Scope and Content
This collection of sound recordings, photographs, and manuscripts (including correspondence and other research materials) was compiled by Eloise Hubbard Linscott and represents her research for her book, Folksongs of Old New England (1939), and her unpublished manuscripts and folk music research through about 1955. Among Linscott's many correspondents were Phillips Barry, Ruth Benedict, Marshall Bartholomew, Samuel P. Bayard, James M. Carpenter, Harold J. Coolidge, Jr., Helen Hartness Flanders, Carrie B. Grover, Sarah Gertrude Knott, Lois Lenski, National Folk Festival, Frank G. Speck, Hendrik Willem van Loon, various correspondents at the Library of Congress including Archibald MacLeish, Alan Lomax, Benjamin A. Botkin, Harold Spivacke, and others; and various publishers, recording companies, radio stations, and administrators of summer camps. Twenty-five glass-based lacquer discs of Lincott's field recordings with field notes were accessioned by the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song in 1942. The recordings include folk music, folk songs, children's songs, sea songs, lumberjack songs, fiddle tunes, and dance music, including dance calls. Other sound recordings in the collection are radio broadcasts, lectures delivered by Linscott, recordings of Linscott's family, and a few American Indian and French Canadian songs. The collection includes music transcriptions of fiddle tunes, some made by Samuel Preston Bayard, circa 1944; and Linscott's transcriptions of music and lyrics. Photographs include pictures of Linscott's informants, her documentation of events and trips, and photographs of New England landscapes. A manuscript of poetry by Arthur Treadwell Walden titled "Songs of the Yukon Trail," and a small book of poetry, "Passing Thoughts," by H. Rae Farnham are included; both were informants of Linscott. Included with Linscott's estate, received at the Library in 1983, is a manuscript music notebook, undated, but circa 1815, belonging to Samuel Reed, and to Linscott's great grandmother, Elizabeth Foster Reed, containing popular songs and dance music, marches, and music from the War of 1812. The collection also includes administrative correspondence related to the digitization of selected collection materials in 2002.