Travelers on the way to Lubbock from Floydada may find themselves at an intersection in Cone that leaves them with questions. This tiny village just outside Floyd County established a post office in 1903. It had a general store, churches, and small businesses at one time. There isn’t much left there these days, but an old cotton gin stands across the highway from a building with a sign that reads Harmony Plains Singing School.
Travelers on the way to Lubbock from Floydada may find themselves at an intersection in Cone that leaves them with questions. This tiny village just outside Floyd County established a post office in 1903. It had a general store, churches, and small businesses at one time. There isn’t much left there these days, but an old cotton gin stands across the highway from a building with a sign that reads Harmony Plains Singing School.
For those who have wondered what that could be, the tents, campers and flurry of activity that suddenly sprang up outside the building recently after months of sitting seemingly empty would have been particularly curious.
The third Sunday in July is a special time in this little place. Every summer, (with the exception of 2020) families have arrived from points near and far in order to practice using the solfege scale to sing in the Primitive Baptist a cappella tradition together for the week. The current population of Cone has often doubled or tripled during their annual visit.
Director of Instruction, Tim Lowrance said the school had 225 students for the 2021 session, though it has had as many as 300.
“Several teachers volunteer their time every summer,” Lowrance said.
Anne Carthel is a local educator who attended last week’s fifty-seventh session. Kathy Taylor is a music teacher in Ralls whose family has been central to Harmony Plains. Taylor and her husband, Tom, moved to Crosbyton in 1980. His parents, Dennis and Rachel Taylor, lived in the Mount Blanco community and were involved in the founding of the school. Fourteen of Taylor’s fifteen grandchildren came to the 2021 session.
Taylor explained that the hymnals in Primitive Baptist churches were designed in a way that helps congregations to read the music. The notes are recognized as “do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti,” rather than e, g, b, d, f in relation to each other.
“It is a method of sight-reading that uses different shapes for the seven-note scale. Wherever ‘do’ is on the staff gives the singer the starting tone in a song in a way that you don’t have to have an awareness of the circle of fifths or understand music theory,” Taylor explained.
Her daughter, Barbara Lowrance, has stood in the Harmony Plains auditorium countless times throughout her childhood, and last week was her thirty-eighth session. Lowrance has missed only two in her lifetime. She is now a professional pianist who lives north of Austin in Georgetown. Her four children attended last week’s session, as they have from birth.
The site that is now Harmony Plains has been important to Cone since it first became a community. The very first students took their reading, writing and arithmetic lessons there on Valentine’s Day in 1903 on donated land. The Cone School District developed in 1905. As motorists can see when they pass by, the brick schoolhouse was built in 1923. At its peak in 1939, Cone had about 150 residents, though the numbers dwindled after that, and the district consolidated with Ralls in 1965. When it was no longer in use as a public school, the Primitive Baptist Foundation purchased the building.
The first teacher for Harmony Plains was Karen (Hausenfluke) Winchester, who has taught at this singing school every year since she was nineteen. She had completed her freshman year as a music major at Southwestern University in Georgetown, where she was studying to teach music. Because she knew Primitive Baptists in this region of Texas, she was asked to teach at the singing school even before it was associated with the former Cone schoolhouse.
In the summer of 1963, She and her fifteen-year-old sister, Sarah Hausenfluke, started off with 36 students.
“By the end of the week, we had 72,” said Winchester.
The younger Hausenfluke sister taught first through sixth graders, while Winchester taught seventh and up.
That year, the first singing school took place at the schoolhouse in Lakeview, another defunct community school near Crosbyton. Members of the Floydada Primitive Baptist Church used the kitchen to cook there each day. The girls slept on cots inside the building and the boys slept outside in tents. Although there was a large auditorium and the building had other amenities, the stench of the outdoor toilets proved too overwhelming in the summer heat to make an ideal permanent location.
The following year, the singing school took place at the church in Floydada. Winchester taught the older students in the balcony while the other students were taught in the sanctuary. Pre-schoolers and new instructors joined over the summers of ’64 and ‘65. By 1966, the Cone school building had become the new home of the Harmony Plains Singing School. Winchester and her mother slept in a Ford van when they attended. At that time, the community’s cotton gin was still operational.
Winchester began teaching public school as an elementary music teacher in Alvin, Texas, though she soon became a high school and middle school choir teacher in Seminole. She’s now retired, but for the last fifty-seven years, she has taught at Harmony Plains for one week every July. Last week she camped there with her daughter, Sarah Gore along with her own three daughters. Gore now teaches the Sunshine Class.
Like Winchester did, some of the teachers start to teach at the singing school when they are in college. Eliza Bearden, who is a Baylor student and Annie Hudson who attends Texas A&M taught younger students together during last week’s session. Bearden first went to Harmony Plains when she was six months old.
“It’s like Christmas because it brings everyone together,” Bearden said, explaining ,“This place has always been my peace. My best friends and family are here, and it’s part of who I am.”
Hudson described a similar experience.
“It’s one of the highlights of my summer. Some of us only get to see each other here for this one week every year,” said Hudson.
Of all her memories from singing school, one of her favorite things about it has been the evening prayer, which the group sings together. She and Bearden also shared memories of staying up late to create skits for the next day and singing songs written by the other members.
“It’s wonderful to see the members you’ve come to love from seeing them once a year,” said Harmony Plains administrator Richard Halbgewachs, better known as Pastor Dickie.
He moved to the area from Austin in 1994 and became involved with the Floydada church.
Primitive Baptists are a relatively small denomination with tightly knit family connections, despite sometimes being separated by many miles. Typically, the same families attend each year.
“It’s a great joy to be together all day long and hear voices lifting up the Lord in song,” said Pastor Dickie, adding that the therapeutic experience of close fellowship “wafts you away from troubles. Grandparents get to spend the whole week with their children and grandchildren.”
Although Pastor Dickie said his duties mostly involve the spiritual aspect of the school, like leading the morning devotions, learning to sing is an important tradition for a Primitive Baptist congregation. Several schools such as this were formed in the 1960s. One in Azle, Texas, called Harmony Hill, meets the second week of June. Taylor’s parents helped to start that school. Some churches also have their own.
Jeff and Tracey Zimmerman are from Illinois. They drove fourteen hours to see their friends, the Halbgewachs and to bring their seven children to the singing school. Their oldest is seventeen and the youngest of the bunch is two. The Zimmermans said they enjoy the fellowship, and the food is good.
Rana Hamilton, who is from Oklahoma, served dinner to a long line of hungry students and their families. Adult counselors Rhett and Jill Jackson and Bonnie Bearden helped to fill glasses of tea. Spaghetti, dinner rolls, green beans and salad were being dished out with current safety concerns in mind.
Thirteen-year-old Joseph Taylor told those gathered in the school’s entrance that he has been to Harmony Plains for fourteen years—since the summer his mother was pregnant with him. He said he looks forward to being there. He likes playing volleyball and ping-pong with his friends. One of his favorite hymns to sing is number 562 in the hymnal. It’s called “When Abram, Full of Sacred Awe.”
Family members crowded into the rows of the auditorium one last time before the session ended on Friday evening to hear the children sing the songs they learned. They listened and sang familiar words in four-part harmony. Bonfires lit the roadside in Cone before going dark for another year.