Alan Lomax Beaver Island field recordings, 1938

Summary

The Beaver Island portion of the Alan Lomax Collection of Michigan and Wisconsin Recordings contains 71 Library of Congress catalog records for sound recordings made at Saint James between 24 and 29 August 1938. Machine-readable item metadata survives for 179 records in all, but 108 of those are still images of catalog cards and are modeled separately in Alan Lomax Beaver Island catalog-card photographs, 1933–1938.

Each of the 71 sound-recording records now has its own item-level article. Those articles preserve the LOC item identifier, catalog title, call number, date, contributor labels and exact local JSON path; they do not split compound catalog titles or promote catalog labels into independent biographies.

What is held

The recordings are field documentation of song and spoken or musical tradition in the island’s Irish-American community. The catalog identifies performers, collectors, titles, dates, genres, media, and Library of Congress identifiers; it does not make this article a claim that every performer or song has been fully identified by the present corpus. Patrick McDonough is separately modeled only to the extent of the catalog’s authority form, lifespan, and three stated performance links. John W. Green is connected to an existing biographical profile as a probable cross-source association: the catalog’s “1871–1963” form matches its name and death year but conflicts by one year with the obituary’s 1870 birth date, while Lomax’s report calls a Beaver Island ballad singer “Johnny Green.” Dominick Gallagher is connected to the separately modeled lighthouse keeper and singer through Lomax’s named report and eight exact item labels; the older 1827–1904 Dominick remains distinct. Andrew E. Gallagher is separately modeled through the Library of Congress’s explicit “Andy Mary Ellen” nickname bridge. Alan Lomax remains catalog metadata pending a local-profile need beyond his collector role.

The date span is the cataloged recording span, not the date of publication or the date on which the collection was digitized. A representative record is Tommy Boyle, recorded 27 August 1938 on Beaver Island and cataloged as a sound recording by the American Folklife Center.

Performers named in the catalog

Counting the contributor field of all 71 sound-recording item records shows the collection is dominated by one singer: John W. Green is credited as performer on 48 of the 71 items, including “Sally Monroe,” “Bold Trooper,” “Down in the Sally Gardens,” and “Dear old Ireland; Flying Cloud.” Dominic Gallagher is credited on 8 items, among them “Roll Her to the Wall,” “Lowlands; Gallagher Boys,” and “Beaver Brig; Rousy Maggie.” Andrew E. Gallagher is credited on 7, including “When first I went to sea” and “Sentence to death.” Patrick Bonner, whose catalog authority form gives his dates as 1882–1973, is credited on 5, all recorded 24 August 1938, including “Clifton’s Crew” and “Callahan’s Reel; Black Tar on the Stick; Up and Down the Broom.” Patrick McDonough is credited on 3, including the item titled “Tommy Boyle.” Four items list no identified performer, and single items each credit Edward McCauley (2 items), Mike J. O’Donnell, Barney McCarthy, Emerald Gallagher, Daniel Bonner, Helen Pischner, and Joseph Ricksgers. Several catalog titles name more than one song per side, reflecting that a recording side sometimes captured more than one performance; the counts above are by item record, not by individual song. Every item’s created_published field locates the session at Saint James, Beaver Island, and the 71 items are dated across five days — 24, 25, 27, 28, and 29 August 1938 — with none dated 26 August in the held export. The catalog’s own genre labels are “Field recordings” (all 71 items), “Songs” (70), “Spoken word” (4), and “Music” (3).

Added 31 July 2026 · revised 4 August 2026. Recent changes