The preface of Polished Pearls identifies congregations unable to afford full-length hymnals as the volume’s primary audience. This target group likely included the Restorationist church pastored by compiler T. J. Shelton (1849–1929) in Arcola, Illinois. Collaborating with Ohio Valley church musician James Holmes Rosecrans (1843–1926), Shelton combined Sunday school music donated by copyright holders into this small, affordable paperbound volume suitable for social worship. The unusual inclusion of numeral notation was doubtless an influence of Cincinnati publisher Fillmore Brothers, a prominent mid–nineteenth century distributor of numeral-notated music that had fallen out of fashion elsewhere in the 1860s, well before the appearance of this 1876 publication.

—Erin Fulton