On Wednesday I published “#” McNiel, about a local singing school teacher, composer, and publisher. He taught singing schools in our community in the early 1900s. He and Bernard N. Richards[i] created the McNiel-Richards Music Company, and published at least two shape note songbooks – Soul Songs and Sonnets: A superior collection of Songs and Hymns for the Church, Revival, Sunday-school, Prayer Service and Convention in 1909 and Sunbeam Songs: A superior collection of New and Old songs for the Church, Sunday-school, Revival, Young People’s Societies, Prohibition, and Convention Work in 1910.
My grandfather’s brother, B. L. Vaughn, had a song (maybe more than one) published in one of the McNiel-Richards books. It is not in Soul Songs and Sonnets. It must be in Sunbeam Songs, unless there is a third compilation of which I am unaware.
Soul Songs and Sonnets lists McNiel and Richards as the publishers/editors. Four other men are listed as “Associate Authors” – A. L. Reed, Doug Goldsberry, Joe R. Day, and J. E. Sullivan. I know who Goldsberry and Day are, and would love to identify Reed and Sullivan. I am posting their pictures below in hopes that someone somewhere somehow might be able to identify them.
Two reasonable guesses without proof are John Edgar Sullivan (1873-1956) and Albert Lee Reed (1872-1944).[ii]
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