Elkanah Kelsey Dare was born in Salem, New Jersey, the son of Benoni Dare (1749-1802) and Damaris Kelsey (1748-1788). In 1804, he married Mary Shallcross Phillips (1785-1841), and they had ten children.[5] They moved to Wilmington, Delaware some time before 1809, and to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, before 1818. Dare joined the Presbyterian church in Greenwich, Cumberland County, New Jersey, at age 23. Dare was hired by the Harrisburg printer John Wyeth as music editor for Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second (1813), where he is mentioned as being "late of Wilmington College,"[6] so this may have been the occasion of his move to Pennsylvania. From 1817 until his death, he pastored at the Union Presbyterian Church, Colerain Township, Pennsylvania.[7] He also served as Dean of Boys at Wilmington College, Delaware. Dare died of swamp fever in 1826.[8]
In his introduction to the facsimile edition of Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music (New York, Da Capo Press: 1974), musicologist Irving Lowens points out that there is no evidence for publisher John Wyeth having any music training.[16] This was not necessary for the original Repository of 1810, which modeled itself on successful tunebooks by other publishers, using their most popular songs, and was designed to appeal to moderate evangelical Christians. The market for the Second Part three years later comprised Methodists and Baptists who were caught up in the enthusiastic revivalism of the time,[17] and this required a real musician who could collect folk tunes, folk hymns, and camp meeting songs, transcribe them, and write harmonies. Elkanah Dare is the only person mentioned in this regard, though there may have been others.[18]
The introductory essay to Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Second Part is prefaced by an acknowledgement to Dare's editorial approach.
The following observations on Music are extracted, by permission, from the Manusript [sic] work of E. K. Dare, A.B. late of Wilmington College, which we hope, ere long to be published soon.[19]
The value of these observations is mentioned by publishers of Southern tunebooks who placed increasing emphasis on regional folk tunes,[20] although they do not mention Dare by name. There is no record of Dare's manuscript work ever having been published.
^The Union: a history of Union United Presbyterian Church 1816-1980, Union History Committee,
compilers (Oxford, Pa.: Union United Presbyterian Church, 1980), 15
^John Wyeth, preface to "On the Genera of Music" in Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second Irving Lowens, ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1964), p. 3.
^Wyeth, John. 1813. Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: John Wyeth. 120 pp. Second Edition, 1820, 132 pp. (Second Edition reprinted by Da Capo Press, New York, 1964).
^Irving Lowens, "Introduction" to Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music Irving Lowens, ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1974), p. vii.
^Scholars who agree with Lowens' argument about Wyeth's lack of musical training nevertheless emphasize the business acumen of Wyeth in perceiving a market for religious folk music, where none had existed before, for example Ross W. Ellison, "John Wyeth, Early American Tunebook Publisher", The American Music Teacher, Vol. 25, No. 1, (Sep 1, 1975), p. 22.
^"The fact that Wyeth himself was no musician poses a collateral problem: whose were the musical brains behind Part Second? It appears highly probably that the person responsible for the organization of the tue-book and its general editorial supervision was the Rev. Elanah Kelsay Dare (1782-1826), Methodist clergyman, Freemason, and musician, who at one time served as the dean of boys at Wilmington College, Wilmington, Del., an institution long since defunct." Irving Lowens, "Introduction" to Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second Irving Lowens, ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1964), p. xii.
^John Wyeth, Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second, Irving Lowens, ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1964), p. 3.
^For example, Alexander Johnson, Johnson's Tennessee Harmony (Cincinnati: Morgan, Lodge & Co., 1818), p. xiii; Allen D. Carden, The Missouri Harmony, stereotype ed. (Cincinnati: E. Morgan & Co., 1839), p. 12.
