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We've formed our band and we're all well mann'd
To journey afar to the promised land, Where the golden ore is rich in store, On the banks of the Sacramento shore. Then, ho! Brothers ho! To California go. There's plenty of gold in the world we're told, On the banks of the Sacramento. Heigh O, and away we go, Digging up the gold in Francisco. Heigh O, and away we go, Digging up the gold in Francisco. O! don't you cry, nor heave a sigh, For we'll all come back again, bye-and-bye, Don't breathe a fear, nor shed a tear, But patiently wait for about two year. Then, ho! Brothers ho! To California go. There's plenty of gold in the world we're told, On the banks of the Sacramento. Heigh O, and away we go, Digging up the gold in Francisco. Heigh O, and away we go, Digging up the gold in Francisco. As we explore that distant shore, We'll fill our pockets with the shining ore; And how 'twill sound, as the word goes round, Of our picking up gold by the dozen pound. Then, ho! Brothers ho! To California go. There's plenty of gold in the world we're told, On the banks of the Sacramento. Heigh O, and away we go, Digging up the gold in Francisco. Heigh O, and away we go, Digging up the gold in Francisco. O! the land we'll save, for the bold and brave Have determined there never shall breathe a slave Let foes recoil, for the sons of toil Shall make California God's Free Soil. Then, ho! Brothers, ho! To California go. No slave shall toil on God's Free Soil, On the banks of the Sacramento. Heigh O, and away we go, Chanting our songs of Freedom, O. Heigh O, and away we go, Chanting our songs of Freedom, O. |
Nathan Barker. "The California Gold Diggers: Song and Chorus." Music: Adapted and arranged by Nathan Barker. Lyrics: Jesse
- Score may be found at "The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music," levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu.
- "A song composed for a band of overland emigrants, who left Massachusetts, in the spring of 1849."--From the score
- "Ho! for California" was sung again as a farewell to a Massachusetts company traveling to California, as their ship, the La Grange, sailed out of Salem Harbor on March 17th. - Duncan Emrich, American Folk Poetry: An Anthology (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 560-561. Later this song became a part of the Hutchinson Family's concert repertoire. While I can't get at this information right now, I believe "Ho! for California" was also sung by the Alleghanians during that group's stay on the West Coast in 1852. Somehow in the folk process, Jesse Hutchinson's chorus was borrowed for the sailor song, "Sacramento," which was sung to the tune, "Camptown Races."
- I've seen this song listed on concert programs and elsewhere under a number of different names, including the title on the score cited here, "The California Gold Diggers;" but to my experience, this piece is best known, far and away, as "Ho! for California."
![[earliest Hutchinson Family publicity likeness]](http://www.oocities.org/unclesamsfarm/quartet342.jpg)
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