Darling Nelly Gray

Darling Nelly Gray. One of Multiple Markers. In 1856, Benjamin Hanby published his first song, Darling Nellie Gray, a tale of fugitive slave Joe Selby, who was en route to Canada. Selby died in the Hanby’s Rushville house in 1842. Selby had hoped to buy the freedom of his love, Nelly, who had been sold to a plantation “down river.” When attending Otterbein University, Benjamin travelled to Kentucky, where he witnessed a slave auction. This experience inspired him to complete the song telling the story of Joe and Nelly. An anthem of its time, Darling Nelly Gray became a theme of anti-slavery sermons. Abolitionists labeled it :the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of song.” Union soldiers sang the song around campfires. Benjamin was an ordained minister of the United Brethren Church after graduating in the second class of Otterbein University in 1858. In 1864, he left preaching to operate a singing school in New Paris, Ohio, where he wrote the Christmas song Santa Claus- today known as Up on the Housetop. While working for Root and Cady in Chicago, he wrote the hymn Who is He in Yonder Stall? By the time Hanby died of tuberculosis in 1867, he had composed more than 80 songs.

Songs of protest have long been used by temperance groups, labor organizations, Civil Rights advocates, and anti-war demonstrators, to popularize their causes. We Shall Overcome, a song adapted from Charles Tindley’s early gospel lyrics I’ll Overcome Someday (1900), the 19th century spiritual, No More Auction Block for Me, and Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind became protest songs, calling for an end to racial discrimination and war. Hanby’s own The Reveler’s Chorus was a rallying song for the Temperance Movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.