I obtained a copy of the pages from the Fuld book. It contains numerous bits of information although it is not organized very well in a chronological sense. Much of the information overlaps the discussion in Tinsley and I would rate the Tinsely discussion to be overall more compete and more interesting. I will try merge common points from both.

Edward Hubbell Chapin was a well known Universalist clergyman from Boston. He studied law at Tufts University, but was ordained as a Universalist in 1838. He published the poem "The Ocean-Buried" in the Southern Literary Messsenger in 1839. About 4 months after publication of the poem the steamboat "Lexington" caught fire and sank sending 140 people to the bottom of Long Island Sound. Chapin used his poem as a outline for a sermon on the burning of the ship and the tragedy of folks consigned to unmarked watery graves. He preached on the topic at least twice in 1840 and the sermon was included in a book he published in 1846.

In 1845 the Southern Literary Messenger published a poem by E.B. Hale of Putnam, Ohio called "O Bury Me Not". Hale preferred being buried at sea to being buried in a lonely tomb. Related to this (although perhaps tenously since I haven't seen the lyrics) is a song called "The Sailor Boy's Grave" by J. Martin and published in 1841. It opened with the line "Oh bury me not in the dark cold grave."

The Southern Literary Messenger struck again in 1857 when it published "Oh, Bury Me Not" by W.F Wightman. HIs preference was not to be buried by a surging sea, but rather to be laid down in a lovely glade in the grand old woods.

The Saunders claim. In 1884 H. Saunders of Leesburg, Virginia, claimed that his brother Capt. William H Saunders wrote the poem "Bury me not in the deep sea" about forty years earlier and published it in the New Orleans Picayune. The timing would have placed that in the mid 1840's after Chapin's poem and sermons and since no copy of the Picayune has surfaced containing the poem, there is nothing to substantiate the Saunders claim.

Chapin's poem with some minor changes was the basis of the sheet music in 1949 credited to Geo. N. Allen published by S. Brainard, Cleveland (see Levy link above). The musical setting is not the well-known cowboy tune. A "new and improved" version was published in 1850, and it was also printed around the same time on one side of a folio broadside by O.B. Powers, with no city, date, nor copyright.

Eloise Hubbard Linscott in "Folk Songs of Old New England" (orig. 1939) has "The Ocean Burial" with lyrics that very closely match those in the Levy collection (I didn't think to compare tunes when I was there). She says the Chapin/Allen song was: "sung in public at the concerts of Ossian N. Dodge and in innumerable homes. It was carried westward by some New England of Canadian youth, who went from punching logs to punching cattle, and was recreated as 'The Lone Prairie' sung to the old ballad air, 'Hind Horn'" I get the feeling that Ms. Hubbard was engaging in a whole lot of unsubstantiated speculation and she may also be responsible for the 'Hind Horn" connection, if indeed, one can be demonstrated.

John Bauman and English cattle broker wrote in 1877 of hearing the young cowboys in the evening singing their favorite wail "O bury me not on the lone prairie,/ Where the coyotes howl and the wind blose free." Another Englander, this time a woman named Mary Jaques lived a while in Texas and described the favorite song of the Texas cowboys as "then bury me not on the lone prairie,/ With the turkey buzzard and the coyote/ In the narrow grave six foot by three." She recalled hearing the entire song sung one cold winter night by a cowboy tenor "with a great deal of pathos" in a minor key. Not too long afterward the singer was killed by lightning. Jaques' writing was published in 1894 but I don't know what time she was in Texas.

The publication of the William Jossey version in 1907 was described above. Likewise the Annie Laurie Ellis version in JAF in 1901. Neither had the familiar tune. Another printing of the song was in 1905 as part of "Folk Songs of the West and South" harmonized by Arthur Farwell. The title here was "The Lone Prairie" and contained the first line "O bury me out on the lone prairie" with a footnote saying that in some version "out" is "not". The song appeared in the first edition of John Lomax's "Cowboy Songs" in 1910 with lyrics paraphrasing "The Ocean Burial" Lomax called it "The Dying Cowboy". Again the tune is not the most familiar one. The Thorp publication and claim of attribution is desecribed above. J Frank Dobie (1927, Ballds and Songs of the Frontier Folk) disputed Thorp and said there was an unmarked grave near Brady, Texas that locals said belonged to the cowboy that wrote the song. Dobie himself believed the true author would never be known. A source told Vance Randolph that the song was "made up" by Venice and Sam Gentry who herded cattle in Texas in the 1870's.

The well-known music along with words were printed in an article by Mellinger E Henry titled "Still More Ballads and Folk-Songs from the Southern Highlands" (Journal of American Folklore 1932). The song was called "The Lone Prairie (The Dying Cowboy)" and Henry stated that his version was a "fragment from western NOrth CArolina"

In 1934 a cowboy singer, Carson S. Robison, popularized a version similar in both lyric and melody called "Carry Me Back To The Lone Prairie". Robison was a Kansas native who longed to go back home.

That's about all I've found about the lyric orgins.

rich r