Voices from the Past: The Singing and Preaching at Otter Creek Church

Abstract

A SMALL RELIGIOUS SECT in the southern region of the United States whose singing has been maintained as an oral tradition for more than 125 years would hardly be considered newsworthy since the phenomenon is still relatively common, but finding such a tradition as far north as Indiana is indeed worth noting. The fact that Otter Creek Regular Predestinarian Church in Putnam County, Indiana, has gone undiscovered until now is not surprising considering its remote location and absolute disinterest in adding to its membership. Because Otter Creek Church cut itself off from the mainstream of religious life in Indiana as much as one hundred years ago, its isolation now preserves for us a rare but fragile window through which we can see something of an early musical tradition which has changed almost beyond recognition elsewhere in the state. The Primitive Baptists to whom the Regular Predestinarian Baptists were once closely related are strongest in the deep South from the Carolinas to Texas and as far north as Kentucky. Not only are Primitive Baptist churches scarce north of the Ohio River, but their singing and sermon styles have become less and less like that of their brethren in the southern highlands. The northern Primitive Baptists have been far more willing than their southern cousins to accept gospel hymns, sermons delivered in ordinary speech, and songbooks which include musical notation. They have always been at the edge rather than the center of the musical tradition and consequently more open to the influence of the dominant missionoriented Baptist churches. In most southern states, Kentucky included, Primitive Baptists and other related sects prefer hymnals containing only poetry to those having musical notation as well. Consequently there is no guide to remembering tunes or matching them to certain texts other than oral tradition. George Pullen Jackson, whose many books and articles on American shape-note music first appeared in the 1930's, defined the existence of a body of sacred folksongs which had begun appearing in oblong songbooks as early as Jeremiah Ingall's Christian Harmony (Exeter, New Hampshire, 1805) and Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part II (Harrisbutg, 1813) compiled by John Wyeth.' Throughout his Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early