Scope and Content
The Captain Pearl R. Nye Collection consists of materials that document the professional relationship between Pearl R. Nye and the Library of Congress, as well as the personal relationship between Nye and Alan Lomax. The collection is centered on Nye’s documentation of and contribution to folk songs about the Ohio and Erie Canal. It includes sound recordings of Nye, recorded by John A. Lomax, and Alan and Elizabeth Lomax in Akron, Ohio in 1937, correspondence between the Library of Congress and Nye, and photographs of Nye at his home on the canal.
Nye’s desire to collect canal folk songs and sing them for the Lomaxes stemmed from his childhood growing up on the canal, his own career as a canal captain, and his later years when traditional activities on the Ohio and Erie Canal were supplanted by more modern technologies.
Nye’s transcriptions of song lyrics provide an invaluable research tool. These transcriptions include those songs he sang (included on the recordings), as well as songs he knew (and were not recorded). These lyrics reflect not only popular sentiments of the times, but enduring values and traditions, as they provide a snapshot of a way of life for trade and travel that was becoming obsolete through technological advances.