[METHODIST] Pious Songs. Social, Prayer, Closet, and Camp Meeting Hymns (1836)

[METHODIST] Pious Songs. Social, Prayer, Closet, and Camp Meeting Hymns, and Choruses. Baltimore: Armstrong & Berry, 1836. Third Edition, Enlarged and Improved. [11129]

Full brown leather with a black leather spine title label, scuffed, worn, a little worming, yet still intact with strong joints, 4 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches. [i-ii], [3]-455, [i-xxii]; the text is complete. The pages are bordered in black, the subjects are running titles. The title page and next four leaves have worming at the bottom margin; about 100 pages have a dark stain in the bottom margin; three of the Index leaves are torn without loss; scattered foxing, other stains. Lacks the front free end papers (blanks). Good. Hardcover.

Date taken from the copyright, which was held by Robert G. Armstrong, the publisher.

483 hymns without music; choruses are unnumbered (i-xxii above). Includes index.

"This is an enlargement of Social and Camp-Meeting Songs for the Pious (twenty-fifth edition dated 1831), itself an enlargement of John J. Harrod's Social and Camp-Meeting Songs of 1817. Methodist; all known editions originating in Baltimore." - Richard Hulan, Western Folklore, Vol. 33, No. 1, Symposium on Folk Religion (Jan., 1974); as found on JSTOR.

We find online a reference to a second edition, also dated 1836, and "Enlarged and Improved."

The name "Yoder" is inked on the title page, and there is a faint pencil name at back, "Savilla Beachy;" both are names associated with the Mennonites; the Beachy name has a date of 1860 beside one of them. We find a reference to a Savilla Beachy Miller (1846-1933), b. Elk Lick Twnp, PA; d. Grantsville, MD. She was a member of the Amish Mennonite Church - entry at findagrave.

With a signed provenance card from the music collection of A. Merril Smoak, Jr., DWS.