A few weeks after finding this article, Lawrence Haley called me with the news that he had found four more of his father’s records. These were not from the home recording sessions of the mid-forties. Instead they were from Junius Martin, a man who “ran with Pop some.” Martin had brought them to Lawrence in the late ’70s and traded them for a Parkersburg Landing album. I was extremely excited — what tunes were on these records? Were they dated? Lawrence said two of the Martin records, titled “Blackberry Blossom”/”Poplar Bluff” and “Bluegrass Meadows”/”Ox in the Mud” were dated December 1947. The other two, “Indian Eat the Woodchuck”/Unnamed and “Cabin Creek”/”Indian Eat the Woodchuck”, were undated.

     Inspired by the find, I read up on some history behind “Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom” in Jean Thomas’ Ballad Makin’ in the Mountains of Kentucky. According to Thomas, a French harpist named Christopher Columbus learned the tune from General Garfield in the Big Sandy Valley during the War Between the States. Upon returning home, he told his wife, “Americkee, I’ve learnt another tune! I ketched it from General Garfield his own self. The General whistled it a heap o’ times as he rode ahead of our troops right off yonder at the mouth of Big Sandy.”

     According to Thomas’ account, General Garfield heard Christopher Columbus play the tune on a harp one night at camp.

     “One night I was sent to his headquarters with a message and whilst I was waitin’ for orders I set down on the far end of the stoop and played a tune.  I had not played the piece oncet through till I hear-ed behind me a heavy tread and the clickin’ of sword agin’ boot top. I poked my harp in my pocket quick as I could and riz to my feet in salute. For there stood General Garfield his own self lookin’ down at me. ‘Let’s hear that tune again,’ said the General, as friendly as a private, ‘that’s my favorite tune though I can’t recall the name of it.’ With that, he [the General] let fly a stream of tobacco juice into a clump of blackerry bushes growin’ nigh the foreyard. The amber splattered all over the snow white blossoms on the bush and from then on we called the piece Blackberry Blossom.”