This is a blog about music, photography, history, and culture. These are photographs from my collection that tell a story about lost time and forgotten music. Mike Brubaker
The client's props are all carefully arranged. His violin hangs precariously by a peg on a music stand with an open fiddle case inviting us to leave a small gratuity.
On the other side a second instrument, a cornet, the premier solo instrument of the era, is casually displayed in its case along with some sheet music as a testament to the musician's skill.
Standing above these musical instruments is the player, a young man with a thin whisp of a mustache, who wears a bandsman's cap and holds an ink pen. On a table next to him is an ink bottle and a scattering of papers and journals. Fastened to the shoulders of his suit coat are military style epaulets that add a curious mix of prestige and a little conceit to such a youthful face.
Who is this talented fellow?
I don't know.
But he looks like a musician who wants us to listen to him play something, or even everything.
By far the most common photograph of a musician in the era of the cabinet card format, roughly 1870s to 1910s, was a cornet player as it was a very popular instrument. Violinist posed for photos, too, but in my experience there were not so many as cornetists. For a person to master both a string and a brass instrument was not that unusual in the late 19th century, but few musicians chose to have their portrait made with both. The way he holds his pen and a large paper sheet of printed music, suggests to me that he considered himself a composer too.
It a shame that this photo came to me very faded, which I have corrected, but alas the photographer's camera did not pick up any detail of the sheet music in the picture.
The photographer was Mr. J. S. Aunspach of Pillow, Pennsylvania. If he had only penciled in a number for the negative, we might be able to get a copy of this man's cabinet card portrait. Or an enlargement or a colorized version.
Pillow, which is north of Harrisburg and very near the great Susquehanna River, has the unusual distinction of always being a very small town, or borough as it is called in Pennsylvania. Since the 1870 census when its population was 299 and 2020 when it was 291, Pillow's population has averaged only 324 residents every decade for 150 years.
According to the Pillow Historical Society, the town was originally founded in 1818 by John Snyder, a land developer from Mercer County, who called "Schneidershtettle". In 1865 after the Civil War it was incorporated as "Uniontown" but this conflicted with another larger Uniontown in Pennsylvania, so the post office or the residents took to calling it Pillow, supposedly after Major General Gideon Johnson Pillow, a U. S. Army general who distinguished himself in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. However, this seems a strange choice as Gideon J. Pillow was born in Tennessee in 1806 and during the Civil War served as a brigadier general of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, playing for the losing side.
The website for the American Battlefield Trust has a bio for Gideon J. Pillow (1806–1878) that begins with this extraordinary unflattering description of the man.
According to Who Was Who in the Civil War, Gideon Johnson Pillow was “one of the most reprehensible men ever to wear the three stars and wreath of a Confederate general” (Sifakis 508). It was reported that during the January 2, 1863 Battle of Stones River, Pillow hid behind a tree instead of leading his men into the fray. His most famous action, however, is his roll (sic) in the loss of Fort Donelson.
In the Battle for Fort Donelson, a Confederate fort near the Tennessee–Kentucky border that protected the Cumberland River route, General Ulysses S. Grant led a Union army to capture this strategic fort. As the Confederate generals realized they were defeated and now faced imprisonment, they handed command to a junior officer so that they might escape before being captured. When Grant later learned that General Pillow, whom he knew, was one of these officers who fled, he was told by the junior officer who surrendered Fort Donelson that, "He thought you'd rather get hold of him than any other man in the Southern Confederacy,"
"Oh," replied Grant, "if I had got him, I'd let him go again. He will do us more good commanding you fellows."
Considering that the name "Uniontown" honored the victory and restoration of the United States, naming the borough "Pillow" after this man seems a very peculiar choice for people of Pennsylvania. Moreover, the townsfolk did not actually vote for Pillow to be the town's official name until 1965.
I think someone either got very confused about General Gideon Pillow's background or was trying to make an inappropriate political statement. Somehow the current residents of Pillow seem happy to let the name stand.
1882 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania city directory
In any case, the photographer, whose full name was Jonathon S. Aunspach believed he lived in Pillow, and so did the publisher of the 1882 Harrisburg city directory which included a list of all the businesses in Pillow. At the time it reported the town has a population of 300. Mr. Aunspach was the only photographer amid a good number of other tradesmen. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1835 and died in Pillow in 1908 at the age of 72.
The young man's hat has a cap badge, but the three letters are not clear. The second and third letters are C and B, which very likely stand for Cornet Band. But the first letter is too wide to know for certain. Pillow, despite its small size, did have a band in the 1880s which is when I think this photo was taken. But a search for "cornet band" in the newspaper archives returned dozens of different cornet bands from around this region of Pennsylvania. So sadly this musician must stay anonymous, though I think it safe to say he was some cornet band's multi-talented leader.
If only we could read the cover page of the music he holds. There looks like a good clue in the title but I'm stumped to read the big printed gothic letters. Maybe Bnnrannon? What kind of word is that?
The saxophone is a hybrid instrument. Made of brass, its body is a conical metal tube hammered, molded, and fused together much like any trumpet, horn, or tuba. But its sinuous shape is punctured with dozens of holes that are fitted with an elaborate key mechanism just as flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons have.
So is it a woodwind or a brass instrument?
In musical terms it is classified as a "woodwind"
primarily because of how the saxophone's sound is produced by blowing on a single cane reed. (Though technically a reed is not a wood but a grass.)
But saxophone construction is very different from other woodwind instruments as seen in this postcard photo of a workman operating a specialized metal forming machine. The caption on the back tells us what he is doing.
SAX SOCKET PULLING
Making socket for saxophone at C. G. Conn Ltd., Elkhart, Ind., world's largest manufacturer of band and orchestra instruments. Metal in sax body is pulled up to form walls of tone hole. Wall is then part of sax body. Socket can't come loose, tilt or leak.
This postcard was sent by Larry from Chicago to his grandparents in New Castle, Indiana on 3 November 1958. {Remember, only YOU can prevent forest fires!}
Dear grand ma & pa
On our way to Northwestern University we stopped at the Conn Music factory for a tour. The gave us a free lunch. This week I am hound-dog in the half time show (We are playing elvis prestly hound dog) Larry
No doubt Larry's grandparents were very disappointed to miss their grandson's performance on the football field.
1904 C. G. Conn's Wonder Improved System Saxophones
Thought we can never known if Larry played a saxophone in his high school band, whatever instrument it was it's very likely that it was made in the Elkhart factory for the C. G. Conn musical instrument company. Founded in 1876 by Charles Gerard Conn (1844 – 1931), this Indiana manufacturer developed into a major company that became a dominate cultural force in America with a factory of hundreds of skilled craftsmen producing thousands of band instruments every month. Cornets, trombones, euphoniums, tubas, clarinets, flutes, piccolos, and assorted drums of every size and type were made in Elkhart with each instrument individually identified with its own serial number. But in its early years Conn imported some instruments from Europe that were less commonly played in America. Most bands did not require many, it any, oboes or bassoons, and in the 1870s saxophones were an exotic foreign instrument that few American musicians had even seen or heard. For these instruments, Conn imported models made in France.
The saxophone was patented in Paris in 1846 by a Belgian instrument maker, Adolphe Sax (1814 – 1894). Like his other self-named instruments—the saxhorn, the saxotromba, and the saxtuba, Sax designed the saxophone as a consort that came in several sizes from soprano to contrabass. He initially expected a saxophone could be played in both orchestras and bands, but the way its conical brass form easily amplified the saxophone's sound made it a great match for the dynamics of brass instruments. It soon became an important instrumental section in French military bands.
In 1872 a talented Dutch musician, Edward Abraham Lefebre (1834 – 1911) immigrated to the United States. Lefebre was a skilled clarinetist and saxophonist who was hired by Patrick Gilmore for his Twenty-second Regiment National Guard Band, then considered the premier military band in America. Lefebre proved to be a virtuoso on the saxophone and soon became the leading soloist and proponent of this novel instrument in late 19th century America. In
In 1888 one of C. G. Conn's talented foremen, Ferdinand August Buescher (1861 – 1937) produced a copy of one of Edward Lefebre's saxophones and persuaded Conn that his factory could make more using Lefebre, who became a member of John Philip Sousa's band, to promote the brand. So by 1892 the Conn company had a full line of "Wonder" Saxophones in six sizes, from soprano to bass, and in several levels of finish, from polished brass to gold plate with ornamental engraving. In 1904 the little B-flat soprano cost $85 if made with the top level silver-plated finish or $50 in basic polished brass. The price for a giant contrabass saxophone was $200 in silver or $105 in brass. Gold-plating was a special order and cases, velvet lined with nickel trim, cost extra.
This bird's eye view of the C. G. Conn Musical Instrument Factory in Elkhart gives a good perspective of this immense facility dedicated to turning wood, brass, cane, even rawhide into every kind of musical instrument imaginable. It's in stark contrast with how Charles G. Conn began his music business in a very small way by making special cornet mouthpieces using a converted old sewing machine as a lathe.
As a young man, Conn, a veteran of the Union Army, moved to Elkhart after the war where he tried his hand at different jobs, selling health care products, and working with rubber stamps and metal plating. He also played cornet in the town's band until one day he suffered a debilitating injury to his lip. In an effort to regain his embouchure he came up with an idea for a mouthpiece with a rubber rim that would reduce fatigue and prevent trauma to the lips. When other musicians expressed interest in it, Conn took out a patent and began making and selling his "elastic" cornet mouthpieces. This simple musical accessory led him to create an industrial factory that could mass produce any kind of musical instrument.
This card was sent from Cincinnati on 11 October 1911 to Miss Clara Bayer of Ashton, Illinois.
Dear Clara ! Don't get discouraged As soon as I find out where I am going I will let you know. Love and Kisses from Rosie.
The postcard dealer added an annotation that mistakenly labels the picture it as the Conn factory before the May 22, 1910 fire. Actually this is an architect's rendering of C. G. Conn's new factory that would replace the one destroyed in May 1910. And this was Conn's second factory fire in Elkhart, too.
On 29 January 1883, a fire broke out in the packing room of the C.G. Conn factory at the corner of Elkhart Avenue and East Jackson Street. Elkhart, like many small towns in this era, did not have a citywide water system so there were no fire hydrants. Instead firemen had to resort to pumping water from the nearby river, but tragically at this time of the year the river was frozen with 18 inches of ice. The fire destroyed the factory building valued at $55,000 but insurance only covered $22,000. The fire also consumed nearly everything inside the factory except for Conn's safe which contained all his business orders. He vowed to fulfill them within two weeks and his workers obliged by finding new tools to continue to make instruments.
Ruins of Conn Horn Factory, May 22, 1910 Elkhart, Indiana Source: Indiana Memory
Two months later Conn opened his second factory, hiring three times the number of employees that worked at the old factory. It was larger with four floors and was adjacent to another two-story building that Conn used for his music publishing department. The factory caught fire on the night of 22 May 1910 at 1:00 AM. Various causes for the fire were proposed: arson, faulty electrical wires, combustible wood dust or negligent watchmen, but nothing was proven. Once again the city's inferior water service did not have sufficient pressure for the firefighter's hoses and Conn's second factory was destroyed. Only a few instruments and business equipment were saved. The loss was estimated as between $100,000 and $500,000. Insurance adjustors paid just $80,000.
At the time Charles Conn was in California when the fire occurred. Of course he immediately returned to Elkhart but since travel then was by train he did not arrive in Elkhart until 26 May. He was met at the station by a huge crowd of well-wishers showing popular sympathy. There was a parade to take him to a hotel and 5,000 citizens lined the city's streets to welcome him back. After many years living and working in Elkhart, Conn had earned this respect by also serving as mayor of the city for a couple of years, and as a United States congressman from Indiana.
Even though other cities like Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Terra Haute, and Joliet, Illinois offered free buildings and other incentives for Conn to relocate his music instrument company, instead Conn was determined to stay in Elkhart and rebuild his business. As in 1883, Conn's loyal workers sifted through the factory fire's debris to salvage sheet brass and other material and soon were back making instruments again in temporary workshops. Construction on Conn's third factory began at a new site on 15 August 1910 and by the following 12 December it was nearly fully operational.
This colorized photo postcard shows the factory's grand frontage with its twin towers that give it a Spanish Mission quality that may have been inspired, I think, by Conn's trip to California. The ground around the building is still roughly graded from construction work. Notice the horse and buggy at the front doors and the collection of worker's bicycles leaning on the walls.
The postcard was sent from Elkhart on 19 August 1911 to Mrs. Samuel Dunfee of Wabash, Indiana.
Hello All Mamma just got here we met her at the train hope you will all get better. we are going home now. write us every day. your daughter verner Three rivers R R 2.
C. G. Conn "New Wonder" factory, Elkhart, Indiana 1911 Source: Wikimedia
In advertisements Conn promoted that at his new third factory he employed "303 wage earners, of whom 250 are men and 53 are women. No boys or girls are employed. The men work nine hours per day and the women eight hours per day. The output of this factory averages about 800 instruments per month, no counting Bugles, Drums and Musical Traps and Accessories. The Conn instruments are used and recommended by all great musicians and they will improve the playing ability of any performer at least twenty-five percent."
Conn's musical instruments were marketed around the country and many community bands bought complete sets of instruments at attractive credit terms. Conn promoted his instruments in a self-published musical news journal for music dealers called Trumpet Notes. It included many photos of town bands and instrumentalists offering testimonial praise for Conn instruments. Some of those postcard photos are in my collection. In many ways, C. G. Conn was like the character of Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man, except he really did bring a boys' band to River City and many other towns in America.
C. G. Conn Band Instrument Co. postcard No. 17 Saxophone Department Source: Wikipedia
Perhaps in honor of his dedicated workers, C. G. Conn had a souvenir brochure of the new factory made in 1911 that included 44 photographs of the various departments. The photos were later released as separate postcards. Photo No. 17 was of the saxophone department. This large workroom, lit by large windows, is filled with dozens of work stations where workers are assembling saxophones. On tables and hanging from the ceiling are numerous components of unfinished saxophones.
The full story of Charles G. Conn is a fascinating history of how one man could establish a business empire during America's industrial revolution. His success came from his relentless drive to make quality musical instruments at an affordable price. Conn certainly ranks with countless similar entrepreneurs of the 19th century who began with a simple invention or idea for an innovative appliance and then built factories to mass produce them. But sadly, like many of those tycoons, Conn's increasing debts forced him to sell his company in 1915 to a group of investors. Thereafter Conn retired to Los Angeles, California where he died in 1931, though he is buried in Grace Lawn Cemetery in Elkhart.
The new managers who took over his music instrument factory continued to operate it under the C. G. Conn brand name. Over the past 100 years, after many acquisitions, mergers, and restructuring, the Conn company continues in the 21st century to make musical instruments including saxophones. The headquarters are still in Elkhart, though much of the manufacturing is in other parts of the country or world. It is now owned by Steinway Musical Instruments which combined it with their subsidiary the Selmer Company to create the Conn-Selmer company.
Ironically Conn's foreman, August "Gus" Buescher, who helped introduce the saxophone to America, left the Conn company in 1893 to start the Buescher Band Instrument Company He didn't go very far either as he set up his factory in Elkhart, too, where over the following decades he became Conn's main competitor in saxophones, as well as other instruments. It was bought out by another music company in 1963 and closed in 1983.
This birds-eye-view postcard is an actual aerial photo of the Conn factory, taken several years after Conn left the company. The main entrance is still there but the facility has expanded with another smoke stack added. The worker's bicycles have been replaced with automobiles neatly parked in a center lot. There are also residential houses opposite the factory.
This card was sent from Davenport, Iowa on 18 September 1940 to Mr. Arthur Blocher(?) of Henry, Illinois. I was unable to decipher the word "Hultquisto" in the sender's brief message. Is it a name or a greeting? The language seems Spanish-like but Google offers no clues.
Aerial view of factory, C. G. Conn, Ltd., Elkhart, Indiana, world's largest manufac- turer of band and orchestra instruments. Occupies more than 200,000 square feet of floor space and employs over 900 skilled craftsmen. Capacity output of 7,500 com- plete instruments per month.
As music evolved into the jazz age, the saxophone became the instrument most identified with this new musical genre. The Conn company continued to bring out innovations on saxophone design like improved mechanisms and better materials that appealed to the increasing number of sax performers, both professional and amateur. It also tried making several variations on saxophones like a mezzo-soprano sax in the key of F and the "Conn-o-sax", a saxophone-English horn hybrid which failed to gain any traction with customers.
During the war years 1942 to 1945, the Conn factory stopped producing musical instruments and instead joined the war effort by converting its metalwork tools from manufacturing tubas, trumpets, and saxophones to making specialized military equipment. The Conn factory used its expertise in operating at very close tolerances to build aviation and naval instruments like compasses, altimeters, and gyro-horizon indicators.
In this photo from 1943 Conn workers assemble brass semi-spheres to be used for ship binnacles that housed a ship's compass.
Among my individual photos of unknown saxophonists is this young man who posed with his giant bass saxophone. He wears some kind of uniform as he has high legging over his shoes and up to his knees. I initially thought he was an army bandsman, from roughly around 1915-1920. But his long sleeve shirt is not military issue, I think, so perhaps he is in some fraternal or collegiate outfit. I can't tell if it's a Conn sax or a Buescher or some other maker, but in any case, he seems pleased with his photo.
The card was sent, probably in a letter to Mrs. Wm. G. Bullis of Rosendale, New York.
Dear Nettie, How is this for your brother in laws. I took it last Sunday in the parlor at home. I am as every. Will
So to recap, here is what you need to make a saxophone.
First, build a factory with lots of space to store tools and materials. Second, hire very skilled people who can operate complicated machines like a sax socket puller. Third, borrow some reed stock that clarinet players rejected. And fourth, make sure you keep a fire extinguisher handy.
Or you can watch how it is done at the Selmer Saxophone Factory and then decide it's better to order one off the rack and readymade, rather than to try to make one yourself.
This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday where everyone tries to thread the needle.
The guitar is a versatile instrument. It can be played solo or in a group by contributing melody, accompaniment, or both.
It's a very tactile instrument, too. The guitar's strings and fretboard
invite fingers to touch it and make a sound that vibrates the wooden body.
Whether strummed or picked, chords and arpeggios come naturally to the guitar and create music that is intimate and personal.
It's also lightweight and very portable which makes it easy to make music anywhere.
Today a modern guitar can easily rock a stadium with its amplification turned up to eleven, but in earlier non-electric times it was known only in its acoustic form, a shapely classical instrument with a warmquiet tone.
Today I present three vintage photographs of young women who enjoyed playing the guitar.
My first guitarist posed for her portrait seated with her instrument in playing position. She wears a dark satiny dress made with tight sleeves and collar and a generous amount of material for the skirt. She looks about age 21 to 30 years old with attractive features of a high society woman of the 1880s. I can't say very much about her instrument except that the guitar's body seems smaller than most modern acoustic guitars. The ribbon bow tied to the headstock gives it a light-hearted style. The photo has no annotation so the woman's name is unknown. Her dress and hair style fits with fashions of the late 1880s and early 1890s.
Her photograph was taken at the studio of W. Kurtz in New York City at Madison Square & 233 Broadway. The back of the photo has the Kurtz business mark advertising its 12 first class medals from New York, Vienna, Paris, and Philadelphia. The bottom imprint of Branch 233 Broadway likely means the photo came from that studio which was located, I think, on Broadway across from City Hall park just two blocks up from St. Paul's Chapel.
The proprietor of this studio was Wilhelm or William Kurtz(1833 – 1904) , a German-American photographer and illustrator. He is recognized as a pioneer in the development of halftone and color printing for reproducing photographs. Kurtz was born in Hesse, Germany in 1833 and as a young man trained to be a lithographer. However after serving his compulsory two years of military service he lost his apprenticeship and left Germany to seek his fortune.
He first traveled to England where he joined the British German Legion and fought in the Crimean War. After surviving that war he set off for China only to be shipwrecked off the Falkland Islands. He was rescued and taken to New York City where he found work in a photography studio. When the American Civil War started Kurtz enlisted in the New York Seventh Regiment and managed to survive that conflict, too.
William Kurtz photograph gallery, circa 1885 Source: New York Public Library Archive
Returning to New York he went back to work as a photographer and in 1873 opened his own studio on East 23rd Street opposite Madison Square. The building was five stories tall and Kurtz's studio was on the top floors to take advantage of window lighting. Later his studio was one of the first to introduce electric lights. In this illustration his studio is covered in advertising promoting his name, but it is interesting that he shared the building with the Remington Sewing Machine Co., too.
William Kurtz became very successful making portraits of New York's society people and theater and literary celebrities. The last decades of the 19th century were a time when photographs became a very popular medium largely because innovations in photo printing allowed them to be reproduced in great numbers. It's quite possible that this guitarist's photo is a souvenir photo of a well-known actress or socialite but without more clues she will have to remain anonymous.
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My second and third guitarists appeared together as a duo on the same cabinet card photograph. Both wear fine dresses of a dark color with tight sleeves but modestly puffy shoulders, a fashion that dates from the early to mid 1890s. The girl on the left seems rather young, perhaps 14 to 18 years old maybe, while the woman on the right it closer to age 22 or 30. They might be sisters but they don't share many facial features so I'm inclined to think this is a photo of a student and teacher. Their guitars are small like the previous woman's instrument. The girl on the left has a capo across the fretboard to transpose her strings to a higher key.
This photo is in remarkably perfect condition with a high gloss finish that makes it look as if it was taken yesterday. It has none of the surface abrasion or faded contrast that I usually find in antique photos of this period. The photographer was F. T. Bannister of New Richmond, Wisconsin. His business imprint on the back announces that "Pictures like this may be had at any time, for $2.00 per dozen, after the first dozen." For this kind of quality that sounds like quite a deal.
The photographer's name was Frank Truman Bannister. Courtesy of one of his descendants who posted his family tree on Ancestry.com, I learned he was born in 1854 in Rome, Michigan. In 1888 Frank Bannister set up his own photography shop in New Richmond, Wisconsin with a specialty in "General Viewing of Railroads, Bridges, Mills, Residencies, Life-size Photographs, Fine India Ink and Crayon Portraits."
New Richmond is in St. Croix County, Wisconsin about 40-35 miles northeast of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. In the 1890s it was a thriving small town of about 1,500 residents that served a larger region of farms and timberlands.
On Monday, 12 June 1899, New Richmond was welcoming many visitors because the Gollmar Bros. Circus was in town. The weather was not ideal and the afternoon brought heavy rain with hail that spoiled the show, but by suppertime the rain let up and people began heading back to their homes and to the town's center.
Suddenly the sky grew very menacing with flashes of lightning and rumble of thunder. Within seconds a tornado touched down near the southwest corner of the town in a residential neighborhood where many of New Richmond's prosperous families lived. In an instant over fifty homes were destroyed.
The tornado then rapidly advanced on the town's central business district where many people had sought refuge in the stone and brick commercial buildings. Yet these masonry structures were no defense against this tornado's monstrous energy and fury. All were demolished killing many people sheltering inside. In moments it hit the circus grounds, shredding the tents and killing a few horses and an elephant. The town of New Richmond was almost completely obliterated and hundreds perished with many more injured.
Minneapolis Tribune 13 June 1899
The 1899 New Richmond cyclone was estimated as an F5 tornado, the most powerful kind with the highest velocity winds. That evening of June 12th it ripped a 45-mile path of devastation through St. Croix, Polk, and Barron counties in west-central Wisconsin. Within New Richmond and the surrounding area 117 people were killed, and at least twice as many more were injured. Hundreds were left homeless. The wind peeled the bark off trees. Houses were totally destroyed. Damaged tanks of flammable material caught fire setting off a secondary wave of destruction. This next image taken the next day shows only part of the damage. It was clipped from a larger panoramic photo that gives a better view of this terrible tragic event.
Elevated view of New Richmond after the tornado hit on June 12, 1899. The Willow River is visible in the foreground. Source: Wisconsin Historical Society image 61758
Reports on the destruction of New Richmond continued through the week as the world learned of the horrendous disaster. Mr. Bannister's business appeared in one account which was repeated in several newspapers around the country.
The people are still so dazed that, with few exceptions, the bereaved ones evince no grief or apparent emotion. This gives the impression of indifference, but physicians say they are so dazed by the disaster that they do not realize its extent or their losses of friends and property. One old man was looking over the ruins of Bannister's photograph gallery. In answer to a question as to what he was looking for he replied, in a perfectly indifferent manner:
"Oh, I was just looking for a picture of my wife and children. They were all killed and my house went, too."
This is a fair sample of the state of mind every one is in who lost part of or all they possessed. Money and supplies are coming in constantly, but as far as money is concerned, it is not enough to give the desolate town anything like a new start. It is problematic whether or not this once thriving community will rise from its ashes, or rather debris, and attain the prosperity which prevailed before it was demolished.
A few weeks later in another newspaper, Mr. Bannister told a reporter that he had begun building three small buildings to restart his photography business. By the 1910 census Frank T. Bannister listed his occupation as photographer and included his eldest son, also named Frank, in the business. He died in 1919 at age 65.
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My third photo and fourth guitarist is posed standing in a photographer's studio while leaning her head on her instrument's headstock. This is not how you tune a guitar. She wears dark skirt with a a loose blouse made of a broad crisscross pattern satiny fabric with big puffy shoulders. That fashion and her hair tied into a top knot, (along with the ornate rattan chair, too) are a typical style of the late 1890s. Her direct gaze at the camera also gives her a subtle provocative quality that is not common in photos of this era. Her guitar is similar to the others but has a darker varnish.
The photographer was E. E. Spracklen of 101,103 & 105 Allen St. in Webb City, Missouri. Webb City is located in the southwest corner of Missouri, west of Springfield and near the border corners of Kansas and Oklahoma. It was developed partly on 200-acres owned by a farmer named John C. Webb who drew up plans for a town in September 1875. He incorporated his self-named city in December 1876 when it already had a population of 700.
Mr. Webb knew the value of the land as he had discovered lead ore there while plowing. In this great age of the industrial revolution it did not take long for mining companies to start digging. By the late 1890s when this photo was taken there were over 700 mines located within the limits of Webb City and adjacent Carterville. The region was also rich in other minerals, especially zinc ore. By 1880, just a few years after its incorporation, Webb City's population more than doubled to 1,588. By 1890 it jumped 217.6% to 5,043 residents. After a decade it was 9,201 in the 1900 census and then 11,817 in 1910.
In 2020 Webb City has a modest but respectable population of 13,031, but in the 1890s it was clearly a prosperous place with enough wealth for a photographer to make a good living producing fine photos like this one of a young woman with her guitar.
The photographer's full name was Edwin Eveliegh Spracklen. Courtesy of information posed on the FindaGrave.com website, Edwin E. Spracklen was born in December 1853 on the Isle of Guernsey in English Channel. As a child he immigrated with his family to London, Ontario where he evidently got a good Canadian practical education. He trained as a photographer in Chicago and after a period traveling around the west, Spracklen settled in Webb City opening his own photography studio there in 1880. He was remembered as an artistic photographer and dealer in picture frames and art sundries. In 1898 he was elected mayor of Webb City, a position he held of two years. He died in March 1941 at the age of 87 and is buried in the Webb City cemetery.
We may never know the names of anonymous people in old photographs but sometimes we can make a sketch of their lives by learning more about the person behind the camera. I'd bet good money that Mr. Kurtz, Mr. Bannister, and Mr. Spracklen each got to hear their guitarists play. A private concert in return for a beautiful photograph.
The friendships made by soldiers can last a lifetime. Photographs of that bond were common enough for regular soldiers in World War One, but it was just as true for army musicians too.
Today I present a small sample of private photos of unknown soldiers who were bandsmen in the Imperial German Army.
This pair of bandsmen, a hornist and a trombonist, posed for a relaxing moment outdoors while enjoying a smoke. The photographers, Gebrüderen Spahn were a professional studio in Hammelburg, a city in Bayern/Bavaria. They probably arranged to take photos of soldiers who were doing their army training at the Lager-Hammelburg ~ army barracks which were south of the city. Soldiers bought the postcards to send to friends and family back home. The Waffen, the ornate brass plate affixed to the front of their distinctive Pickelhaubehelmets matches the pattern used by the Bavarian army.
The postcard was sent from the Hammelburg Barracks on 13 June/July (?) 1907 to Wohlgeboren (i.e. well born, a title for a minor nobility) J---(?) F. Müller, a Kaufman ~ merchant in Neustadt, a very common city name in Germany. The addition of "on S." means Neustadt in Sachsen, I think. The Spahn brothers also helpfully included the year 1907 with their printed business name on the back. It's interesting that cigarettes are a favorite prop featured in many similar photos of French soldiers from this era, while German soldiers, especially those from Bavaria, are often depicted smoking pipes.
***
This next duo also stand outdoors wearing proper German Pickelhaube but dressed in less formal uniforms with ordinary shoes instead of boots. I think this was the attire worn for indoor concerts which required no marching or ceremonial precision from a band. The tall trumpet player even has a short bandsman's sword attached to his belt, though his companion, a tenor hornist, is missing his sword. The back of the card is blank, so the only clues for identification are their helmet plates. Unfortunately the sunlight glare makes it difficult to see the full design but I think it matches the regimental pattern for Württemberg.
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This next pair of German bandsmen were photographed in a studio standing in front of a painted backdrop of a dramatic cloudy landscape. One soldier holds a tuba and the other a clarinet. They wear dark wool overcoats, boots, and Pickelhauben. On their belts are pouches for their sheet music. Their helmet plates have the Prussian eagle gripping the royal scepter and orb which is a design used by several Prussian infantry regiments.
The postcard is blank except for a stamp of the photographer's studio, H. Kalinke, of Gotha, a large city in Thuringia, Germany, northeast of Frankfurt and west of Leipzig. However one soldier has left his mark. The clarinetist drew a cross over himself, just in case his parents might not recognize him in uniform.
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My last photo is not a duo but a quartet of bandsmen in dress uniforms performing outside on tuba, trumpet, horn, and bassoon. Next to them a stout non-commissioned soldier wearing a white fatigue uniform appears to interrupt their concert. He carries a beer keg under one arm and seems to be offering them a box of cigars, as he is smoking one too.
Leaning on the horn player's legs is a slate-board sign which has a message written in chalk. The first line, "Albert lebe hoch" is "Albert lives long", but I can't make out the next words to translate them. Presumably it's a humorous comment about the soldier with the beer and cigars. However the last line is clear, "Schießplatz Jüterbog" translates as "Jüterbog shooting range". Jüterbog is a town in northeastern Germany, in the Teltow-Fläming district of Brandenburg, about 65 km (40 mi) southwest of Berlin. The helmet plate pattern is a Prussian infantry or Garde regiment, similar to those of the bandsmen from Gotha. Notice that they wave short swords too.
The postcard was never posted but it does have a message on the back. However the handwriting is too broad for me to make out any of the letters. Maybe it's part of the joke. :—)
Since only one postcard has a date, which was from 1907, I can't say that the other photos were taken in that pre-war decade or later during the Great War from 1914-1918. What I can say is that Germans were very fond of band music, uniforms, and cameras. I have found far more personal photos of soldiers in the Imperial German Army than of British, French, Belgian, or American servicemen from the same era.
The little leather Pickelhauben look silly and impractical to our modern eyes, but at the beginning of the 20th century the spiked Prussian helmet was an important symbol of German military heritage, especially because it was still new as a unified Germany empire did not exist until 1871. These men wore it with pride and were respected for their military music traditions, many of which were borrowed by military bands in France, Britain, and the United States.
But what I like best about these photos of anonymous bandsmen is that they reveal close personal friendships that come from making music together while serving your country. These musicians genuinely belonged to a band of brothers.
This is a web gallery of antique photographs of musicians. Most are of people whose names are now lost in time but they represent the many kinds of players, instruments, and ensembles that once defined musical culture. But these photographs also capture a moment in the history of people and places, so I write about that too.
All the photos shown here are in my personal collection.
For Best Effect Click on the Images for a Larger View
For information on my music for horn - go to the bottom of this column.
