"Lorena" Songwriter Lived in Elkhorn, Wisconsin-- Part 1

From the February 2014 Spirit of Geneva Lakes Magazine "Songs of Elkhorn Composer Still Ring Out 150+ Years Later" by Jean Van Dyke.

Joseph Philbrick Webster wrote songs that are still played today, and he wrote them in a tiny house that used to stand in the Elkhorn, Wisconsin downtown square where it had once before served as a land office and courthouse.  The house was moved to 9 East Rockwell Street and today houses the Webster House Museum and Walworth County Historical Museum.

Elkhorn is about thirty miles from where we live in Spring Grove, Illinois.

One of his three biggest songs were his 1857 ballad "Lorena," often considered the most-popular song during the Civil War on both the North and South.  Another was "I'll Twine 'Mid the Ringlets," written in 1860 and now known as "The Wildwood Flower," June Carter Cash's last recorded song.  The last is one of the better-known Christian hymns in America's history, "In the Sweet By and By," written and published in "The Signet Ring" in 1868.

Sing Me a Song.  --Old Secesh