Alonzo Elliot

His best-known composition is "There's a Long Long Trail A-Winding", a popular song from the era of World War I. Elliott wrote the music, and Stoddard King, Elliot's chief song collaborator, wrote the lyrics, when they were seniors at Yale.

In Elliot's own words told to me shortly before his death in 1964, he created the music as an idle pursuit one day in his dorm room at Yale in 1913.

It then appeared on page 103 of "The Best of Yankee Magazine" ISBN 0-89909-079-6 In the interview he recalled the day and the odd circumstances that led to the creation of this historic song.

In addition, he wrote an article on the background of the American Civil War song "John Brown's Body" (“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in his grave,” sung to a melody later to become more famous as the melody to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic"); the article purported to show that the John Brown of the song was a soldier in Boston, not the famous abolitionist of the same name.

Elliot died age 73 at the Gaylord Farm Hospital in Wallingford, Connecticut on June 25, 1964.