H. T. Burleigh

Henry (Harry) Thacker Burleigh was born on December 2, 1866, in Erie, Pennsylvania. His mother, Elizabeth, was a domestic worker because she was unable to get a teaching position despite her college education and fluency in French and Greek. The people who musically influenced Burleigh's life can be traced as far back as his maternal grandfather. Hamilton Waters was a partially blind ex-slave who worked as Erie's town crier and lamplighter. As he performed his duties, he sang plantation songs to young Harry, thus passing on a music--the Negro spiritual--that his grandson would one day make known around the world.