Eight line manuscript poem signed and in the hand of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft titled "Somebody", a slightly modified adaptation of the popular late nineteenth century song. Single page sheet, verso blank, 6.65" x 5.25", apparently removed from an autograph friendship album. No date.
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (1800-1842), of mixed Ojibwe and British ancestry, was born in Sault Ste. Marie to John Johnston, a fur trader, and his wife, Ozhaguscodaywayquay, also known as Susan Johnston, daughter of Ojibwe chief Waubojeeg. In 1823 she married Indian Agent and ethnographer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, with the two collaborating throughout their marriage on material which would be published under her husband's name. While the vast majority of her own writings were kept private during her lifetime, following her death she has become known as one of the first Native American literary authors, with poems and stories written both in English and Ojibwe.
The present manuscript appears to be a very slightly altered adaptation of the popular song "Somebody", also titled "My Own Dear Somebody", which first appears to have been printed in The New Lyric Repository, published in London for J. Osborne in 1795, and included in many different variants in songbooks and compilations in the decades following. Schoolcraft, likely transcribing the poem from memory, has largely kept to the original version, modifying the first line, "Where I obliged to beg my bread" to "Was I reduced to beg my bread", otherwise copying the first six lines of the poem before excising the twelve middle lines and retaining the final two.
