Boyhood Home of John A. Lomax
Meridian, Bosque County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Only a log kitchen now marks the homesite of John Lomax, one of the foremost collectors of American folksongs. Here, on part of the Chisholm Trail, young Lomax heard cowboys crooning and yodeling to restless herds; Negro servants taught him jig tunes, chants, work songs, and calls; and on winter nights his family sang songs and swapped stories around a blazing fire. Lomax began to write down this music while still a boy; and when he left Bosque County at age 20, he carried with him a roll of cowboy ballads -- the nucleus of his lifelong work. (1970)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On this Bosque County homesite—now marked only by a surviving log kitchen—grew up John A. Lomax, who would become one of America's greatest collectors of folk music. Sitting astride the Chisholm Trail, young Lomax absorbed the ballads of trail-driving cowboys and the jig tunes, chants, and work songs of Black servants, jotting the music down while still a boy. When he left home at twenty he carried a roll of cowboy ballads that became the seed of a lifetime's work preserving the nation's vernacular song.
Why it matters
Lomax's boyhood here shows how the everyday music of cowboys and Black laborers on the Texas frontier became the raw material of a national folk canon that would later shape American culture.
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Related people
- · John A. Lomax
Themes & tags
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