Samuel N. Mitchell

An 1890 profile of Mitchell in the Boston Globe reported that an astounding (and surely exaggerated) four million copies of the song had been sold.

[4] Mitchell claimed to never have received any payment for the song, however, as the lyrics were "stolen bodily" from him and brought to London, where Charles Blamphin set them to music.

[7] A mournful ballad where a dying child tells her mother to put her shoes away to save for her infant brother, it reportedly sold over 100,000 sheet music copies.

It was first recorded by Riley Puckett in 1926,[7] and later by the "Father of Bluegrass" Bill Monroe (1956),[9] the Everly Brothers (1958),[10] Girls of the Golden West,[11] Woody Guthrie, Dolly Parton, and others.

[14] Many of Mitchell's songs were set to music by William A. Huntley, a fellow citizen of Providence, Rhode Island his own age.