“Poor Ellen Smith” (Roud 448) is based on a killing in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Ellen Smith, a maid in the home of a local merchant, was shot on 20 July 1892 near the Zinzendorf Hotel. She had become pregnant by Peter DeGraff, a local ladies’ man who denied the child was his; the baby was stillborn or died soon after birth, and DeGraff had broken off the relationship and threatened to shoot her if she contacted him again. A note asking to meet her on the evening of the 20th preceded the shooting, and her body was found the next morning by people directed to the spot by a man who seems to have been DeGraff himself. He fled and lived under an assumed name in Mount Airy until he returned in June 1893 and was arrested. He pleaded innocent, was convicted, and in 1894 confessed to the large crowd that had gathered to watch him hang.
The ballad is sung to the tune of the hymn “How Firm a Foundation.” Because many versions are told in the first person, a tradition arose that DeGraff wrote the song himself while awaiting execution. Versions differ. In some the singer is the killer, looking back from years in prison on the girl found shot through the heart with her clothes scattered, the blood on the ground, and the flowers on her grave; he describes being hunted down while loafing around town, and speaks of the sins of his past.
Henry Whitter recorded it for Okeh in 1925. Molly O’Day and the Cumberland Mountain Folks recorded it for Columbia on 4 April 1949 at Castle Studio in Nashville, with Art Satherley producing. The Country Gentlemen cut it in March 1960 in Washington, DC, with John Duffey on lead, Charlie Waller on guitar, Eddie Adcock on banjo and Jim Cox on bass; Starday issued it as a single in September 1960, coupled with “Helen.” Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs recorded it as “Ellen Smith” at Columbia Studio in Nashville on 21 March 1962 for Folk Songs of Our Land. Jimmy Martin recorded it on 9 March 1965 for the Decca LP Sunny Side of the Mountain. Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys recorded it in August 1967 at a home studio in Dayton, Ohio, for the Jalyn LP Old Time Music, with Melvin Goins and Larry Sparks on guitars, Curley Lambert on mandolin, Curly Ray Cline on fiddle and Jack Lynch on bass. Jim Mills included it on Bound to Ride (Sugar Hill, 1998), and Billy Strings and Don Julin recorded it on Fiddle Tune X (2014).
