Square Dance History Project
The rich story of North American square dance finally has a home in the digital age.

Browse Items (40 total)

  • Temporal Coverage is exactly "1900-1930"
Still Image

Bennie "Cuje" Bertram

from the website of the Sgt. Alvin C. York State Historical Park "I was born August 24, 1894, in Fentress County on the Three Forks of the Wolf. Alvin York was our next door neighbor. His daddy was a… View item
Document

Henry Ford Old Time Dances in Vermont

When thinking about Henry Ford's project to revive old-time dancing, it's easy to focus on his influence in the Midwest, reaching out from Benjamin Lovett's presence in Dearborn. These five newspaper… View item
Document

Cowboy Songs and Dances

This is an excerpt-- the dance part; a later song section is omitted-- from an article that includes the author's experiences at a cowboy dance in 1903. The author includes typical patter heard… View item
Moving Image

African-American quadrille, 1914 (#1)

SIlent movie footage from 1914 showing African-American dancers in square formation. Referring to the couple dance later in the footage, a comment on a YouTube posting of the same clip says, "They are… View item
Website

Square Dance, Oakland, CA - 1919

This silent newsreel footage from Gaumont News, a French company, shows several sets of dancers doing a quadrille in an outdoor setting. The brief title before the action reads: "Choose… View item
Document

Old Square Dances of America

In his Square Dances of West Texas booklet and elsewhere, Rickey Holden makes frequent references to Iowa as a source of western dancing: --- There are, not counting the Southern Mountain clogging of… View item
Website

Kentucky Square Dances

An early (1928) collection of figures collected "from callers in Kentucky who are familiar with the old square dances as they are danced in the Kentucky Mountains and elsewhere in the state."This is… View item
Website

78-rpm Recordings of Southern Dance Callers (1924-33)

This collection of nearly 100 old recordings was created by Phil Jamison to accompany the publication of his book, Hoedowns, Reels and Frolics (2015). The book tells the story behind the square… View item
Sound

Kentucky Set Running - 1917 firsthand account

After graduation from Vassar and a summer holiday with family, Marguerite Butler, at age 22, headed for Pine Mountain Settlement School in a remote area of eastern Kentucky to try to make some… View item
Document

An Old-Time Dance, Missouri, 1929

An account from a 1929 newspaper of what the author deemed "what was probably a duplication of the real, old-time hill country dance." Interestingly, the words "square dance"… View item
Sound

McLeod's Reel - 1926

Recorded by Tom Owens and the WLS Barn Dance Trio; this band was featured on the National Barn Dance on WLS radio in Chicago. For a detailed appreciation of this program, see fiddler Paul Tyler's post… View item
Sound

Buffalo Girls - 1927

The recording is [Tommy} Dandurand and his Barn Dance Fiddlers, recorded in 1927, with caller Ed Goodreau. Dandurand was a fixture on the National Barn Dance on WLS radio in Chicago. For a detailed… View item