Carpenter, James Madison, 1888-1983

Biographical History

James Madison Carpenter (1888-1984) was born in Booneville, Mississippi. He received both a bachelor of arts degree (1913) and a master of arts degree (1914) from the University of Mississippi. He continued his graduate training at Harvard University, where he came under the tutelage of Professor George Lyman Kittredge, a ballad scholar. At Harvard, Carpenter became interested in British and American folk songs; his dissertation, Forecastle Songs and Chanties, was completed in 1929.

From 1929 to 1935 Carpenter traveled throughout England and Scotland primarily as a Harvard Fellow, collecting folk songs, folk plays, and other folklore materials. Upon his return to the United States, Carpenter taught himself to notate the tunes he had recorded, and proceeded to transcribe approximately 1000 tunes over the next few years. At the same time Carpenter became a college lecturer, giving presentations based on his research at institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Vassar, Smith, Radcliffe, Amherst, and the University of Vermont. In 1938 he taught English at Duke University, and continued his collecting of folk songs and children’s games, often as part of his curriculum. After five years at Duke, Carpenter taught for one year at the College of William and Mary and then became chairman of the English Department at Greensboro College. His tenure at Greensboro lasted ten years; he formally retired from the department in 1954. Carpenter returned to his hometown of Booneville in 1964, where he lived until his death on July 4, 1984.

From the guide to the James Madison Carpenter Collection, 1928-1955, 1972, 1987, 1928-1935, (Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center Library of Congress http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/folklife.home)