James Ryder Randall
{{short description|American poet}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = James Ryder Randall
|image = James Ryder Randall.jpg
|birth_name =
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1839|01|1}}
|birth_place = Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
|death_date = {{death date and age|1908|01|15|1839|01|1}}
|death_place = Augusta, Georgia, U.S.
| occupation = Journalist
Poet
| language =
| nationality =American
|alma_mater =
| genre =Poetry
| subject =
}}
File:James Ryder Randall 1861.jpg
James Ryder Randall (January 1, 1839 – January 15, 1908) was an American journalist and poet. He is best remembered as the author of "Maryland, My Maryland".
Biography
Randall was born on January 1, 1839, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was named after Father James A. Ryder S.J., the 20th President of Georgetown University.{{citation needed|date = April 2018}}
He is most remembered for writing the poem "Maryland, My Maryland," which is also the reason for his being called the "Poet Laureate of the Lost Cause". It became a war hymn of the Confederacy after the poem's words were set to the tune "Lauriger Horatius" (the tune of O Tannenbaum) during the Civil War by Jennie Cary, a member of a prominent Maryland and Virginia family. It later became the state song of Maryland.Maryland State Archives (2004). [http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/symbols/song.html Maryland State Song – "Maryland, My Maryland"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060104115517/http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/symbols/song.html |date=2006-01-04 }}.
Randall wrote the poem after learning that his friend Francis X. Ward, of Randallstown, Maryland, was killed by the 6th Massachusetts Militia in the Baltimore Riot of April 19, 1861.{{cite web|url=http://www.bcplonline.org/community/history-randallstown|title=A Brief History of Randallstown|last=Phair|first=Monty|work=Baltimore County Public Libraries|access-date=2012-12-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161211194142/http://bcplonline.org/community/history-randallstown|archive-date=2016-12-11|url-status=dead}} The work was first published a week later on April 26, in the New Orleans newspaper The Sunday Delta.{{cite encyclopedia |last=Dwyer |first=William |title=James Ryder Randall |encyclopedia=The Catholic Encyclopedia |volume=12 |pages= |publisher=Robert Appleton Company |location=New York |year=1911 |url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12639b.htm |access-date=October 12, 2009}}
After abandoning his studies at Georgetown University, he traveled to South America and the West Indies. Upon his return to the United States he taught English literature at Poydras College in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. It was during this time that he penned "Maryland, My Maryland". Tuberculosis prevented him from enlisting in the Confederate Army.{{cite web|url=http://baltimoreauthors.ubalt.edu/writers/jamesrandall.htm|title=James Ryder Randall|website=baltimoreauthors.ubalt.edu|access-date=23 September 2017|archive-date=3 September 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170903145734/http://baltimoreauthors.ubalt.edu/writers/jamesrandall.htm|url-status=dead}} However, he was able to serve with the Confederate States Navy in Wilmington, North Carolina. Though a Marylander by birth, he wrote the poem "Maryland, My Maryland" while living in Augusta, Georgia. He considered himself a Georgian by adoption.A Standard History of Georgia and Georgians, Volume 3 By Lucian Lamar Knight page 1283{{cite web|url=http://www2.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/r/Randall,James_Ryder.html|title=James Ryder Randall Papers, 1855-1864; 1905-1912.|website=2.lib.unc.edu|access-date=23 September 2017}} After the Civil War, Randall became a newspaper editor and a correspondent in Washington, D.C., for The Augusta Chronicle. He continued to write poems, although none achieved the popularity of "Maryland, My Maryland". His later poems were deeply religious in nature.
He died on January 15, 1908, in Augusta, Georgia, and is buried there in Magnolia Cemetery.{{cite web|url=http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/education/2013-04-20/tour-highlights-civil-war-sites-augusta|title=Tour highlights Civil War sites in Augusta|work=The Augusta Chronicle |publisher=|access-date=23 September 2017}} Augusta honors him on the Monument to Poets of Georgia along with Fr. Abram Ryan, Sydney Lanier, and Paul Hamilton Hayne, all of whom saw Confederate service.{{cite web|url=http://www.ohwy.com/ga/m/mongapoe.htm|title=Monument to the Poets of Georgia Augusta Georgia|website=Ohwy.com|access-date=23 September 2017|archive-date=29 November 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221129160313/https://www.ohwy.com/ga/m/mongapoe.htm|url-status=dead}} The Randall Memorial Committee of Chapter "A" United Daughters of the Confederacy Augusta, Georgia, dedicated a statue to him there in 1936.{{cite web|url=http://www.oocities.org/heartland/pines/3093/augusta.html|title=Frankies Confederate Monuments and Memorials of the South|website=Oocities.org|access-date=23 September 2017}} James Ryder Randall Elementary School in Clinton, Maryland, bears his name.{{cite web|url=http://www1.pgcps.org/jamesryderrandall/index.aspx?id=24350|title=Home|website=1.pgcps.org|access-date=23 September 2017|archive-date=22 February 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180222065455/http://www1.pgcps.org/jamesryderrandall/index.aspx?id=24350|url-status=dead}} Edward Bailey Eaton referred to him as "Poet of the Confederacy".{{cite journal |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3mYKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PT285 |title=Historic Collections in America |first=Edward Bailey |last=Eaton |journal=The Journal of American History |pages=359–60 |volume=3 |issue=3 |year=1909}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{wikisource author}}
{{wikiquote}}
{{Commons category|James Ryder Randall}}
- [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12639b.htm Biography] at Catholic Encyclopedia
- {{Find a Grave|7462271}}
- Sheet music for [http://purl.lib.ua.edu/14434 "There's life in the old land yet"], Augusta, GA: Blackmar & Bro, from the [http://purl.lib.ua.edu/18443 Confederate Imprints Sheet Music Collection]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Randall, James Ryder}}
Category:19th-century American male writers
Category:19th-century American poets
Category:Journalists from Maryland
Category:American male journalists
Category:Confederate States Navy officers