Nehemiah Shumway
Nehemiah Shumway (August 26, 1761 – July 1843) was an American composer of sacred music, teacher, and farmer.
Life
Shumway was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, the youngest of seven children of Amos Shumway and Ruth Parker.[1] He graduated from the College of Rhode Island in 1790, and became principal of the Freehold Academy in New Jersey.
Shumway married Sarah/Sara Tice/Tyse[2] on December 10, 1795. She was baptised in Freehold on July 4, 1773, and died in Lyme, New York, in 1831. They had four children together, but no known grandchildren.[3]
Shumway moved to
Music
Shumway is best remembered today for two
His sacred tunebook The American Harmony was published in Philadelphia in 1793 (2nd ed. 1801). (Note: There were several publications of this name in the same period.)
Footnotes
- ^ Genealogy of the Shumway Family in the United States by Asahel Adams Shumway (New York, Tobias A. Wright, 1909)
- ^ A Genealogy of the Warne Family in America by Rev. George Warne Labaw (New York, Frank Allaben Genealogical Company, 1911)
- ^ a b c George F. Daniels, History of the Town of Oxford, Massachusetts, Oxford, Mass.: Published by the Author with the Co-Operation of the Town, 1892, p. 688.
- ISBN 1-57233-128-3; Lamberton, Lewisburgh, Pennsylvania, Scotland, The Judgment, and Westminster in the Shenandoah Harmony(Boyce, VA 2012).
- ^ D. W. Steel, The Makers of the Sacred Harp, U of Illinois P, 2010, p. 155 ("While Davisson's attributions are not always accurate, this is at least plausible, as the tune was first published in an 1815 edition of The Easy Instructor.").