The Landis family of Creedmoor, North Carolina, long celebrated in the two-part documentary series A Singing Stream, represents one of the most remarkable family histories in the state—an intergenerational story shaped by land, labor, and a musical tradition passed down like an heirloom.
The family story begins with matriarch Bertha Mangum Landis, born in 1898—the same year as the Wilmington Race Riot. Her lifetime would span Reconstruction’s aftermath, the rise of segregation, the Great Depression, the New Deal, the civil rights era, and into the new millennium. Through each chapter, Bertha became the steady center of a sprawling family that would eventually grow from 11 children to nearly 100 descendants.
Her early years were steeped in music. Bertha came from a lineage of shape-note singers, teachers, and church leaders, and she recognized that the man she married, young farmer Coy Landis, also carried what she called “the singing stream.” She passed that legacy directly to their children—eight boys and three girls—by teaching them parts and harmonies at home. While Coy sometimes attempted to silence late-night singing from the rooms overhead, Bertha defended the racket: “Don’t get after them,” she would say. “They may be great musicians someday.”…