Talk:The Church in the Wildwood

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Can you make a subsection for the lyrics? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FCC8:FE08:600:A533:5EE5:A3C7:8DF2 (talk) 16:41, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

The math
The article says the song "...was written by ... Pitts in 1857 .... In 1862, Pitts moved to Bradford ... to find a church being erected on the very spot he had imagined seven years before."

There were only 5 years between 1857 & 1862, so either the dates or the math is wrong. I followed the links provided to try to verify the dates, but none of the links work except the one to the "Official Site of the Little Brown Church," which says that the church was completed in 1864. That would have been 7 years after Pitts' initial visit, but when he saw it "being erected" in 1862, there had only been 5 years since "he had imagined" it.

I wonder if one should change the words "seven years" to "five years", or to just leave out the math entirely? James H. Coates (talk) 15:22, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Fixed the chronology, added sources & ext link, and rephrased
Because this is my 1st non-minor edit, I will explain what I did and why in some detail. All edits were in the lead and 1st section.

Fixed the problems with the chronology that I mentioned earlier. In the lead I changed "seven" years to "several", because although the building was completed 7 years later in 1864, the relevant fact was that Pitts became aware of its construction by 1862. The actual construction had begun before 1860.

In the "Origins of the song" section, I continued fixing the chronology and added 2 sources for the factual material. I rephrased some of the text to be in alignment with the sources. (The only source that had been previously provided was a link that no longer works, to a newspaper article.) For example, where the article said that Pitts was "stunned", I changed that to "surprised" because there is no longer a source cited that says he was "stunned".

The reason I cited The Little Brown Church history page was that it provides the chronology of the building's construction, and gives the reason for the Pitts' eventual return to the area. My other source is the book, "History of Chickasaw and Howard counties, Iowa, Volume 1". Please note that the lower case "c" in "counties" is not a typo. The book quotes Pitts' account of the circumstances of the writing of the song. This account provides the bulk of the factual material. There are some minor discrepancies between Pitts account and the Little Brown Church's, so I gave both as sources.

By adding The Little Brown Church history page as a reference, I have made the pre-existing link to their main page in the External Links section redundant. I will wait and see if there are no objections to the reference. If not then I (or someone) can remove the external link.

I added a new link in External Links to the City of Nashua, Iowa, website. The town of Bradford no longer exists, and so the address of the Little Brown Church is now nearby Nashua. The city provides its own historical account of the history of the church and song, with a few interesting details that are not found in the other accounts. Jim C. 03:14, 2 August 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by James H. Coates (talk • contribs)

Is the "Origins" section history or folklore?
I was so caught up with the chronology of the song's origin that I overlooked what might be the bigger problem. The main source for the origin is Pitts' own account, in his own words. The article does not cite any secondary sources that independently verify Pitts. It seems to me that Pitts' statement that he wrote the song before construction of the building began was accepted at the time as truthful, and then passed down through the years as factual. The story has been repeated numerous times, and every single place that I have seen it, it is stated as a fact. My concern is that in the article we also state it as a fact, but we have no source to verify that it is, and there well might not be any source that does verify it. If not, then the origin would seem to me to be something more akin to folklore rather history.

I wonder if we should rephrase that part of the article to reflect that the commonly accepted origin of the song, as repeated in the article, is just Pitts account. Something like, "Pitts own account of the origin of the song was that while on a stagecoach ride to visit..." That would be directly supported by the reference to the "History of Chickasaw and Howard counties". Or if the history book is public domain perhaps it would be better to just quote Pitts version of the origin, instead of paraphrasing his words and thereby introducing shades of meaning that he did not intend. But a further complication is that the "History of Chickasaw and Howard counties" itself did not provide a source for the quote it attributed to Pitts, as far as I can determine. The author, Robert Herd Fairbairn, wrote, "The following account in Dr. W. S. Pitts' own words tells how the song became identified with the church. Doctor Pitts says ..." and then he quotes Pitts. There is no telling if it was a written account or if Fairbairn was repeating a story that Pitts personally told him, and thus is a primary rather than a secondary source. Fairbairn did not provide any footnotes for the quote that I could find. In light of that, perhaps the article should state something like "Pitts reputedly said....", or, "According to an account given in 1919 by local historian Robert Herd Fairbairn, Pitts said...." Not to cast doubt on either Fairbairn or Pitts, but because we do not yet have a solid secondary source for the origin.Jim C. (talk) 13:55, 3 August 2011 (UTC)