Come Home, Father

"Come Home, Father" (also known as "Poor Benny") is a temperance song written by Henry Clay Work in 1864. According to George Birdseye, a contemporary biographer of the time, the song was the "pioneer and pattern for all the many temperance pieces now in the market, not a few of which are very palpable imitations." Although the sheet music was first published in 1864, the song is believed to have been first performed in 1858 as part of the Broadway play, Ten Nights in a Barroom, an adaptation of the 1854 temperance novel. The song was eventually adopted as the anthem of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. rdf:langString