Old Historical Hymn Book

[Bible Thumpin n Gun Totin]

I ordered an old Hymn Book last week, a Sweet Songster, and it finally arrived! It's a Primitive/Old Regular Baptist Hymnbook from the Antebellum South. It's interesting to think that the same hymnbook I'm looking at was used by Christians over 160 years ago. Mere decades from when the last of the U.S's founding fathers passed on and only 10 years from the beginning of the American Civil War

 

[rlvaughn]

Good to hear that Billups' Sweet Songster is still available to purchase. I bought one several years ago to have, but it is not used in this area. I think Old Regular Baptists are currently the only churches that use it. The copy I own was reprinted in 1970 by Arrowood Brothers in Wayne, WV:.

As a matter of interest to others, my records show the full title is The Sweet Songster, a Collection of the Most Popular and Approved Songs, Hymns, and Ballads, and was first published by Edward W. Billups in 1854.

 

[rlvaughn]

Found this at The Baptist Library:

The Sweet Songster is used by the Old Regular Baptist, United Baptist and some Primitive Baptist.

 

[Deacon]

Here's an even older hymnal

Bay Psalter in metre [LINK]

The Bay Psalm Book of 1640 was the first book printed in America.

"It's a book that was not created to be fancy or splendid or valuable in any way other than the significance of its content," says Derick Dreher, the director of Philadelphia's Rosenbach Library, one of the few institutions to hold a Bay Psalm Book. But because the congregation for which it was created literally used the book to death, very few of the copies have survived.​

One of the few remaining copies was sold last November 2013 for 14.2 million dollars.

"If therefore the verses are not alwayes so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them confider that Gods Altar needs not our pollishings: Ex. 20. for wee have respected a plaine translation then to smooth our verses with the sweetnes of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather then Elegance, fidelity rather then poetry, in translating the hebrew words into english language, and Davids poetry into english meetre…" [Bay Psalm Preface, page 13]
​

I digitalized it and put in Logos Personal Book format for those who are interested.

5824 BAY PSALM BOOK IN METRE 1640_LOGOS PB.DOCX [link]​

Rob

 

[Bible Thumpin n Gun Totin]

Good to hear that Billups' Sweet Songster is still available to purchase.

They are, but they're getting increasingly difficult to find. I saw one of those 1970 copies that you mentioned and it was priced at $150! That's quite a lot for a fairly recent book. I suppose the supply is fairly low while demand for old, solid, strong Hymns is relatively high.

And thanks for that link Deacon! I just saved the document. Can't wait to see what Hymns are in there that I've never seen before.

 

[rlvaughn]

I wrote a short piece on Billups and his hymn book for my blog:

A Singer and His Songs: E. W. Billups and The Sweet Songster

David E. Whisnant recorded that “...Josephine McGill reported that during her collecting trip to Knott County [Kentucky] in 1914 she found The Sweet Songster and the Thomas hymnal ‘owned by nearly every mountain family’.”

 

[Bible Thumpin n Gun Totin]

Update on my collection:

Top Left -- Goble Hymnal -- 2015?
Bottom Left -- Goble Hymnal -- 1887
Middle Top -- Christian Hymn Book -- 1868
Middle Bottom -- Young Christian's Companion -- 1827
Bottom Right -- A Selection of More Than 300 Hymns from the Most Approved Authors...All the Hymns of Dr Watts -- 1819

To put the age of these within the grasp of our mind. James Madison, the Founding Father who penned the Constitution, was still alive when that 1819 Hymn Book was printed.

 

[rlvaughn]

Nice additions!