Daniel W. Patterson (NHC Fellow, 1997–98)

Fellowship Work Summary, 1997–98

Daniel W. Patterson worked on his book using gravestone carvings of "Scotch‑Irish" settlers in Pennsylvania and the Carolina Piedmont between 1730 and 1810 as a window into their social history and culture. He also researched and wrote five chapters of another book, a study of a murder that took place in the North Carolina mountains in 1831 and left a legacy of traditional legends, a ballad, and since 1900 an increasing body of newspaper articles, poems, videos, plays, and novels. He gave a number of lectures, including a presentation of a folklife documentary video (jointly produced with Tom Davenport Films), on "The Ballad of Frankie Silver," to the Chapel Hill Senior Citizens Center; "Being a Joines," a talk using this folklife video to discuss documentary filmmaking for the Film Criticism course in the Department of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; "Revealing Images: Eighteenth‑Century Scotch‑Irish Gravestone Carvings in the Carolina Piedmont," at the Department of Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; a screening of the video "The Balad of Frankie Silver," and a talk, "The Ballad and the Legends of Frankie Silver: The Search for a Woman's Voice," for the American Folklore Society; and "Shaker Religious Folksong," at Catawba College. At the Appalachian Studies Conference he was a panelist in a session on Frankie Silver and presented the film "The Ballad of Frankie Silver." At the Shaker Museum in South Union, Ky., he gave the keynote speech, "Unsimple Simple Gifts: Shaker Religious Folksong," at the Shaker Music Workshop.