The Preacher and the Bear

I was reading through a family history book yesterday titled Home in New Mexico—Amos Tietjen by Permelia Bunker. It is a book of stories, reflections and histories of my great Grandfather, Amos Tietjen (b. 15 Jun 1890, d. 21 Sept 1975), and has some fascinating insights into the life of a person who I only have one vague memory of.

One of the ways I get closer to my ancestors is by trying to experience life the way they lived it. Sometimes I do this with their recipes, and sometimes I do this by reading books they did, or listening to music they did. So as I was reading this book, I was interested when I came upon this little paragraph written by my Grandmother Genevieve Tietjen Hassell (b. 27 Jun 1916, d. 27 May 2002) as she recalled memories of her father Amos Tietjen.

As a family we took time out for camping trips. Some of the outstanding ones were the time we went to Chaco Canyon with Uncle Dick George’s family. Another time when we went just below the Bluewater lake, that it rained all the time for one week. We stayed in the tent and enjoyed the folks telling stories and playing games with us. At night Dad would play the harmonica and recite the “Preacher and the Bear.” He had it memorized “A Preacher went out a hunting, and etc.”

As this was not a familiar song to me I jumped over to Google and the search produced so many results, that I was almost embarrassed for not having heard of this song before.

The University of Colorado has a digital copy of the sheet music. It was written in 1904 by Joe Arzonia and can be viewed here: http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/cgi-bin/sheetmusic.pl?RagPreach&Rag&main (One note, I have figured out that the word “coon” in this song is a nick name for preacher, so don’t let that throw you off as you read it. )

If you’d like to hear what it sounds like, you can watch or hear it in several places on YouTube. This was meant to be a song, but as my grandmother tells it, Amos would recite it. Here’s one version where it is more or less recited. Perhaps in a manner similar to the way my great Grandfather did it.

Here’s another version (audio only) by one of my favorite people, Andy Griffith:

And lastly, here’s a version I came across, and it was so cool to hear this old preacher belt out the song, and I just had to include it:

Now that I know what this song sounds like, it is so much easier to imagine, my grandmother and her family sitting in a tent near Bluewater Lake with rain pouring all around them while my great Grandfather plays the harmonica and recites this song.

So the next time you are reading your family history and you come upon a reference for a song/game/poem/etc. that you are not familiar with, take some time to do a little digging. Doing so is how family history becomes more than names and dates and actually comes alive.