their own names”
- CAROL LYONS
Since the beginning of the school year, N1 students have been practicing how to trace their initial letter, learn it’s sound, and to copy their complete name from a name card. Now we are encouraging children to sound out their name and write it by memory.
We video recorded each child doing this and showed the videos to the class. This has motivated children to give this task their best effort. They have enjoyed watching themselves and each other while learning new letter sounds in their friends names.
Students in Prekinder 9 filmed videos with the assistance of their teachers to send messages to classmates, parents and friends. We used the digital camera to record students sending messages. Students reviewed their recordings to see if they could improve it or if they were satisfied with the recording.
We showed the students how the videos were transferred from the digital camera to the computer. When asked how they thought the video on the camera got onto the computer, Simon explained, “The movie goes through the white cable and then we can see it on the computer.”
We then used these recordings to make short clips to share with friends and family. Students were able to see how their messages were shared with parents and friends on computers and cell phones. The children loved this activity!
We are studying sunflowers in K10. First, we watched a video of a sunflower growing in a time lapse. After that, students took a photo of a seed using the iPad and then used the app Doodle Buddy to draw the roots and the flower growing from the seed. When they finished they saved the photo to the iPad’s gallery.
Students enjoyed imagining how the seeds we planted will grow. It also helped them understand the life cycle of a plant using a different media.
Once our sunflowers grow bigger, we will compare the photos of the children’s drawings to the actual plants and check if their predictions of how the flower would look like were right.
En la clase de español, a los alumnos de kínder les gusta utilizar los diversos recursos tecnológicos para comunicarse con sus compañeros de generación que están en otros salones. Algunos de ellos se conocen por haber compartido anteriores grados escolares o debido a su convivencia durante el tiempo de recreo.
Para fomentar aún más esta dinámica y enlazarla a los diversos objetivos de aprendizaje correspondientes al grado kínder, hemos invitado a los alumnos a utilizar el celular para enviar mensajes de voz relacionados a libros leídos por la maestra o para ayudar a comprender un tema en particular. La maestra graba los audios y los comparte con los alumnos de tal forma que surja una conversación entre ellos.
Los alumnos de kínder también han participado activamente en la creación de sus propios libros o historias. Debido a la experiencia que han adquirido han realizado por iniciativa de la maestra un video en el que comparten sugerencias o tips sobre cómo crear tu propio libro.
In N2, we have been exploring the possibilities an overhead projector can offer. We began by using our bodies to play and understand how the device works. Later on, some students added objects from the classroom to the play, discovering that the shadows created differ according to the objects’ properties.
Some of the ideas that popped up were:
Another day, after playing with objects collected outdoors (rocks, shells, sticks, and leaves) a student said “these make shadows because they’re not transparent”. Noticing the connection he was making, we decided to put these objects together with the projector and explore.
While playing with them and seeing their shadows on the wall, students felt inspired and began creating a story using the shadows reflected as a background.
Finally, they used the projector and their drawings on these acetates to tell a story to their friends. The final product, was a beautiful story told by 3-year-old students interacting with technology.
Pre Kinder 5 students have been introduced to a listening center in the classroom. This provides the students with the opportunity to hear their favorite books by their favorite authors, read aloud again and again. We have set up 3 headsets next to the students’ computer so the children can enjoy listening with their friends.
We have seen their focus and concentration increase, because as of now, our listening center provides only audio. We have chosen not to use videos of books because we want the children to focus on the words, to improve their listening skills and build vocabulary.
Most of our books have interesting music, and sound effects, and the narrators use silly voices and dramatic ways in which to tell the stories. Our students have enjoyed taking turns at the listening center.
Children in K6 have being learning a song for parent’s day. While searching for the song in YouTube, they discovered a video where girls were dancing to the song. My students decided to copy some of the steps and invent some of their own moves. One student suggested we make a video to show these new dance steps to their classmates in order to help them learn the dance for our upcoming performance.
As classrooms have experienced erratic attendance due to the seasonal flu, PK-K 11 students are using technology to bridge distances to share important moments, such as one friend’s birthday celebration. Children learned how to count down from 3 to 0 before speaking. Each group of children picked the background they wanted to use and they figured out how to space themselves out so that the camera can capture all participants in the video. The only hurdle we have yet to overcome is how we can share birthday cake!
Nursery students celebrated World Read Aloud Day by sharing stories among nursery classrooms with our webcams. Miss Cynthia from N1 read a story to N3 using their classroom computer and we enjoyed looking at her on the TV. Later on, we read a story to N2 students, and they then read a story to us. For this activity we used our computer webcams to communicate through Google Hangouts.
To prepare for this experience, N3 arranged for the webcam to face the carpet so children could watch themselves on the TV screen while they were being recorded. They danced, made faces, and played while trying to figure out how this could happen. Some students thought about a camera connected to the TV and computer, but they still have not found the camera nor gotten the answers to this “magical” technology, as they called it. We plan on doing more of these fun activities so children can keep playing and discovering how tech devices work.
In Pre Kinder 4 we have been working on a Day and Night unit and studying shadows. We took out the old overhead projector and allowed children to explore and play with different materials, while moving the objects around and even starting to trace the shadows with a dry erase marker on the whiteboard. We also watched a video on YouTube to understand a little bit more about how shadows are made and planned an outdoor activity where children searched for shadows around our playground and took photos of the shadows they found with the classroom iPad and camera.
Along with our Day and Night unit we have been talking about the moon and its phases. We brought a telescope to the classroom as a provocation and children really enjoyed exploring it and looking for the moon during the day. After observing the moon over the month of February and watching how it changes, we posted a picture on the screen for students to copy on black cardboard and white crayons
Students in K7 have enjoyed learning about animals that make their homes in the Arctic and Antarctic. We watched videos and studied photos on the iPad and computer. By seeing the animals in photos and videos online children were able to understand why many animals in the Artic and Antarctic are white.
They looked at maps online to help them understand where the Arctic and Antarctic are in relation to Mexico. They also found photos of animals to print out. This helped with a final art project where they drew animals in a realistic way.
In PK-K8 we’ve been studying several poems, rhymes, and songs for our Balanced Literacy program during the school year. The children have been exposed to them in writing, in storybooks and online. Many students are now confident enough to search for them in the different websites available, such as Starfall.
For our 100 days of school, students used the “Aging app” in our iPad to discover what they would look like at 100 years of age. At the beginning, the teachers were taking photos of their students and showing them how to make the “transformation”. Later on, students started to take “selfies” and configured the “aging” process on their own
Nursery 1 students created a virtual forest in the classroom for their plastic animals. By placing a photo of a forest on the overhead projector and choosing an audio recording of rain, they used their bodies and plastic animals to create light and shadow and move inside the environment.
"NOTHING WITHOUT JOY" -Loris Malaguzzi
One of our US students in PK9 brought a Super Bowl cake to the classroom to share with his classmates. We took this opportunity to learn a little about American football. We looked at different historical football photographs from the National Geographic webpage and found some recent uploads of the summary of this year’s Super Bowl game on YouTube. The students watched the videos and discussed their experience watching the game. Here is a link to one of the conversations.
For the last two months, K10 has been studying and researching Mo Willems to learn a little about his life and work. We learned that Willems has a daughter named Trixie and that’s why he gave the same name to one of the main characters in his Knuffle Bunny books. This helped children understand that an author can be inspired by personal experiences and use this to create new stories.
Children also noticed that Willems uses real photographs for the settings of his books and then he draws the characters as illustrations. We compared this type of illustration to other Willems’ books and reflected on how, as the illustrator of a book, you can decide the style and technique you want to use.
Children loved the idea of using real photos, so we decided to create a story together using Willems’ style. The class decided they wanted the story to be about the Pigeon becoming a student in K10. We titled the book “The Pigeon Goes to School.” Each child mentioned a part of the routine they would like Pigeon to do, and we took a photograph of that child doing the chosen activity. Then we printed the photo in black and white, asked each student to draw a picture of Pigeon, and had the child cut and paste the drawing on the photo to make it look like a Knuffle Bunny book.
Children just finished this part of the process. The next step will be to audio record their voices and turn the book into an ebook using the app Book Creator.
En la clase de español los alumnos de kínder han estado disfrutando de los videos creados por sus compañeros en los que leen sus propias historias y han utilizado la cámara para tomar fotografías de las historias con el objetivo de compartirlas con sus amigos o familiares.


A ballad // is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "danced songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Ireland and Britain from the later medieval period until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in Australia, North Africa, North America and South America. Ballads are often 13 lines with an ABABBCBC form, consisting of couplets (two lines) of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. Another common form is ABAB or ABCB repeated, in alternating 8 and 6 syllable lines.
Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century, the term took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and is often used for any love song, particularly the sentimental ballad of pop or rock, although the term is also associated with the concept of a stylized storytelling song or poem, particularly when used as a title for other media such as a film.
The ballad derives its name from medieval French dance songs or "ballares" (L: ballare, to dance), from which 'ballet' is also derived, as did the alternative rival form that became the French ballade. As a narrative song, their theme and function may originate from Scandinavian and Germanic traditions of storytelling that can be seen in poems such as Beowulf. Musically they were influenced by the Minnelieder of the Minnesang tradition. The earliest example of a recognizable ballad in form in England is "Judas" in a 13th-century manuscript.
Ballads were originally written to accompany dances, and so were composed in couplets with refrains in alternate lines. These refrains would have been sung by the dancers in time with the dance. Most northern and west European ballads are written in ballad stanzas or quatrains (four-line stanzas) of alternating lines of iambic (an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable) tetrameter (eight syllables) and iambic trimeter (six syllables), known as ballad meter. Usually, only the second and fourth line of a quatrain are rhymed (in the scheme a, b, c, b), which has been taken to suggest that, originally, ballads consisted of couplets (two lines) of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. This can be seen in this stanza from "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet":
The horse | fair Ann | et rode | upon |
He amb | led like | the wind |,
With sil | ver he | was shod | before,
With burn | ing gold | behind |.
There is considerable variation on this pattern in almost every respect, including length, number of lines and rhyming scheme, making the strict definition of a ballad extremely difficult. In southern and eastern Europe, and in countries that derive their tradition from them, ballad structure differs significantly, like Spanish romanceros, which are octosyllabic and use consonance rather than rhyme.
Ballads usually are heavily influenced by the regions in which they originate and use the common dialect of the people. Scotland's ballads in particular, both in theme and language, are strongly characterised by their distinctive tradition, even exhibiting some pre-Christian influences in the inclusion of supernatural elements such as travel to the Fairy Kingdom in the Scots ballad "Tam Lin". The ballads do not have any known author or correct version; instead, having been passed down mainly by oral tradition since the Middle Ages, there are many variations of each. The ballads remained an oral tradition until the increased interest in folk songs in the 18th century led collectors such as Bishop Thomas Percy (1729–1811) to publish volumes of popular ballads.
In all traditions most ballads are narrative in nature, with a self-contained story, often concise, and rely on imagery, rather than description, which can be tragic, historical, romantic or comic. Themes concerning rural laborers and their sexuality are common, and there are many ballads based on the Robin Hood legend. Another common feature of ballads is repetition, sometimes of fourth lines in succeeding stanzas, as a refrain, sometimes of third and fourth lines of a stanza and sometimes of entire stanzas.
Scholars of ballads have been divided into "communalists", such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and the Brothers Grimm, who argue that ballads are originally communal compositions, and "individualists" such as Cecil Sharp, who assert that there was one single original author. Communalists tend to see more recent, particularly printed, broadside ballads of known authorship as a debased form of the genre, while individualists see variants as corruptions of an original text. More recently scholars have pointed to the interchange of oral and written forms of the ballad.
The transmission of ballads comprises a key stage in their re-composition. In romantic terms this process is often dramatized as a narrative of degeneration away from the pure 'folk memory' or 'immemorial tradition'. In the introduction to Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802) the romantic poet and historical novelist Walter Scott argued a need to 'remove obvious corruptions' in order to attempt to restore a supposed original. For Scott, the process of multiple recitations 'incurs the risk of impertinent interpolations from the conceit of one rehearser, unintelligible blunders from the stupidity of another, and omissions equally to be regretted, from the want of memory of a third.' Similarly, John Robert Moore noted 'a natural tendency to oblivescence'. According to Scott, transcribed ballads often have a 'flatness and insipidity' compared to their oral counterparts.
European Ballads have been generally classified into three major groups: traditional, broadside and literary. In America a distinction is drawn between ballads that are versions of European, particularly British and Irish songs, and 'Native American ballads', developed without reference to earlier songs. A further development was the evolution of the blues ballad, which mixed the genre with Afro-American music. For the late 19th century the music publishing industry found a market for what are often termed sentimental ballads, and these are the origin of the modern use of the term 'ballad' to mean a slow love song.
The traditional, classical or popular (meaning of the people) ballad has been seen as beginning with the wandering minstrels of late medieval Europe. From the end of the 15th century there are printed ballads that suggest a rich tradition of popular music. A reference in William Langland's Piers Plowman indicates that ballads about Robin Hood were being sung from at least the late 14th century and the oldest detailed material is Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495.
Early collections of English ballads were made by Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) and in the Roxburghe Ballads collected by Robert Harley, (1661–1724), which paralleled the work in Scotland by Walter Scott and Robert Burns. Inspired by his reading as a teenager of Reliques of Ancient English Poetry by Thomas Percy, Scott began collecting ballads while he attended Edinburgh University in the 1790s. He published his research from 1802 to 1803 in a three-volume work, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Burns collaborated with James Johnson on the multi-volume Scots Musical Museum, a miscellany of folk songs and poetry with original work by Burns. Around the same time, he worked with George Thompson on A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice.
Both Northern English and Southern Scots shared in the identified tradition of Border ballads, particularly evinced by the cross-border narrative in versions of "The Ballad of Chevy Chase" sometimes associated with the Lancashire-born sixteenth-century minstrel Richard Sheale.
It has been suggested that the increasing interest in traditional popular ballads during the eighteenth century was prompted by social issues such as the enclosure movement as many of the ballads deal with themes concerning rural laborers. James Davey has suggested that the common themes of sailing and naval battles may also have prompted the use (at least in England) of popular ballads as naval recruitment tools.[unreliable source?]
Key work on the traditional ballad was undertaken in the late 19th century in Denmark by Svend Grundtvig and for England and Scotland by the Harvard professor Francis James Child. They attempted to record and classify all the known ballads and variants in their chosen regions. Since Child died before writing a commentary on his work it is uncertain exactly how and why he differentiated the 305 ballads printed that would be published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. There have been many different and contradictory attempts to classify traditional ballads by theme, but commonly identified types are the religious, supernatural, tragic, love ballads, historic, legendary and humorous. The traditional form and content of the ballad were modified to form the basis for twenty-three bawdy pornographic ballads that appeared in the underground Victorian magazine The Pearl, which ran for eighteen issues between 1879 and 1880. Unlike the traditional ballad, these obscene ballads aggressively mocked sentimental nostalgia and local lore.
Broadside ballads (also known as 'broadsheet', 'stall', 'vulgar' or 'come all ye' ballads) were a product of the development of cheap print in the 16th century. They were generally printed on one side of a medium to large sheet of poor quality paper. In the first half of the 17th century, they were printed in black-letter or gothic type and included multiple, eye-catching illustrations, a popular tune title, as well as an alluring poem. By the 18th century, they were printed in white letter or roman type and often without much decoration (as well as tune title). These later sheets could include many individual songs, which would be cut apart and sold individually as "slip songs." Alternatively, they might be folded to make small cheap books or "chapbooks" which often drew on ballad stories. They were produced in huge numbers, with over 400,000 being sold in England annually by the 1660s. Tessa Watt estimates the number of copies sold may have been in the millions. Many were sold by travelling chapmen in city streets or at fairs. The subject matter varied from what has been defined as the traditional ballad, although many traditional ballads were printed as broadsides. Among the topics were love, marriage, religion, drinking-songs, legends, and early journalism, which included disasters, political events and signs, wonders and prodigies.
Literary or lyrical ballads grew out of an increasing interest in the ballad form among social elites and intellectuals, particularly in the Romantic movement from the later 18th century. Respected literary figures Robert Burns and Walter Scott in Scotland collected and wrote their own ballads. Similarly in England William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced a collection of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 that included Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats were attracted to the simple and natural style of these folk ballads and tried to imitate it. At the same time in Germany Goethe cooperated with Schiller on a series of ballads, some of which were later set to music by Schubert. Later important examples of the poetic form included Rudyard Kipling's "Barrack-Room Ballads" (1892-6) and Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1897). Victorian poet Christina Rossetti used ballad forms to explore spiritual and moral issues and to discuss the stereotypical treatment and representation of men and women's roles in society.
In the 18th century ballad operas developed as a form of English stage entertainment, partly in opposition to the Italian domination of the London operatic scene. It consisted of racy and often satirical spoken (English) dialogue, interspersed with songs that are deliberately kept very short to minimize disruptions to the flow of the story. Rather than the more aristocratic themes and music of the Italian opera, the ballad operas were set to the music of popular folk songs and dealt with lower-class characters. Subject matter involved the lower, often criminal, orders, and typically showed a suspension (or inversion) of the high moral values of the Italian opera of the period. The first, most important and successful was The Beggar's Opera of 1728, with a libretto by John Gay and music arranged by John Christopher Pepusch, both of whom probably influenced by Parisian vaudeville and the burlesques and musical plays of Thomas d'Urfey (1653–1723), a number of whose collected ballads they used in their work. Gay produced further works in this style, including a sequel under the title Polly. Henry Fielding, Colley Cibber, Arne, Dibdin, Arnold, Shield, Jackson of Exeter, Hook and many others produced ballad operas that enjoyed great popularity. Ballad opera was attempted in America and Prussia. Later it moved into a more pastoral form, like Isaac Bickerstaffe's Love in a Village (1763) and Shield's Rosina (1781), using more original music that imitated, rather than reproduced, existing ballads. Although the form declined in popularity towards the end of the 18th century its influence can be seen in light operas like that of Gilbert and Sullivan's early works like The Sorcerer as well as in the modern musical. In the 20th century, one of the most influential plays, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's (1928) The Threepenny Opera was a reworking of The Beggar's Opera, setting a similar story with the same characters, and containing much of the same satirical bite, but only using one tune from the original. The term ballad opera has also been used to describe musicals using folk music, such as The Martins and the Coys in 1944, and Peter Bellamy's The Transports in 1977. The satiric elements of ballad opera can be seen in some modern musicals such as Chicago and Cabaret.
Native American balladsEdit
Native American ballads are ballads that are native to North America (not to be confused with ballads performed by Native Americans). Some 300 ballads sung in North America have been identified as having origins in British traditional or broadside ballads. Examples include 'The Streets of Laredo', which was found in Britain and Ireland as 'The Unfortunate Rake'; however, a further 400 have been identified as originating in North America, including among the best known, 'The Ballad of Davy Crockett' and 'Jesse James'. They became an increasing area of interest for scholars in the 19th century and most were recorded or catalogued by George Malcolm Laws, although some have since been found to have British origins and additional songs have since been collected. They are usually considered closest in form to British broadside ballads and in terms of style are largely indistinguishable, however, they demonstrate a particular concern with occupations, journalistic style and often lack the ribaldry of British broadside ballads.
The blues ballad has been seen as a fusion of Anglo-American and Afro-American styles of music from the 19th century. Blues ballads tend to deal with active protagonists, often anti-heroes, resisting adversity and authority, but frequently lacking a strong narrative and emphasising character instead. They were often accompanied by banjo and guitar which followed the blues musical format. The most famous blues ballads include those about John Henry and Casey Jones.
The ballad was taken to Australia by early settlers from Britain and Ireland and gained particular foothold in the rural outback. The rhyming songs, poems and tales written in the form of ballads often relate to the itinerant and rebellious spirit of Australia in The Bush, and the authors and performers are often referred to as bush bards. The 19th century was the golden age of bush ballads. Several collectors have catalogued the songs including John Meredith whose recording in the 1950s became the basis of the collection in the National Library of Australia. The songs tell personal stories of life in the wide open country of Australia. Typical subjects include mining, raising and droving cattle, sheep shearing, wanderings, war stories, the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, class conflicts between the landless working class and the squatters (landowners), and outlaws such as Ned Kelly, as well as love interests and more modern fare such as trucking. The most famous bush ballad is "Waltzing Matilda", which has been called "the unofficial national anthem of Australia".
Sentimental ballads, sometimes called "tear-jerkers" or "drawing-room ballads" owing to their popularity with the middle classes, had their origins in the early "Tin Pan Alley" music industry of the later 19th century. They were generally sentimental, narrative, strophic songs published separately or as part of an opera (descendants perhaps of broadside ballads, but with printed music, and usually newly composed). Such songs include "Little Rosewood Casket" (1870), "After the Ball" (1892) and "Danny Boy". The association with sentimentality led to the term "ballad" being used for slow love songs from the 1950s onwards. Modern variations include "jazz ballads", "pop ballads", ""rock ballads", "R&B ballads" and "power ballads".
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- "Popular Ballads" The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, pp. 610-17.
- "Songs of Protest, Songs of Love: Popular Ballads in Eighteenth-Century Britain | Reviews in History". www.history.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-12-12.
- M. Hawkins-Dady, Reader's Guide to Literature in English (Taylor & Francis, 1996), p. 54.
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- "The Influence of transmission on the English Ballads", Modern Language Review 11 (1916), p. 387.
- B. Sweers, Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 45.
- Gregory, E. David (April 13, 2006). Victorian Songhunters: The Recovery and Editing of English Vernacular Ballads and Folk Lyrics, 1820-1883. Scarecrow Press. pp. 42–43. ISBN 978-1-4616-7417-7. Retrieved August 30, 2017.
- D. Gregory, '"The Songs of the People for Me": The Victorian Rediscovery of Lancashire Vernacular Song', Canadian Folk Music/Musique folklorique canadienne, 40 (2006), pp. 12-21.
- Robin Ganev,Songs of Protest, Songs of Love: Popular Ballads in 18th Century Britain
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- M. Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 111-28.
- B. Capp, 'Popular literature', in B. Reay, ed., Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (Routledge, 1985), p. 204.
- "Popular Ballads", The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, p. 610.
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- Kerry O'Brien December 10, 2003 7:30 Report, abc.net.au
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References and further readingEdit
- Dugaw, Dianne. Deep Play: John Gay and the Invention of Modernity. Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2001. Print.
- Middleton, Richard. "Popular Music (I)". In Deane L. Root (ed.). Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 6 April 2007. (subscription required)
- Randel, Don (1986). The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-61525-5.
- Temperley, Nicholas. "Ballad (II, 2)". In Deane L. Root (ed.). Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 6 April 2007. (subscription required)
- Winton, Calhoun. John Gay and the London Theatre. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993. Print.
- Witmer, Robert. "Ballad (jazz)". In Deane L. Root (ed.). Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 6 April 2007. (subscription required)
- Marcello Sorce Keller, "Sul castel di mirabel: Life of a Ballad in Oral Tradition and Choral Practice", Ethnomusicology, XXX(1986), no. 3, 449- 469.
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ballads.|
|Wikiquote has quotations related to: Ballads|
- The British Literary Ballads Archive
- The Bodleian Library Ballad Collection: view facsimiles of printed ballads
- The English Broadside Ballad Archive: searchable database of ballad images, citations, and recordings
- Welsh Ballads resource guide
- The Traditional Ballad Index
- Black-letter Broadside Ballads Of The years 1595-1639 From the Collection of Samuel Pepys
- Smithsonian Global Sound: The Music of Poetry—audio samples of poems, hymns and songs in ballad meter.
- The Oxford Book of Ballads, complete 1910 book by Arthur Quiller-Couch
- English Broadside Ballad Archive—an archive of images and recordings of over 4,000 pre-1700 broadside ballads
- A Book of Old English Ballads public domain audiobook at LibriVox


Georgia's string of subtropical barrier islands boast a rich and lengthy cultural history. Relics of ancient coastal Indians reveal that thousands of years passed between the first generation of children born to aboriginal residents and the winds that blew the large cloth sails propelling European ships. During the sixteenth century, Spanish and French explorers first set foot upon the sandy shores of the islands. Both countries laid claim to the lush coastal lands, but the Spaniards proved strongest. Although many Georgia history books spend little more than a few sentences on Spanish heritage in the pre-Oglethorpe period, missions of considerable size and permanence thrived well into the seventeenth century and reflect extensive Spanish activity.
With the eighteenth century came the English and the beginning of the most influential era in the state's history as studied by Georgia schoolchildren. Fertile acres were cultivated extensively and English colonists prospered from the export of indigo, rice, hemp, and flax among other agricultural products. Finally the stars and stripes replaced the union jack, but with the outbreak of the Civil War, even the stars and bars of the Confederacy managed a short reign. After the plantation era and its peak of Sea Island cotton production, tycoons flocked to the barrier islands during the latter part of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Today, picturesque ruins still stand-remnants of missions, forts, slave dwellings, and mansions. Colossal live oaks, their moss-draped branches ever extended, welcome conservationists to certain areas along the coastal terrain and vacationers to others.
The Creeks, one of the so-called Five Civilized Nations of Indians, inhabited Georgia's barrier islands long before Europeans set sail for the New World. A nomadic people, they moved from one village to another with the changing seasons, following migratory wild fowl, fishing the inland streams, and hunting alligators in the coastal rivers and buffalo and deer on the mainland. They cultivated corn, melons, squash, beans, tobacco, and fruit, and possessed insatiable appetites for oysters.
It has been said that these native inhabitants were not mound builders like so many other Indian tribes, but on Ossabaw Island-located 20 miles below Savannah-shell mounds exist. Excavations have revealed mostly kitchen middens or massive piles of oyster shells: evidence that Ossabaw was once a favorite Creek hunting, fishing, and feasting ground. One of the largest Creek villages, with headquarters for the chieftain of the tribe, was situated south of Ossabaw on St. Catherines Island; a high promontory on this island's eastern side overlooks both beach and sea and no doubt provided a natural vantage point for the Creeks.
On Sapelo Island, a 12-foot shell wall encloses a space at least 60 yards in diameter-nearly the size of a football field. This ancient shell ring, or arena, dates back some 5,800 years and is one of the oldest remnants of Indian activity along the Georgia coast. As legend has it, the arena was formed by a Creek chieftain who tossed aside shells, day after day, as he sat on the ground cross-legged and feasted on oysters delivered to him by runners who fetched them directly from the ocean. Sea Island, St. Simons, and Jekyll share similar prehistoric backgrounds of Creek inhabitation. Only Cumberland Island was occupied by the Timucuans, a Florida tribe whose customs and language differed from those of the upper island Creeks.
Among the first traders said to have traveled to the coast were tribes from north Georgia who followed the Old Indian Path from the Appalachians to the Atlantic. With weapons, tools, and arrowheads of stone and flint they arrived, wishing to trade for dried fish, fowl, fruits, and herbs. Of particular interest were the dried leaves of the cassina, which grows in abundance along the coast and was used to brew a potent ceremonial tea. Arrowheads, made from stone that is not native to the Georgia coast, comprise portions of contemporary public and private collections.
Beyond domestic trade, the coastal Indians established foreign trade relations during the sixteenth century. According to Burnette Vanstory, author of Georgia's Land of the Golden Isles, they supplied French ships with "cargoes of sassafras, animal skins, wax, rosin, and wild turkeys. It has been said that people in France were enjoying turkey from the Southern coast long before the first Thanksgiving feast of the pilgrims."
During the 1560s, early explorers like Frenchman Jean Ribaut with his band of Huguenots and Pedro Menéndez and his Spanish fleet staked their claims to these islands. But certain evidence suggests an even earlier European settlement along Georgia's barrier islands. Dr. Paul Hoffman, professor of history at Louisiana State University, suspects that 60 years before the demise of Sir Walter Raleigh's "lost colony" at Roanoke, the Spanish tried and failed to gain a foothold in the New World. It was along Georgia's barrier islands, not at Roanoke or Jamestown or Plymouth Rock, according to Hoffman, that America's colonial history truly began.
The year was 1526. Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, a royal judge residing in Santo Domingo, led a voyage of 500 men and women, including African slaves and Dominican friars, to establish a Spanish colony called San Miguel de Gualdape. Attempts to settle, however, were short lived. Indians soon attacked and disease quickly spread; Ayllon and more than 200 other settlers died. Less than three months after its founding, the Spanish colony was abandoned.
The site of San Miguel de Gualdape has yet to be uncovered while attempts to pinpoint its location have been plagued by controversy. Using sketchy and often conflicting records, many historians have concluded that the colony was near Georgetown or Port Royal, South Carolina, or even near the mouth of the Savannah River. But within the last 15 years, reprinted accounts of early Spanish voyages in the New World (originally published in the 1530s) "strongly suggest that Gualdape was on Sapelo Sound," says Hoffman. Despite squabbles over location, there appears to be no doubt about the year of settlement, 1526: 39 years before the founding of St. Augustine, 81 years before Jamestown, 95 years before the arrival of the Mayflower, and 207 years before Oglethorpe sailed up the Savannah River to colonize Georgia. Confirmation of Ayllon's settlement-the first European establishment in North America-would surely require a revision of history.
Dr. David Thomas Hurst, an anthropologist employed by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, is working to foster greater interest in Georgia's Spanish epoch. The author of St. Catherines: An Island in Time, Thomas's research has shown that the Spanish mission system in Georgia (and Florida) "was founded earlier.involved more people and lasted longer" than its better-known counterparts such as the Alamo and others in the American West. "Understanding of the past has always been heavily conditioned by attitudes of the present," explains Thomas. "The early missions of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California still remain highly visible. It is no coincidence that hundreds of volumes have been written on America's western missions."
Once the French under Ribaut were driven off of the barrier islands by Menéndez and his Spanish fleet, Santa Catalina de Guale was established on St. Catherines Island in 1566. It is considered part of the first settlement north of Mexico deemed for regular Spanish mission work. When Thomas began searching for Santa Catalina on St. Catherines, he knew that for nearly 100 years the mission was the "northernmost Spanish outpost on the Eastern Seaboard, and this historical fact implied considerable size and permanence." As anticipated, he and a team of archaeologists uncovered evidence of a fortified church, buildings to house soldiers and priests with granaries, storehouses, and dwellings suitable for hundreds of Guale (another name for the Creeks pronounced "wallie") Indians.
Mission priest learned the Indians' language and converted thousands to Christianity between 1566 and 1680. In addition to teaching and converting natives, the priests spent time tending their gardens-a profusion of tropical vegetables, fruits, and flowers. A legacy to the Georgia coast from its early white inhabitants, groves of oranges, lemons, pomegranates, olives, and figs would continue to bear fruit long after Spanish occupation.
Although the majority of natives were friendly toward missionaries, some resented the outsiders. Buckling under the harassment of hostile Creeks, several missions were destroyed and Jesuit friars eventually driven out. In the 1570s, mission work was zealously reorganized by Franciscans and pursued for decades, but troubles for priests persisted. With English colonists in close proximity to the barrier islands, English traders provoked friction between Indians and Spaniards and goaded pirates sailing the coastal waters to come ashore and plunder missions. But Santa Catalina de Guale persisted, and in the early 1600s, Juan de Las Cabeza de Altamirano, the Roman Catholic bishop stationed in Havana, Cuba, came to the Georgia coast to praise the work of missionaries and baptize Guale leaders.
In 1732, King George II issued a charter for James Oglethorpe and 19 associates to colonize Georgia. The territory to be settled lay between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers; England and Spain had agreed to leave the region below the Altamaha as a sort of no man's land. So it was left to Oglethorpe, British general and philanthropist, to secure the path towards development of this 13th colony. Oglethorpe developed a three-fold plan. It included establishing a defense against the Spaniards in Florida; creating a haven for Protestant dissenters, insolvent debtors, and the criminal classes of England; as well as developing a new source of revenue for the Crown.
In 1733, General Oglethorpe first touched American soil on Tybee Island, approximately 18 miles from the site where he would found Savannah. Upon his arrival, Oglethorpe and the Creek Indian Chief Tomochichi became fast friends. The general's dealings with the natives were, from the start, remarkably successful. Tomochichi soon persuaded the Creeks to peaceably turn over possession of the chartered territory, and the town of Savannah was founded later that year. Settling upriver was as strategic a move as Oglethorpe's plans for mass fortification along the coast. Oglethorpe selected the island of St. Simons for fortification against Spanish invasion. He ordered construction of a fort on St. Simons's west side where a bend in the river formed a natural vantage point. Built in 1736, this British fort, one of the largest in colonial America, provided protection for other colonies as well as the town within its walls. Fort, town, and river were called Frederica in honor of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The town rapidly grew around the fort as Oglethorpe encouraged craftsmen, artisans, shopkeepers, and their families to settle there. But after the British victory at the Battle of Bloody Marsh, the regiment disbanded, and many settlers left for other parts of the colony. In 1758 a fire destroyed the town and it was never rebuilt.
Numerous other forts, both colonial and American, were constructed over the next 150 or so years. Savannah's strategic wartime importance contributed to the construction of two fortifications near the city. In 1808, a brick structure surrounded by tidal moat, Fort Jackson was built on Salter's Island near Tybee. The second, Fort Pulaski, was built in 1829.
In keeping with the land agreement between Oglethorpe and Tomochichi, the Creeks retained Ossabaw Island along with neighboring St. Catherines and Sapelo for their hunting grounds, but with British influence the names of the other islands became Anglicized. Previously San Pedro, Cumberland Island was given its English name soon after the colony of Georgia was settled. In 1734 when Tomochichi and his family visited England, the chief's nephew, Toonahowie, kindled a friendship with William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, the 13-year-old son of the king. As the Indian family's four-month visit came to an end, Prince William presented Toonahowie with a gold watch. Deeply touched by the gesture and the relationship the two had shared, the Indian prince requested the name of San Pedro be changed in honor of William Augustus.
Perhaps the most intriguing instances of nomenclatural evolution were those experienced by Jekyll Island. Jekyll was a favorite haunt of the Creeks who called it Aspo. In the 1560s, the French Huguenots named the island Ile de la Somme. Over 150 years later, General Oglethorpe changed its name once again-this time to honor Sir Joseph Jekyll, a gentleman who had helped him finance the colony of Georgia, but Jekyll locals have long since contested such aristocratic ties to the island's most recent name. As word-of-mouth history goes, a Frenchman named Jacques operated a trading station for pirates and buccaneers here in the 1600s. The name Jacques' Island deteriorated into Jake's Isle, then Jakyl. Spelled Jekyl for many years, an extra "l" was eventually added making Jekyll the accepted spelling.
By the 1740s the Georgia colony had proved its worth as a buffer against Spanish forces but had yet to establish itself as a source of income for the mother country. Oglethorpe believed the cultivation of fertile acres along the coast would surely reap profit. During these early stages of agricultural development, planters were encouraged to grow indigo for the production of dyes, mulberry trees to make silk, and vineyards for wine. Of the three, indigo thrived; in a time before synthetic dyes, it rapidly became one of the colony's chief exports. According to a record dating back to 1756, other agricultural products from the coast included rice, pitch, tar, hemp, flax, vegetable wax, and beeswax. Lumbering and cattle-raising also earned profits for the colony.
Prosperous planters made their way to the lush barrier islands and shared in the success for more than a decade. But soon the thunderous boom of Revolutionary War cannons forced island inhabitants to flee. Fields were later plowed and replanted, but with the War of 1812 the coast was again subjected to enemy raids; Fort Jackson, off of Tybee, was among the coastal forts garrisoned.
Between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, a process called "live oaking" became a booming business. Before the advent of metal-hulled ships, live oak was one of the world's most sought after lumber types for the construction of battleships. A dense, heavy wood with many curves and a twisted grain, live oak is resistant to rotting and weathering. Such qualities made live oak ships superior war vessels. Reports of British cannonballs bouncing off the hull of the U.S.S. Constitution, a live oak ship employed during the War of 1812, gave it the name Old Ironsides. As such reports spread worldwide, a demand for live oak in both domestic and foreign markets skyrocketed. Unfortunately, 400 to 700 live oaks were required to build the frame of just one ship, and Georgia's barrier island forests were ravaged. Procuring live oak became increasingly difficult. This problem coupled with the inception of "ironclad" steam-powered ships diminished the live oak trade by the mid-1800s.
The barrier islands now flourished in what author Burnette Vanstory described as "the high noon of the plantation era." White land, black labor.
Ossabaw Island was among the first of Georgia's coastal empires. The cultivation and processing of indigo prompted the transfer of hundreds of slaves to the island. Field hands were used to cut the plants at daybreak before the hot sun could dry the leaves. Vat workers then immersed the leaves to draw out the dye while others stirred the extract with paddles for aeration. Skilled men handled the dye's actual preparation, boiling its sediment with water then draining and pressing it into molds. Once dried in the sun, the molds of indigo were loaded upon barges headed for Savannah to then be shipped to foreign markets. Ossabaw bustled with its plantation house and slaves' quarters, its field hands and dye workers, and its docks and loading crews.
Late in the eighteenth century, colonists determined that the subtropical barrier islands were decidedly ripe for the cultivation of a certain species of cotton. Colonists who sought refuge in the West Indies during the American Revolution found it there. Seed plants brought to the Georgia coast were said to be developed into the most superior brand of cotton ever grown. The long-fibered cotton could be easily separated from the seed.
During the late 1700s and early 1800s, coastal plantations made agricultural history. From Sapelo and St. Simons on down to Cumberland, island fields were white with cotton. Even Ossabaw turned over its profitable indigo fields to the growth of Sea Island cotton upon learning it demanded up to twice the fee for ordinary cotton in markets throughout the world. Crops of Sea Island cotton brought many plantation owners up to $100,000 per year.
Planters built sprawling estates, entertained lavishly, and coveted the finer things. Life on the island empires, however, was best categorized with contradiction-elegant yet primitive. Indeed there were all the luxuries and delicacies of the Old World as enjoyed by the duBignons-a noble family who came to American to escape the French Revolution in 1789-on their 11,000-acre Jekyll domain planted in cotton. The duBignons lived like the French landowners from whom they descended. The family residence was decorated with furnishings, paintings, and ornaments from France, brought by their sailing vessel the Commodore on her annual voyage to the motherland for supplies. But such seclusion from the outside world could prove dangerously inconvenient. Sudden illness had to be treated with home remedies. Communication was dependent upon boat travel and if turbulent weather made waters impassable, island inhabitants were forced to rely on their ingenuity.
Despite the prosperity reaped from the cultivation of cotton, certain agricultural experts expressed concern. Thomas Spalding, an authority on Sea Island cotton, foresaw the potential danger of exhausting energies on one crop to the exclusion of others. A resident of Sapelo Island, he successfully introduced sugar cane to the barrier islands as an alternative cash crop; with so much cotton being produced at once, a surplus seemed imminent. One of the earliest advocates of diversified farming, Spalding regularly made speeches and published articles urging farmers to rotate their crops. His insight was a modern concept, one touting the importance of conserving nutrients in the soil.
Just as Spalding predicted, cotton production peaked, and the demand and price declined. Near the middle of the nineteenth century, England experienced a recession, and the coastal island docks backed up with bales of cotton. Plantation soils also became exhausted. Before long, rampant infestation of boll weevils destroyed the crops.
Headman upon the Spalding plantation was a famous slave called Bulallah, believed to have been born in the French Sudan. Bulallah enjoyed the complete confidence and respect of his master and of all the men who came under his supervision. Father of a score of children, Bulallah has hundreds of descendants living today in the coastal region. Many are said to have inherited his copper-toned skin and features as well as his height. His descendants are proud of their ancestry and pass down tales of the old man. Bulallah was wise in the ways of nature. His children and his children's children knew the secrets of the moon, the tides, the waters, and the forests. When one family member fell sick, the elders related to Bulallah knew which herbs and roots to gather and how to concoct the proper medicinal brew. Joel Chandler Harris's Story of Aaron mentions a book written in Arabic by Ben Ali (another name by which Bulallah is called). This volume is prized among rare books at the Georgia State University Library located in Atlanta.
The majority of slaves relegated to work upon the coastal empires did not enjoy the confidence and respect of their masters. An Englishwoman by the name of Frances (Fanny) Kemble recorded the day-to-day operations and conditions of plantation life on St. Simons. After marrying a wealthy Philadelphian, Pierce Bulter, whose family fortune was partly derived from a vast cotton and rice plantation, Kemble lived on the island for several months. In her book, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839, Kimble expressed disdain for "the manifest injustice of unpaid and enforced labor; the brutal inhumanity of allowing a man to strip and lash a woman, the mother of 10 children; to exact from her, toil, which was to maintain in luxury idle young men, the owners of the plantation." Her account is one of backbreaking slave labor endured in miserably high temperatures and unbearable humidity, and of the harsh cruelties inflicted regularly upon slaves by their white masters. Kemble also details the plantation's landscape of swamps and woods, canals and rivers, stately mansions and decrepit hovels.
Today a square brick chimney is all that remains of a steam-powered rice mill on the Butler plantation. A roadside marker near the site mentions Kemble's Journal "which is said to have influenced England against the Confederacy." Although it hardly affected international diplomacy, the book (which first appeared in 1863 in England, then in the states) did cause controversy in the North and South. In the South, Kemble was denounced as a meddling foreigner who stood in judgment on matters with which she had merely a passing acquaintance. She was also accused of distortion and exaggeration. But in the North, her accounts furthered the cause of many abolitionists. Skeptics of Kemble's Journal remain critical today. They cite several willful misrepresentations as evidence of unreliability, and point to a book published after the war by Kemble's daughter, Frances Leigh, that contradicted her mother's accounts.
During the Civil War in the 1860s, most of the barrier islands were evacuated at some stage before the Confederacy surrendered. Those residing on St. Catherines and Ossabaw departed immediately. For a time in 1861, Confederate troops were stationed upon Sapelo Island.
Numerous forts on the barrier islands earned mention in the history books thanks to their roles in the Civil War. On January 3, 1861, in one of the first military actions of the war, Georgia troops seized Fort Pulaski (located on Cockspur Island near Tybee) from Federal hands. Only 15 months later, Union troops occupying Tybee recaptured the fort. When construction of Fort Pulaski began in 1829, one of its engineers-soon after his graduation from West Point-was Second Lieutenant Robert E. Lee.
Fort Jackson, previously a colonial fort also located on a barrier island, served as the Confederate headquarters of the river batteries during the Civil War. An interior brick fort guarding Savannah's river approach, naval vessels never overcame it.
Troops of the Confederacy were also stationed at the south end of St. Simons with instructions to guard the entrance of the Brunswick harbor. But a few weeks shy of New Year's Day 1862, Union gunboats blockaded the coast and the residents of St. Simons were ordered off the island. Eventually Confederate troops were evacuated from St. Simons Island-long ago a military stronghold where General Oglethorpe strategically constructed Fort Frederica to stave enemy invaders away from the colonies. Bitter yet weary soldiers followed their final orders and blew up the St. Simons lighthouse to keep the light from aiding the victorious blockaders. With St. Simons and Brunswick in the hands of Union forces, the island was used as a concentration area for freed slaves from the mainland.
Some of the first black troops to see action in the Civil War had been stationed on St. Simons Island. The Massachusetts 54th, the U.S.C.T. regiment commanded by 25-year-old Col. Robert Gold Shaw, fought against Sherman's armies who looted and burned the town of Darien, located on a channel of the Altamaha River near Savannah, in 1863. The battle was made famous by the movie Glory.
In the years following the Civil War, a number of barrier islands were taken over by squatters and plunderers, which infested the South during Reconstruction. Federal forces had previously pillaged coastal island plantations until they became inoperable and owners fled. Some of the former plantation slaves who remained farmed for subsistence, but before long owners returned. Loosely organized sharecropping and land-bartering arrangements were made between the two. Attempts, however, to reestablish antebellum cotton plantations failed under these working conditions. Plantations simply could not operate without enforced labor; the work required was that treacherous, as the former slaves knew all too well. The plantation era came to a close.
But before the war's end, the present state of Sapelo Island's cultural history began to take shape. The remaining Spaldings on Sapelo, two daughters-in-law of the late Thomas, undertook the task of sailing slaves to the mainland. Upon arrival, they marched them over 160 miles to the interior of the state. Those too young or too old to walk were left behind to fend for themselves.
Once freed, many former slaves from Sapelo struggled their way back to the coast, then back to the island (many to reunite with family). An order by Sherman granted abandoned land on the coastal islands and a section of the Georgia mainland in 40-acre allotments to the freed people. Those returning to Sapelo set to work at once, cultivating soil and building a schoolhouse and church. A community began to emerge. But this autonomy did not last long as power shifted from Sherman's General Saxton to a General Tillson.
By 1871 three Sapelo men scraped together a down payment on 1,000 acres at Raccoon Bluff, which they divided into 33-acre plots and sold to former Spalding slaves. Although it was not a prosperous community, as people subsisted on what they could grow and fish, Raccoon Bluff became Sapelo's dominant community by the end of the nineteenth century.
In 1911 the last of the Spaldings sold the greater part of the island to Howard Coffin of the Hudson Motor Company, and in 1934 Coffin sold it to tobacco heir R.J. Reynolds. By 1950, Reynolds had set aside the northern half of Sapelo Island for a game preserve, but Raccoon Bluff stood in his way. Because Reynolds held economic power over the black community, the Sapelo people moved, although reluctantly, to parcels in Hog Hammock.
After Reynolds' death in 1963, the northern half of the island was sold to the state. A few years later, Georgia bought the rest, except for Hog Hammock. Today, approximately 70 people-many descendants of the legendary slave, Bulallah-reside in the Hog Hammock community. Geechee, their West Africa-influenced dialect (known as Gullah along the South Carolina coast), is still spoken by some. Many Hog Hammock residents have committed themselves to the preservation of their community, keeping traditions such as southern-style cooking and storytelling alive.
One resource, still abundant on the coastal mainland and on some of the islands, was lumber. From 1870 to 1900, the short-lived lumber period occurred in response to an increasing international demand for southern lumber. St. Simons and Doboy Island, a tiny marsh island south of Sapelo, became the sites of lumber mills because of their river locations. Cypress, pine, cedar, and oak were cut from flourishing mainland forests; the logs were then floated down the Altamaha and Satilla rivers to island mills where they were sawed into lumber for export. St. Simons and Doboy sounds were stocked with great schooners from all parts of the world waiting to purchase the lumber. Simultaneously, residents of Sapelo Island made a thriving business raising cattle and selling beef to the captains and crews of the schooners. This bustling period rapidly ended as the trees suitable for lumber were depleted.
During this period following the Civil War, barrier islands such as St. Catherines and Ossabaw seemed to evolve full circle. With fields overgrown enough to provide cover for birds and game, they appeared as they had centuries ago as the roaming and hunting grounds of the Creek Indians.
Of the barrier islands in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Vanstory wrote lyrically, "Devastated and deserted and weary with war the islands dozed in the sun; time healed their wounds, and nature covered their scars with the lush green of vine and fern and the profligate beauty of the tropical flower." The Georgia coast attracted vacationers and naturalists alike who were bedazzled by nature. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the barrier islands entered a new period of prosperity and five of the islands became the property of America's wealthiest tycoons.
Between 1886 and 1942, American millionaires faithfully wintered on Jekyll Island. Astors, Rockefellers, Morgans, Vanderbilts, Macys, Pulitzers, and Goodyears took leave of Fifth Avenue penthouses and retreated to the serenity of the Georgia coast. For 56 years Jekyll remained their exclusive playground; visitors were referred to as strangers and allowed to stay on the island for two weeks only. The "simple life" that these leading American financiers chose to lead on Jekyll often included wild-boar hunting parties followed by 10-course meals prepared by a chef imported from New York City's Delmonico's Restaurant. Residing in multiroomed "cottages," the rich and famous played golf and tennis and socialized.
St. Catherines Island, purchased in 1876 by John J. Rauers of Savannah, became home to one of the finest country homes and private game reserves in the nation. The home of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Button Gwinnett, remains on St. Catherines.
Once the Torrey family settled into their home on Ossabaw after acquiring the island in 1924, the hospitality of plantation days was restored. An oversized leather-bound guest book, first signed by the Henry Ford family, boasted many a well-known name with the passage of very little time.
During World War II, the famous millionaires of Jekyll departed for the last time. In 1947, the State of Georgia purchased the island for the bargain price of $675,000. Since then the number of private houses built in residential areas has dramatically increased. Closer to the beach are tourist developments such as motels, restaurants, a convention center, an aquarium, and shopping centers. A public fishing pier and an amphitheater for summer play were also built with vacationers in mind.
Continuous development of subdivisions and shopping centers bring more permanent residents and traffic to the narrow, tree-lined roads on St. Simons each year. On the more exclusive Sea Island, the famed Cloister resort is still rated among the finer hotels in the nation and continues to attract international clientele. These islands also attracted the attention of famous writers, such as Eugene O'Neill, who wrote Ah Wilderness here, and Eugenia Price, the best-selling author of a trilogy of books set on St. Simons.
On other barrier islands, the state and federal government have taken control of the conservation of coastal terrain. In 1969 the tiny island of Wassaw was sold to The Nature Conservancy provided that no bridge ever be built connecting it to the mainland. Deeded to the federal government that same year, it is now preserved as a national wildlife refuge. Virgin forests cover ancient dunes and help to protect and increase island wildlife, and today Wassaw is a popular hunting destination. The 5,600 acres of woodlands, lakes, and marsh on Blackbeard Island also remain as an unspoiled natural haven, and Blackbeard is one of the seven coastal refuges administered by the U.S. Department of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service.
Ossabaw is also bridgeless and destined to stay that way. In 1961 the island's private owner, Eleanor Torrey West, created the Ossabaw Island Project Foundation for "men and women of creative thought and purpose." The foundation soon gained a reputation as a high-quality, if slightly eccentric organization. Lengthy waiting lists for admission to the select group were comprised of artists, craftsmen, scientists, philosophers, photographers, poets, and writers. Each paid a reasonable weekly fee to work in the idyllic setting. The author Ralph Ellison and composer Aaron Copland were among the better-known residents. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources now operates the island, and only those who obtain special permission from the agency can visit Ossabaw.
Cumberland Island has remained largely wild. In the early 1970s, the federal government established the Cumberland Island National Seashore and opened part of this national treasure to the public. Visitation to St. Catherines, on the contrary, has become extremely limited. In 1974, the island entered what must have been the most unusual period in its varied history when it became one of the New York Zoological Society's Rare Animal Survival Centers. Acres that were once white fields of Sea Island cotton, then pastures for herds of black angus cattle, became grazing areas for exotic animals from such far-away places as Uganda, the Sudan, Kenya, the Sahara, and South America. In addition to the work of the animal survival center, a number of archaeological explorations have been undertaken on St. Catherines, such as those headed by Dr. David Thomas as part of his Santa Catalina de Guale excavations. Guest visitation today is quite difficult to obtain.
Two islands, Tybee and Skidaway, are accessible by the causeway off the coast of Savannah. Tybee opens its 5-mile beach to the public, but Skidaway is a private residential area with golf courses and recreation area developments. The University of Georgia Marine Research Extension Service, located on Skidaway, offers some research trips.
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