Musician. Writer. Minister.
The remarkable Daniel L. Ridout, a Princess Anne Academy alumnus, holds a special place in the institution’s history as composer of its jaunty alma mater .
The Ridout name was synonymous with music in the early 20th century. A third-generation Methodist pastor, Ridout was born March 10, 1898 in Chestertown, Md.
His innate musical talent was cultivated by his father, the Rev. Daniel Archie Ridout, who also was a gifted musician. The younger Ridout’s exceptional musical ability was second only to his writing and speaking skills.
For his graduation from the Academy on May 30, 1918, Ridout delivered an oration, “War, Negro Patriotism and Peace,” and composed the music for “Parting Days,” the class song. Before he had turned 20, he composed the music for “Marching On For Jesus” and “Hail, the Risen King” for the Easter season in 1918 and also wrote “Pride of the Battalion.” The piano, cello and baritone horn were among the instruments he played.
After graduation, Ridout enrolled in Morgan College, a private institution in Baltimore, but returned to Princess Anne following his father’s death on July 19, 1919. Ridout served as secretary to Academy principal Thomas H. Kiah as well as the school’s music director and briefly as director of the popular Princess Anne Academy Quartet.
When the school was renamed Maryland State College in the mid-20th century, Ridout wrote new lyrics to accompany his original 1918 commencement year composition. The song became the institution’s alma mater and resonates today in the hearts of alumni.
{Ridout’s 1918 melody also was used by the class of 1922 for its song; graduate Gentry Kersey, however, wrote different lyrics for it.}
Ridout studied at Ithaca Conservatory of Music in New York and completed graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University in Philadelphia.
His family’s interest in music and commitment to Methodism laid the foundation for a productive ministerial career, which began in 1924. Over the next 25 years, Ridout pastored churches across the Delaware Conference, an expansive area that included charges in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware as well as Maryland.
Between 1953 and 1965, Ridout was administrative assistant to renowned Methodist Bishop Edgar Amos Love, who co-founded Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Ridout, who served as president of Bridgeton, N.J. branch of the NAACP during the 1940s, was among the first Black ministers to serve in the Peninsula Conference when the Methodist Church became integrated in 1965, which he described as “a great step forward for Methodism, and for the Christian church as a whole in America.”
Ridout also wrote a book of poetry in 1924 about his life’s experiences, “Verses from a Humble Cottage,” was appointed in 1944 as the Representative to the Negro Press of the Commission on Public Information of The Methodist Church,* and was a member of a committee that revised the Methodist hymnal in the mid-1960s.
According to his obituary published in the Wilmington (Del.) Morning News, he was credited with founding the Great Hymns Choir of Baltimore, “an integrated, interdenominational group of singers (that) toured the Eastern part of the country giving concerts in churches, colleges and civic centers.”
Ridout received an honorary doctorate in 1963 from Allen University, an African Methodist Episcopal institution in Columbia, S.C., in recognition of his work in the field of church music.
He married Caddie A. Washington, with whom he had two children; Vivian and Daniel, Jr. Caddie died in 1950.
A second marriage to Frances Jefferson produced two daughters, Patricia and Danita. Frances J. Ridout died in 1974. He also was married briefly to Beatrice Conway of Salisbury, but they had no children.
Ridout retired from the ministry in 1971.
His legacy as an important figure in the history of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore will “shine thou in endless splendor, beneath the trees serene.”
Daniel Lyman Ridout Sr. died June 15, 1982 in Wilmington, Del. He was 84.
(*) The Indianapolis Record, Nov. 18, 1944, pg. 2
