I Feel Like Traveling On: A Song History

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The words of "I Feel Like Traveling On" go back to William Hunter (1811–1877), an Irish-born Methodist minister who came to America as a child in 1817 and later taught Hebrew at Allegheny College.[1][2] Hunter wrote about 125 hymns. This one appeared in his collection Select Melodies, for which the sources consulted give dates of both 1838 and 1851.[1][2] The poem pictures heaven as a home free of pain and death. Hymnary.org files the text under the title "I'm Going Home" and counts it in about 840 hymnals.[1]

1940 photograph of a wagon traveling along a dirt country road past barns in North Carolina

Marion Post Wolcott, “Wagon with stocks of meal on road in Corbett Ridge section, Caswell County, North Carolina,” photograph, September 1940. Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

The gospel version sung today under the title "I Feel Like Traveling On" is tied to James D. Vaughan (1864–1941) of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. Hymnary.org lists him as the arranger of this tune, not its composer, and finds it in about 75 songbooks.[3] Most of the recent hymnals indexed there under the title "I Feel Like Traveling On" set Hunter's words to Vaughan's tune.[1][3] Vaughan was a major figure in southern gospel publishing. In 1903 he founded a publishing house that sold more than six million gospel songbooks during his lifetime, and from 1910 he sent touring quartets out to sing his material. In 1922 he bought what the Tennessee Encyclopedia calls the state's first commercially licensed radio station.[4] The sources consulted here do not say when Vaughan's setting first appeared. They also show that Hunter's words have also been sung to another melody, an 1854 tune by William Miller.[1][5]

The song was also recorded by country musicians. A detailed online session discography lists a recording by Clyde Moody and the Brown's Ferry Four, made at the King studio in Cincinnati on August 17, 1952,[6] and SecondHandSongs gives 1953 as the year it was released.[7]

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Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "I'm Going Home" (My heavenly home is bright and fair).
  2. Blue Letter Bible: "Biography for William Hunter".
  3. Hymnary.org: "[My heavenly home is bright and fair] (13332)" (tune arranged by James D. Vaughan).
  4. Tennessee Encyclopedia: "James D. Vaughan".
  5. Hymnary.org: "[My heavenly home is bright and fair] (Miller)".
  6. Praguefrank's Country Discography 2: "Brown's Ferry Four".
  7. SecondHandSongs: "I'm Going Home / I Feel Like Traveling On" (William Hunter).