Ananias Davisson (2 February 1780–21 October 1857), composer and songbook compiler, was born probably in Shenandoah County and was the son of Jemima Little Davisson (maiden name unknown) and her second husband, Ananias Davisson. He received a basic education, attended local singing schools, and likely served as a printer's apprentice. In 1804 Davisson bought land in Rockingham County, where he then resided. He conducted singing classes in the Shenandoah Valley and may have been a partner in the Harrisonburg printing company Davidson and Bourne in 1813 and 1814. Sometime between the enumeration of the 1820 census and February 1826 he married a woman named Ann whose surname is unknown. They had no children who lived to adulthood.

In 1816 Davisson established a printing shop in Harrisonburg. That year he published a compilation of 143 anthems, hymns, and psalm tunes entitled Kentucky Harmony, the earliest-known music book of southern origin to employ a type of notation in which differently shaped note heads represented the four syllables—fa, sol, la, and mi—that corresponded to pitches on the scale. This simplified system allowed novices to learn to sight-read without extensive formal instruction. Davisson borrowed traditional sacred songs from the shape-note tunebooks that had become popular in New England singing schools early in the 1800s, and he also selected folk hymns—religious texts set to secular tunes—from the work of a more-recent Pennsylvania compiler who had been among the first to print such music. The compositions of southern singing masters accounted for a minority of songs in Davisson's collection. His arrangements, which altered the originals by setting them in four voice parts and by eliminating most sharp, flat, and natural notations, reflected the mostly diatonic religious music that was sung on the southern frontier. A preface outlined the rudiments of vocal music and advised teachers how best to use the book in classes.

In 1817 Davisson brought out a second edition of Kentucky Harmony that contained fewer northern tunes and more pieces influenced by folk melodies popular in the South. In three subsequent editions, the last of which appeared in 1826, the content varied relatively little. Davisson identified himself as the composer of fifteen tunes published in the various editions. Initially sold in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, the volumes soon became available in the Carolinas, Georgia, Missouri, and Ohio. Davisson traveled to eastern Tennessee several times to promote his books and to teach singing classes. Many of the tunes in his collection gained wide popularity, and southern and western compilers of religious music furthered Davisson's influence on the white southern singing tradition by drawing heavily from his work when they began to publish tunebooks later in the 1810s and in the 1820s. His best-known composition, "Idumea," appears in the 1991 version of The Sacred Harp, the most frequently used modern shape-note book, which Benjamin Franklin White originally published in 1844.

In 1820 Davisson published Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony, a stand-alone volume based largely on unwritten folk hymns popular in the South. Intended for practitioners of the emotional style of worship that blossomed on the frontier during the Second Great Awakening, the book contained eighty-eight tunes, including transcriptions of camp meeting songs, and was available as far west as Missouri. Davisson printed a second edition several years later, followed by a 138-song third edition in 1825 or 1826. Combined, the three editions contained about thirty tunes he listed as his own compositions. His last two songbooks, An Introduction to Sacred Music (1821), intended for young students, and A Small Collection of Sacred Music (1825), were brief volumes featuring pieces from Kentucky Harmony and the Supplement set in three voice parts instead of four. Davisson's press also published Songs of Zion (1821), a tunebook compiled by James Peery Carrell, as well as three nonmusical books.

Davisson regularly bought and sold parcels of land in Rockingham County between the 1820s and the 1840s. In 1850 he paid taxes on 572 acres, and his real estate was valued at $10,265. He also acquired three small Augusta County tracts, which he had sold by 1841. Profits from his publications and land transactions allowed Davisson to close his printing shop after ten years. In 1826 he sold his Harrisonburg property, purchased livestock and agricultural implements, and moved to a farm near Mount Vernon Forge in southeastern Rockingham County. There he set up a printing press and issued his last publication, the second edition of A Small Collection of Sacred Music (ca. 1826), before turning his attention to farming. In 1850 the census taker enumerated fourteen slaves in his household, eight of whom were ten years of age or older.

A Presbyterian ruling elder, Davisson attended meetings of the Presbytery of Winchester and the Synod of Virginia during the 1840s. He was one of four Union Church trustees who in 1847 purchased property to be shared with a local Lutheran congregation. Ananias Davisson died on 21 October 1857 and was buried in his church's graveyard (later Cross Keys Cemetery). To fulfill an "intention long entertained," he manumitted his slaves in his will "in consideration of their services." Those who had reached the age of eighteen were to be liberated immediately, while the children were to remain enslaved until they came of age. To a former servant named Ned, Davisson bequeathed a tract of land containing about forty acres.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in George Pullen Jackson, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and "Buckwheat Notes" (1933), 26–31, Harry Lee Eskew, "Shape-Note Hymnody in the Shenandoah Valley, 1816–1860" (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1966), 17–57, Rachel Augusta Brett Harley, "Ananias Davisson: Southern Tune-Book Compiler, 1780–1857" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan,1972), and Davisson, Kentucky Harmony; or a Choice Collection of Psalm Tunes, Hymns, and Anthems, facsimile ed. by Irving Lowens (1976), 3–14; birth and death dates on gravestone; Rockingham Co. Deed Book, 0000:510–511, 517, 7:172, 193–194, 19:342–344; Charles Hamm, "Folk Hymns of the Shenandoah Valley," Virginia Cavalcade 6 (autumn 1956): 14–19; Lowens, Music and Musicians in Early America (1964), 138–155; David W. Music, "Ananias Davisson, Robert Boyd, Reubin Monday, John Martin, and Archibald Rhea in East Tennessee, 1816–26," American Music 1 (autumn 1983): 72–84; Rockingham Co. Will Book, 1A:280–280B (quotations).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Jennifer R. Loux.

How to cite this page:
Jennifer R. Loux,"Ananias Davisson (1780–1857)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2019 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Davisson_Ananias, accessed [today's date]).

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