Information Sheet

 

 

R         Birch, Emma Lawrence Sankey, 1890‑1979.

351                  Scrapbook, 1987.

                                    One folder, photocopies.

 

 

 

This is a scrapbook regarding Emma Lawrence Sankey Birch and her family.  Birch was a native of Salem, Dent County, Missouri, and composer of the march, “The Missouri Girl.”  The scrapbook includes photographs and miscellaneous biographical material on Birch and her fam­ily, and a copy of the sheet music and an audio cassette recording of “The Missouri Girl.”

 

Emma Lawrence Sankey was born on 6 May 1890 at Salem, Missouri.  She was the daugh­ter of Lawrence L. Sankey, originally of New Castle, Pennsylvania, and Emma A. Sachs of Sa­lem.  Her fa­ther and Eben B. Sankey, her uncle, came to Missouri in 1872 in connection with construc­tion of the St. Louis, Salem & Little Rock Railroad, which was later operated as the Sa­lem Branch of the St. Louis-San Francisco (“Frisco”) Railway.

 

The Sankeys were noted singers at social and religious gatherings at Salem.  Emma also demonstrated an early interest in music.  At age sixteen she composed “The Missouri Girl,” a march or two‑step, which was copyrighted in 1904 and published by The Shatlinger Piano and Music Company of St. Louis.  There was considerable local interest in her accomplishment, but the amount of commercial success is not known.  Emma married William J. Birch at Salem in 1914.  She died at age 89 in 1979.

 

The Sankey scrapbook was compiled in 1987 by family members in Ash Grove, Missouri, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.  The book includes genealogical information on the Sankey and Birch fami­lies, newspaper articles regarding the Sankey family and Emma’s authorship of “The Mis­souri Girl,” the sheet music and a cassette recording of the composition, and photographs.  The photo­graphs, which have been copied on 35mm slide film, include views of Emma Sankey and her par­ents, and views of the railroad depot and steam locomotives at Salem.

 

 

 

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