About Francis H. Abbot
I can’t find much about Francis H. Abbot. If you have more information, please leave a comment.
I’ve been able to piece together a few facts about Abbot.
He was from Bedford county, Virginia. He was a collector of songs, eight of which he sang for Alfred J. Swan for the book Eight Negro Songs. Swan, in his editor’s note, also identifies Abbot as his friend.
Abbot appears to have also helped Robert Winslow Gordon, who was the head of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress in 1928. You can hear Abbot sing “Vanderbilt’s Daughter” (March 1932) for the Gordon collection here:
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/Gordon/sound/Caseyjones.mp3
This song is a version of “Casey Jones.”
There was a professor of French in the 1920s at the University of Virginia named Francis H. Abbot. I’m not sure if that’s the same guy.
http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/uva-lib:2155552