Abbotsford Club Abbotsford Club The Abbotsford Club was a text publication society founded in Edinburgh in 1833 or 1834. This was the year after the death of Sir Walter Scott, whose residence of Abbotsford House gave the society its name, and whose literature the club's publications sought to illuminate. The club was modelled on the Roxburghe Club, of which Scott himself had been a member, as well as the Bannatyne Club, which was founded by Scott, and the Glasgow-centred Maitland Club. The founder and first secretary of the club was William Barclay Turnbull, a young Edinburgh lawyer. The stated objective of the
On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away songs. Dresser officially dedicated the song to fourteen-year-old Mary South, a native of Terre Haute, whom he had never met. The second verse of "Wabash" contains reference to "Mary", but Dresser told a reporter that the name was "fictitious" and used only for "rhythmical purposes", and denied that the inspiration for the name came from a girl he once courted in his youth. When asked what led him to write the song Dresser said, "The same sweet memory that inspired that other Hoosier, James Whitcomb Riley, to sing of the 'Old Swimmin' Hole' ... I was born on the banks