"Lorena" is an antebellum song with Northern origins. The lyrics were written in 1856 by Rev. Henry D. L. Webster, after a broken engagement. He wrote a long poem about his fiancée but changed her name to "Lorena," an adaptation of "Lenore" from Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

's poem "The Raven

The Raven

"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. It is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness...

." Webster's friend, Joseph Philbrick Webster

Joseph Philbrick Webster

Joseph Philbrick Webster, also known as J.P. Webster , was an American songwriter and composer most notable for his musical compositions during the Antebellum and American Civil War periods of United States history, and his post-war religious hymns.Amongst his most notable works are the ballad...

, wrote the music, and the song was first published in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 in 1857. It became a favorite of soldiers of both sides during the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

.

During the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, soldiers on both sides of the conflict thought of their wives and girlfriends back home when they heard the song "Lorena." One Confederate officer even attributed the South's defeat to the song. He reasoned that upon hearing the mournful ballad the soldiers grew so homesick that they lost their effectiveness as a fighting force.

Lorena was based on the composer's love for a Zanesville, Ohio girl named Ella Blocksom (who later went on to marry William Wartenbee Johnson, Ohio Supreme Court justice from 1879 to 1886).

Miss Blocksom's parents being deceased, she lived with her sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Blandy. The family attended the Universalist Church in Zanesville where the Rev. Henry DeLafayette Webster was the minister. Miss Blocksom caught the eye of the young preacher and his feelings became more than just pastoral. Henry Blandy and his brother Fred were co-owners of the Blandy foundry in Zanesville. As a wealthy and prominent member of the community he could not see his sister-in-law becoming romantically attached to a poor preacher and so stepped in to put an end to the relationship. Miss Blocksom told Webster that they must part and gave him a letter containing the line "If we try, we may forget," which found its way into the song. The brokenhearted Mr. Webster resigned his pastorate and left Zanesville. In 1856, Webster met Joseph P. Webster, the composer of "In the Sweet By and By." J. P. Webster was looking for lyrics to a song he was writing and Henry Webster responded by writing a ballad about his lost love, changing her name from Ella to Bertha. The composer required a three-syllable name and Henry Webster changed the name again, this time to Lorena. The song was published in 1858 by Higgins Brothers of Chicago and soon was known across America.

Ella Blocksom is buried at Woodland Cemetery in Ironton, Ohio

Ironton, Ohio

Ironton is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Lawrence County. The municipality is located in southern Ohio along the Ohio River. The population was 11,211 at the 2000 census. Ironton is a part of the Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH, Metropolitan Statistical Area . As of the...

.

Lyrics

Oh, the years creep slowly by, Lorena,

The snow is on the ground again.

The sun's low down the sky, Lorena,

The frost gleams where the flow'rs have been.

But the heart beats on as warmly now,

As when the summer days were nigh.

Oh, the sun can never dip so low

A-down affection's cloudless sky.

A hundred months have passed, Lorena,

Since last I held that hand in mine,

And felt the pulse beat fast, Lorena,

Though mine beat faster far than thine.

A hundred months, 'twas flowery May,

When up the hilly slope we climbed,

To watch the dying of the day,

And hear the distant church bells chime.

We loved each other then, Lorena,

Far more than we ever dared to tell;

And what we might have been, Lorena,

Had but our lovings prospered well --

But then, 'tis past, the years are gone,

I'll not call up their shadowy forms;

I'll say to them, "Lost years, sleep on!

Sleep on! nor heed life's pelting storms."

The story of that past, Lorena,

Alas! I care not to repeat,

The hopes that could not last, Lorena,

They lived, but only lived to cheat.

I would not cause e'en one regret

To rankle in your bosom now;

For "if we try we may forget,"

Were words of thine long years ago.

Yes, these were words of thine, Lorena,

They burn within my memory yet;

They touched some tender chords, Lorena,

Which thrill and tremble with regret.

'Twas not thy woman's heart that spoke;

Thy heart was always true to me:

A duty, stern and pressing, broke

The tie which linked my soul with thee.

It matters little now, Lorena,

The past is in the eternal past;

Our heads will soon lie low, Lorena,

Life's tide is ebbing out so fast.

There is a Future! O, thank God!

Of life this is so small a part!

'Tis dust to dust beneath the sod;

But there, up there, 'tis heart to heart.

Use in John Ford Films

The melody of "Lorena" was used by composer Max Steiner

Max Steiner

Max Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...

 to represent homecoming in various scenes in the 1956 John Ford

John Ford

John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

 western The Searchers

The Searchers (film)

The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...

.

In 1959, composer David Buttolph

David Buttolph

David Buttolph was a film composer who scored over 300 movies in his career. Born in New York City, Buttolph showed musical talent at an early age, and eventually studied music formally...

 used the melody to represent bittersweet parting at the end of another John Ford western, The Horse Soldiers

The Horse Soldiers

The Horse Soldiers is a 1959 DeLuxe Color war film, set in the American Civil War, directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne, William Holden and Constance Towers...

.

In "Gone with the Wind"

Lorena is the middle name of the character Ella Lorena Kennedy, Scarlett O'Hara's

Scarlett O'Hara

Scarlett O' Hara is the protagonist in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later film of the same name...

 second daughter, the father being Scarlett's second husband, Frank Kennedy, in the novel "Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind

The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free...

" by Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American author and journalist. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 for her epic American Civil War era novel, Gone with the Wind, which was the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.-Family:Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta,...

. The character was omitted from the film version

Gone with the Wind (film)

Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...

 of the book.

In "So Weird"

The main character, Fiona, goes camping with her family and learns that the woods are supposedly haunted by the ghost of a Civil War soldier who whistles 'Lorena'. It turns out that a Civil War soldier had been injured in the woods long ago and was befriended by a sasquatch, whom the soldier taught to whistle the tune 'Lorena'. While the soldier ultimately dies from his injury, the sasquatch survives into present-day and is revealed to be the one who is whistling the tune in the woods at night. When he hears Fiona whistling the tune many years later, hoping to find the imaginary ghost, the sasquatch decides that there is a connection to his old friend and reveals himself to Fiona so that she can return the lost soldier's heirlooms to his family.

External links

• "Lorena" at Lawrence County, Ohio Genealogy and Historical website