Thomas Commuck

[3] As a young man he moved to Oneida County, New York, where he joined the community of Mohegans and Pequots later to become known as the Brothertown Indians.

In 1831 he married a Pequot woman, Hanna Abner, and with the rest of the Brothertown community moved to Calumet County, Wisconsin.

[4] Among the songs in the collection is one which later became known under the title "Lone Pilgrim", rearranged by Benjamin Franklin White and published in the 1850 appendix of The Sacred Harp.

[6] In Wisconsin Commuck, who lived with his wife in Green Bay,[5] came to occupy a number of important positions within the Brothertown community; he acted as the tribe's postmaster, justice of the peace, and historian, and in 1844 was nominated by the Whig Party to stand as a candidate for the Wisconsin House of Representatives.

[5] He wrote a "Sketch of the Brothertown Indians" in a letter to Lyman Draper, secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin;[7] this has been anthologized.