Editing Pete Seeger (section)

==Early life==
Seeger was born on May 3, 1919, at [[French Hospital (Manhattan)|French Hospital]] in New York City.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/honor-pete-seeger_b_1883818 | title=Honor Pete Seeger | work=[[The Huffington Post]] |last=Dreier |first=Peter |date=14 November 2012 |access-date=July 13, 2013}}</ref> His family, which Seeger called "enormously Christian, in the [[Puritan]], [[Calvinist]] New England tradition",<ref>{{cite book |last=Dunaway |first=David King |author-link=David King Dunaway |title=How Can I Keep From Singing: The Ballad of Pete Seeger |location=New York |publisher=Villard Books |year=2008 |orig-date=1981 |isbn=978-0345506085 |page=17}}</ref> traced its genealogy back over 200 years. A paternal ancestor, Karl Ludwig Seeger, a physician from [[Kingdom of Württemberg|Württemberg]], Germany, had emigrated to America during the [[American Revolution]] and married into the old New England family of Parsons in the 1780s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Pescatello |first=Ann M. |title=Charles Seeger: A Life in American Music |url=https://archive.org/details/charlesseegerlif00pesc/page/4/mode/2up |via=Internet Archive |publisher=University of Pittsburgh |year=1992 |pages=4–5|isbn=978-0-8229-3713-5 }}</ref>

Seeger's father, the [[Harvard]]-trained composer and musicologist [[Charles Seeger|Charles Louis Seeger Jr.]],<ref name=pc1/> was born in [[Mexico City]] to American parents. Charles established the first musicology curriculum in the United States at the [[University of California, Berkeley]] in the 1910s.<ref>{{cite news |last=Swed |first=Mark |title=Behind Pete Seeger, a formative father and mother |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-pete-seeger-appreciation-20140209-story.html |date=6 February 2014 |newspaper=Los Angeles Times}}</ref> He also helped organize the [[American Musicological Society]] and was a key founder of the academic discipline of [[ethnomusicology]]. Peter's mother, Constance de Clyver Seeger (née Edson), raised in [[Tunisia]] and trained at the [[Paris Conservatory of Music]], was a concert violinist and later a teacher at the [[Juilliard School]].{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=20}}

[[File:Professor Charles Louis Seeger, his wife Constance, and their sons, 23 May 1921.jpg|thumb|Peter Seeger (on father's lap) with his father and mother, Charles and Constance Seeger and brothers on a camping trip (May 23, 1921)]]

In 1911, Charles was hired to establish the music department at UC Berkeley, but was forced to resign in 1918 because of his outspoken [[pacifism]] during [[World War I]].<ref>According to Dunaway, the British-born president of the university "all but fired" Charles Seeger (''How Can I Keep From Singing'', p. 26).</ref> Charles and Constance moved back east, making their base of operations on the estate of Charles's parents in [[Patterson, New York]], about {{convert|50|mi}} north of New York City. When Peter was eighteen months old, Charles and Constance set out with him and his two older brothers in a homemade trailer to bring musical uplift to the working people in the American South.{{sfn|Pescatello|1992|pp=83–85}} Upon their return, Constance taught violin and Charles taught composition at the New York [[Institute of Musical Art]] (later [[Juilliard School|Juilliard]]), whose president, family friend [[Frank Damrosch]], was Constance's adoptive "uncle".{{sfn|Tick|1997|p=130}} Charles also taught part-time at the [[New School for Social Research]].

At four, Peter was sent away to boarding school, but was brought home a year and a half later when his parents learned the school failed to inform them that he had contracted [[scarlet fever]].<ref name=Wilkinson_article>{{cite magazine |last=Wilkinson |first=Alec |title=The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger and American folk music |date=9 April 2006 |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |pages=44–53 |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/04/17/the-protest-singer}}</ref> He attended first and second grades in [[Nyack, New York]], before being sent away to another boarding school in [[Ridgefield, Connecticut]].{{sfn|Wilkinson|2009|p=43}}

Career and money tensions led to marital problems between Charles and Constance. When Charles discovered in 1927 that Constance had opened a secret bank account in her own name, he became enraged and a series of separations and temporary reconciliations ensued.{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=32}} Peter was eight at the time of the first marital split. As Seeger biographer [[David King Dunaway]] writes, "Like many children of divorce, Peter was caught between parents and developed an aversion to family quarrels."{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|p=32}} In 1932, Charles married his composition student and assistant, [[Ruth Crawford Seeger|Ruth Crawford]], now considered by many to be one of the most important [[Modernism (music)|modernist]] composers of the 20th century.<ref>See [[Judith Tick]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=xwLTDOR8LUYC ''Ruth Crawford Seeger: a Composer's Search for American Music'' (1997).] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230511214404/https://books.google.com/books?id=xwLTDOR8LUYC |date=May 11, 2023 }}</ref> Deeply interested in folk music, Ruth had contributed musical arrangements to [[Carl Sandburg]]'s influential folk song anthology, the [[The American Songbag|''American Songbag'']] (1927), and later created original settings for eight of Sandburg's poems.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.peggyseeger.com/ruth-crawford-seeger/ruth-crawford-seeger-biography |title=David Lewis, ''Ruth Crawford Seeger Biography in 600 Words'' on website of her daughter, Peggy Seeger |publisher=Peggyseeger.com |date=February 14, 2005 |access-date=August 28, 2012 |archive-date=August 6, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120806133026/http://www.peggyseeger.com/ruth-crawford-seeger/ruth-crawford-seeger-biography |url-status=live }}</ref> Beginning in 1936, Charles held various administrative positions in the federal government's [[Resettlement Administration|Farm Resettlement program]], the [[Works Projects Administration|WPA]]'s [[Federal Music Project]] (1938–1940) and the wartime [[Pan American Union]].<ref>According to [[Judith Tick]], Charles was fired from his job at Juilliard because Frank Damrosch sided with Constance in the Seeger divorce. ''Ruth Crawford Seeger'', pp. 224–25.</ref> After [[World War II]], he taught [[ethnomusicology]] at UC Berkeley and [[Yale University]].{{sfn|Dunaway|2008|pp=22,24}}{{sfn|Winkler|2009|p=4}}

In 1935, Peter was selected to attend [[Camp Rising Sun (New York)|Camp Rising Sun]] (CRS), the George E. Jonas Foundation's international leadership camp, held every summer in upstate New York. He remained a loyal alumnus through the decades and attended a CRS event at age 93 in July 2012.<ref>{{cite news |last=Berger |first=Joseph |title=Shaped by Camp, Alumni Fight to Prevent Its Move |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/nyregion/shaped-by-camp-alumni-fight-to-prevent-its-move.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=6 September 2015}}</ref>

Peter's eldest brother, Charles Seeger III, would go on to become a radio astronomer, and his next older brother, John Seeger, taught in the 1950s at the [[Dalton School]] in Manhattan and was the principal from 1960 to 1976 at [[Ethical Culture Fieldston School|Fieldston Lower School]] in [[the Bronx]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://peteseegersite.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/john-seeger-dies-at-95/|title=John Seeger Dies at 95|date=January 18, 2010|work=[[WordPress.com]]|access-date=November 5, 2010|archive-date=April 17, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190417232441/https://peteseegersite.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/john-seeger-dies-at-95/|url-status=live}}</ref> Peter's uncle, [[Alan Seeger]], a noted American [[war poet]] ("I Have a Rendezvous with Death"), had been one of the first American soldiers to be killed in [[World War I]]. All four of Peter's half-siblings from his father's second marriage—Margaret (Peggy), Mike, Barbara, and Penelope (Penny)—became folk singers. [[Peggy Seeger]], a well-known performer in her own right, married British folk singer and activist [[Ewan MacColl]]. [[Mike Seeger]] was a founder of the [[New Lost City Ramblers]], one of whose members, [[John Cohen (musician)|John Cohen]], married Peter's half-sister Penny, also a talented singer, who died young. Barbara Seeger joined her siblings in recording folk songs for children.