The Odd Fellows Home Girl's Orchestra of Lexington, KY

 

Though the pavement is covered with rain,
the young ladies are not wearing rain slickers
but sailor suits in a female dress version
complete with collar tie and service stripes on the sleeves.
As noted on the bass drumhead the 14 girls are members 
of the Odd Fellows Home Band of Lexington, Kentucky.


However most of their instruments are not suitable
for a marching band, but for a seated orchestra.

A few years earlier, to judge by the director's face,
they sat on a platform constructed in front
of the same portico to celebrate a patriotic day,
perhaps Flag Day or July 4th.
The sailor dresses are in summer white
and about half of the musicians, 12 girls and one boy,
hold string instruments. In the back is an upright piano.
The director is the same man,
but all the girls are different
from those in the first photo.
The drum is the same. 

This next postcard is a half-tone newsprint image captioned:
Kentucky Odd Fellows Home Orchestra.
Prof. Ellis Kidd, Director. Lexington, KY

The ensemble of fourteen girls pose on the same steps
with five violins, viola, cello, and double bass,
two clarinets, two cornets, trombone and percussion.
The director, Prof. Kidd, standing on the left
is the same man in the other postcards.
The other man on the right is unidentified.
The poor print makes face matching more challenging
but I think the cellist is the same girl in the previous photo.
Here the young ladies, ages 13 to 18, are not in uniform
but wear an assortment of fashions.
Their high button shoes suggest a time before 1920.

Three vintage postcards of what looks like a girl's school orchestra.
In a way it was an institution for children, but it wasn't a school.
The string instruments made it definitely a kind of orchestra,
but there were boys too who played in a band.

 

They were all residents of
the Odd Fellows Home for Widows and Orphans of Lexington, KY

The first postcard of the Lexington girl's orchestra
was the only one sent through the mail,
though somehow it never had a stamp.
It was sent to Miss N. J. Hines of Florence, Alabama
from Benham, Kentucky and dated August 26, 1924.

This is those
girls that played
at the theatar to
night  they sure do
make good music
Write soon and the

Best of wishes  Yours
                             Elmer

 

 

Evidently Elmer had heard the girls' orchestra and picked up their postcard at a concert they gave near his home in Kentucky's coal mining region, Harlan County, 165 miles southeast of Lexington.

Lexington KY Herald
7 June 1925

In June 1925 the girls' orchestra performed at a luncheon for a conference of the United Commercial Travelers, another national benevolent organization like the Odd Fellows but established for traveling salesmen. The event was held in the banquet room of a Lexington hotel, and about 225  "knights of the grip" with "their ladies" were entertained by the 14 piece orchestra in a program which included a number of solos. A vocal solo was rendered by Miss Irene Crooks, with a cornet solo by Miss Marie Minter and a trombone solo by Miss Etta Brewer. The other members of the orchestra were Misses Nellie Gross, Ruth Burchett, Margaret Schnitzler, Oggie Raynes, Thelma Showalter, Emily Spencer, Minnie Wood, Eva Fugate, Bessie Raynes, and Kemp Cline. Surely some of the names belong to the girls in Elmer's 1924 postcard.

I.O.O.F. Home, Lexington, KY
Source:  University of Kentucky Library Archives

In this postcard view of the home we can see on the left the main administration building with the four  column portico where the orchestras photos were taken. In the foreground is a band stand, a centerpiece in this era seen in many postcards of American institutions.

 

The Order of Odd Fellows was founded in London in 1730 as a non-political and non-sectarian international fraternal order. The first American lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows was established in Baltimore in 1819. It became the first national fraternity to accept both men and women when in 1851 it allowed women to join, forming a separate order called the Daughters of Rebekah. By 1896 it was considered the largest fraternal organization in America reporting in 1922 that it had 2,676,582 members.

 

Around the country many I.O.O.F. lodges built institutional homes for widows and orphans as a benefit for their members. The one in Lexington opened in October 1898 on about 30 acres of farmland in the north corner of the city. By 1920 it could boast of several large buildings with separate dormitories for boys and girls. Though from the beginning the Lexington home served as a haven for both widows and orphans, it never took in many widows, and in 1916 they were transferred to another facility in Eminence, KY, about 50 miles northwest of Lexington.

 

Not all the children who lived at the home were there because both parents had died. In many cases the loss of one parent forced the surviving spouse to place their children in the care of the orphanage. For fathers it was usually their work that prevented them from having any time to properly raise their children. For mothers it was a different kind of financial burden as in this era women had very limited job opportunities and poverty compelled them to resort to a charitable institution like the Odd Fellows Home. In one personal story I found online, a woman wrote a novel based on her  grandmother's decision after the death of her husband to abandon her five children at the Odd Fellow's Home. The grandmother went on to remarry a man widowed with five children and then produced another five children. Such heartbreaking stories were sadly more common then because communities offered few if any social assistance programs.

I.O.O.F. Home, Lexington, KY
Source:  University of Kentucky Library Archives

In the 1920 census the orphanage was home to 121 children, with 66 females. The orphanage's population was smaller in 1910 with 110, and larger in 1930 with 155. The staff numbered about 15. The average age of an orphan at the home in 1920 was 12.6 years. Though several girls were listed as 17 or 18, there were no boys that age. The residents were released into the world when they reached a majority age, so this may have been earlier for boys at 16 when they had more employment opportunities than girls. There seemed to be more children 12 or older than younger children. It was sad to read a few ages carefully marked as 4 7/12, 3 11/12, and 3 10/12.  

In the 1920 census, siblings at the orphanage were listed together under their surnames. Of the 121 children living at the home, 80 were there with another sibling, recorded under 27 family names, several in a family group of 4 and one with 5. Another interesting bit of detail recorded by the census taker was in annotations along side the sheet columns. "All in school. All over 6 years old can read and write. All born in Kentucky, (for child, father, and mother) All over 10 years old can speak English. All that are old enough worked at the Home."

The older children attended public schools in Lexington, but the home hired a teacher for the primary education of the youngest kids, and provided the older ones training in domestic skills and farm trades. On the property the home also maintained a large garden farm which was reported to have a harvest in 1919 that, when canned, produced 328 gallons of corn, 600 gallons of tomatoes, 524 gallons of of green beans, 320 gallons of sorghum, 51 gallons of jellies and preserves, 108 gallons assorted pickles, 55 gallons of catsup, and 38 gallons of peas, for total of 2,024 gallons. That's a lot of jars to fill.

I.O.O.F. Home, Lexington, KY
Source:  University of Kentucky Library Archives

This next postcard image of the Odd Fellows Home, provided by the University of Kentucky Library Archives, shows Prof. Ellis O. Kidd standing in the center of both the girls' orchestra and the boys' band. Not surprisingly the location is on the same portico as the other postcards. The boys' band was organized by Prof. Kidd in 1914 and the girls' orchestra a year later.

Though the Odd Fellows had financial responsibility to support the orphanage, the home still needed money for numerous extra expenses like summer activities for the children. Like many other orphanages I have written about on this blog, the Lexington Odd Fellows Home used their boys' band and girls' orchestra as a way to raise funds from the general public, either through private event programs or with ticketed public concerts. Every summer Prof. Kidd arranged to take one of his ensembles on a tour of Kentucky. In June 1920 the girls' orchestra traveled 735 miles over 10 days to towns near Lexington with a concert every day. A tour by the boys' band in 1921 raised over $20,000 in pledges for a $200,000 endowment. Postcards of the band and orchestra were a useful medium to promote the home and collect money from the sale of souvenir cards.

When Ellis O. Kidd was hired in 1914-15 to teach the Odd Fellows Home's band and orchestra, he had already established himself in Lexington as a talented and versatile musician. A Kentucky native born in 1865, since the late 1880s he had made his principal occupation in the city as a notable church organist and also played cornet and trombone in several Lexington bands and theater orchestras. Over his long career performing and teaching music he held the position of choir leader/organist at a Baptist, Episcopal, and three Methodist churches. When Ellis O. Kidd died on 25 July 1941 after a long illness, the Lexington newspapers ran very appreciative obituaries. One noted that his mother had been a music teacher and that Ellis and his siblings had performed in a traveling family orchestra. 

 

A few months before his death, Prof. E. O. Kidd conducted the Odd Fellows Home boys' band in a concert in March 1941. The boys' band would continue to be active at the Odd Fellows Home for another decade, but quietly vanished from newspaper reports after 1950.  The girls' orchestra had a much shorter run of only 13 years with the last newspaper report in May 1928. Perhaps the children found other activities of conflicting interest. This was about the time that school systems began to add band and orchestra programs to the curriculum. Teaching string instruments is more difficult and labor intensive than with a band's wind instruments. Keeping up with the two ensembles may have been too much work even for Prof. Kidd.

 

The Odd Fellows Home was not the only fraternal society orphanage in Lexington, as the Knights of Pythias also maintained a large institution there. In the early 1930's it had a girls' orchestra too which played public concerts. However there was no mention of the orchestra's director, so I don't know if Prof. Kidd had any connection to it.

Teaching children a musical instrument is a labor of love, both of children and music. Prof. Kidd's musical upbringing matches that of many directors of children's bands that I have featured here on my blog, as in his era music was often an intimate part of family heritage. It is remarkable that he passed on his own family's love of music to children who had tragically suffered the loss of their parents. That required a special level of devotion. 

 

Alumni of the I.O.O.F. Home, Lexington, KY
20 June 1941
Source:  University of Kentucky Library Archives

By the 1940 census the population of the Odd Fellows orphanage had declined to 61 from the 1930 count of 155 boys and girls. I could not find any newspaper reports on the number of orphans in the 50s and 60s but it likely continued to decline. The Odd Fellows closed the Lexington Home in about 1970 and a few years later the property was used by the city for an urban renewal project. As far as I can determine none of the buildings have been preserved. 

An orphanage was one way that communities in past times responded to personal tragedy with moral obligation. No doubt some children found life in the orphanage a troubling, if not abusive, experience. For some orphans the shame and pain of abandonment left marks that were difficult to heal. But in several modern reports in the Lexington newspapers, the alumni of the Odd Fellows Home, now seniors with grandchildren of their own, talked of the friendships, the kindness, and education they received in this institution that became their home.

The Odd Fellows in Kentucky regularly celebrated a homecoming for their lodges, and in the summer of 1941 the convention was held in Lexington. To commemorate the occasion, a large group of alumni residents assembled on the portico for a photo. Undoubtedly many there that day spoke fondly of Prof. Kidd and remembered the music they played together as children. It's a typical homecoming photo, but it's a photo of a family too. 

* * *

The address of the Odd Fellows Home in Lexington was at 511 west Sixth street. Ellis O. Kidd and his family lived at 611 Price Avenue, about 350 yards from the orphanage. It was close enough that he probably could hear his young musicians practicing their instruments as he walked to the rehearsal room.

Less than two miles north from the Odd Fellows Home
was another orphanage,
the Colored Orphans Industrial Home.

Colored Orphans Industrial Home, Lexington, KY
now the Robert H. Williams Cultural Center.
Photo by Danny Mayer.
Source: noclexington.com

The NKAA, Notable Kentucky African Americans Database
provides the following history of Lexington's Colored Orphan Industrial Home:

The Colored Orphan Home in Lexington, KY, was incorporated with E. Belle Mitchell Jackson as president; Emma O.Warfield, vice president; Ida W. Bate [wife of John W. Bate] secretary, Priscilla Lacey, treasurer, and 11 other women members of the Ladies Orphans Home Society. Captain Robert H. Fitzhugh, who was white, was a professional philanthropist for the home.

Support for the home came from bequests, fund-raising, and donations. The home was located on Georgetown Pike [Georgetown Street] in Lexington. The board members served as matrons of the home and donated food and supplies. The home took in orphaned and abandoned children, a few elderly women, and half orphans (children with one parent). The parent of a half orphan was charged for the child's board at the home.

Board members determined when a child would be returned to its parents; there were a few adoptions and foster care placements, but the goal was to educate the children and teach them an industrial trade in preparation for adulthood. In addition to classwork, house chores, and gardening, the children were taught kitchen duties, cooking, carpentry, chair-caning, laundry, and sewing. The  children made all of the clothes and linen at the home and did shoe-making and repairs; shoes were made for the children and also sold to the community.

The home continued in operation until 1988 when the facility became the Robert H. Williams Cultural Center.

Eliza or Isabelle (Belle) Mitchell Jackson (1848–1942), the home's first president, was born in Perryville, KY and raised in Danville, KY. Her parents, Mary and Monroe Mitchell, purchased their freedom. Belle became an abolitionist and was the first African American teacher at Camp Nelson, a supply depot and hospital used by the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Camp Nelson was a large recruitment and training center for African American soldiers and refugee camp for their wives and children. Mrs. E. Belle Mitchell Jackson later became a prominent teacher in Fayette County, KY and was one of the founders of the African American Orphan Industrial Home. She was actively involved with the Colored Women's Club movement. She was married to Jordan Jackson, an African American attorney, undertaker, newspaper editor and Republican leader in Kentucky.

In 1931 the children at the Colored Orphan Home of Lexington
posed on their home's portico steps for a photo.

Colored Orphan Industrial Home
Lexington, KY, 10 July 1931
Source: Source: University of Kentucky Library Archives

In the 1910 census 52 children lived at the colored orphanage. In 1920 only 23 names were listed. I was unable to find any reference to a band or orchestra at the Colored Orphan Industrial Home. The contrast with the Odd Fellows Home is striking. Everything was separate. Nothing was equal. It would be a long time before the balance began to shift, and even now, a century later, our nation still struggles to address inequity and injustice.

 

For more history on orphanage bands and orchestras in my collection
I recommend these stories from my blog.
The Iowa I.O.O.F. Orphans Home Orchestra,
Music Long Ago and Far Away,
The New York Orphan Boys' Band,
The Jenkins Orphanage Band,

The Boys Band of Mooseheart

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