Laura Foster: A Song History
"Laura Foster" is the ballad that the Traditional Ballad Index files as "The Murder of Laura Foster" (Laws F36, Roud 1935); it is a separate song from "Tom Dooley" (Laws F36A), although both tell of the same 1866 killing.[1] Laura Foster was last seen on May 25, 1866, and her body was found in a shallow grave on June 18; Thomas C. Dula, a Confederate veteran born in Wilkes County, North Carolina, and Ann Melton were charged with her murder.[2] After the case was moved to Iredell County, Dula was convicted, had that verdict overturned by the state Supreme Court, was convicted a second time, and was hanged at Statesville on May 1, 1868.[2] The ballad has a young woman killed and buried by her fiancé and his new sweetheart and her parents finding the body; in the Brown Collection texts, at least, it does not say what became of the killer.[1]
George N. Barnard, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, albumen silver print from glass negative, ca. 1864. A Tennessee mountain photographed about two years before the killing; it is not North Carolina and has no connection to the case.
The Ballad Index names Thomas Land, who was a witness at Dula's trial, as almost certainly the author, and, citing John Edward Fletcher's The True Story of Tom Dooley (2013), describes him as a former Confederate officer and schoolteacher who wrote the piece as a poem rather than a song.[1] According to the Index, Land published "The Murder of Laura Foster" in 1866, and it suggests that someone else may later have set it to music.[1] Texts and tunes appear in the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, which supplies the earliest date the Index gives for the song, 1947.[1] John Foster West printed Land's text in The Ballad of Tom Dula (cited by the Index in its 1977 second printing) with the comment, as the Index quotes it, "The events described are chiefly imaginary."[1] NCpedia notes that people in Wilkes and Watauga Counties were already singing about the killing before Dula's execution.[2]
Don Pedi, who publishes the book himself, gives "Laura Foster" in DGD tuning in Simply Old Time Dulcimer, a 63-page book of traditional tablature and demonstration audio, where "Tom Dooley" is listed as a separate tune.[3]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Murder of Laura Foster".
- NCpedia: "Ballad of Tom Dooley".
- Don Pedi: "Simply Old Time Dulcimer".
- Image: George N. Barnard, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, albumen silver print from glass negative, ca. 1864. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.