“Wildwood Flower” originated as a parlor song titled “I’ll Twine ‘Mid the Ringlets,” published in 1860 with words by Maud Irving and music by Joseph Philbrick Webster (1819–1875). Webster, a New Hampshire-born composer who studied with Lowell Mason and George James Webb in Boston in the 1840s, was one of the more prolific 19th-century American parlor-song composers; he is also credited with the music for the gospel hymn “In the Sweet By and By.”
The song crossed from parlor sheet-music tradition into Appalachian folk tradition over the late 19th century, with the original Maud Irving lyrics gradually drifting toward the slightly garbled but rhythmically stronger version that survived into the 20th century. By 1928 the song had become firmly part of the Carter family repertoire in the Clinch Mountains.
The pivotal commercial recording was made by The Carter Family on May 9, 1928, in Camden, New Jersey, on the Victor label. Sara Carter’s lead vocal and Maybelle Carter’s innovative thumb-and-fingers guitar style on the original recording made “Wildwood Flower” one of the most influential country recordings of the era. Maybelle’s “Carter scratch” guitar technique — striking the melody on the bass strings while strumming chords on the higher strings — effectively defined country-guitar accompaniment for decades. The song has been carried by virtually every American country, bluegrass, and folk-revival act since, and remains one of the most universally recognized pieces in the entire American song repertoire.