HOME ON THE RANGE

In this cabin on Beaver Creek in Smith County a Dr. Brewster Higley wrote the words to “My Western Home” now known all over the world as “Home On The Range,” and is the State Song of Kansas.  The cabin stands on the farm of Ellen Rust.  It is one mile west, eight miles north and 3/4 mile on a dirt road, west of Athol, KS.  The cabin was restored and partially rebuilt with assistance of the Rotary Club in 1954.

The ‘honor’ system’       pamphlet had a lot of interesting information about the Dr., but I’m going to spare you most of it.  Here are a couple tidbits anyway:

Five marriages, ONE of them unhappy, marked the doctor-writer’s career.  His first three marriages were ended by the deaths of his wives.  His fourth wife was the one reported to have caused the doctor to take to drink and come to Kansas!  He sent his children to relatives in IL and left for an unannounced destination – where this cabin is.  This fourth marriage was dissolved in 1875 by default, after three notices by publication in an IN paper.  (I guess things were a little more lax then?).  He married his fifth wife almost one month later and together they had four children! 

The song was a hit locally and spread over the country like magic, and sung in mining camps, cattle-drovers and at singing schools.  Dr Higley’’s health began to fail, and he moved to AR in 1886.  Several other writers copied it, making slight changes for their versions.  It lost its identity with the country of its origin.  The pamphlet says that when President Franklin Roosevelt was first elected, he heard this song and declared it his favorite.  Stories of the President’s approval soon made “Home on the Range” one of the country’s hit songs.  By 1934 it had moved to the top on radio stations where it stayed for six months.  The song was officially adopted by the Kansas legislature on June 30, 1947.

Dr Higley died in 1911 in Shawnee, OK.  This is the poem as originally written by Higley.  If you know the current version, compare it as you read:

 

Oh, give me a home where the Buffalo roam

Where the Deer and the Antelope play;

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,

And the sky is not cloudy all day.

Chorus

A home! A home!

Where the Deer and the Antelope play,

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,

And the sky is not clouded all day.

Oh! give me a land where the bright diamond sand

Throws its light from the glittering streams,

Where glideth along the graceful white swan,

Like the maid in her heavenly dreams.

Chorus

Oh! give me a gale of the Solomon vale,

Where the life streams with buoyancy flow;

On the banks of the Beaver, where seldom if ever,

Any poisonous herbage doth grow.

Chorus

How often at night, when the heavens were bright,

With the light of the twinkling stars

Have I stood here amazed, and asked as I gazed,

If their glory exceed that of ours.