The Roulette Cornet Band

 
This is John Hall, the band's drum major. He worked at the tannery as a machinist and was an active member of the local lodge of the I.O.O.F.—the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. His uniform with 27 shiny buttons, golden braid and aiguillette, and his long gleaming mace are brand new, probably ordered from a music supply house in Philadelphia.

His bandsmen also wore new uniforms but theirs were considerably less fancy with only a single row of five buttons attached to the tunics with some Austrian braid. The young man seated left was Charles Fessenden, the snare drummer. He was employed as a clerk in his father's hardware store. Some of the others worked at the tannery, too, or at one of several saw mills in town. 

 

 

 

The band got its start in 1887 when Mr. J. Hancock used to come to town once a week all the way from Liberty, about 80 miles east of their town. By the following year, the band was good enough to play for church suppers, dances, Decoration Day, family reunions, and even one time at a big political rally that attracted over 1,500 people. 

 

 

These fifteen musicians could make a grand sound and were the pride of their small town. They called themselves the Cornet Band of Roulette, Pennsylvania. They got new uniforms in September 1891 and in November that year they had their photo taken by Mr. C. C. Kimball. 

Coudersport, PA Potter Enterprise
11 November 1891

I believe this large 10" x 8" albumen print of the band was likely the one taken by Kimball. Why he posed them in what looks like a rock quarry is a bit strange. Maybe it happened to be close to where they played a concert. Certainly there was no shortage of rocks in this town, given the mountains that surround it.

 

This smaller cabinet card photo came with the larger photo of the Roulette Cornet Band. It shows a view of Roulette, PA looking east. It's a picture of a typical American rural community with residential lots and small farms arranged around a main street of business buildings, here running across the center of the photo. Just beyond is a river hidden by trees, and further away before the small mountain is a factory with a tall smokestack. 

Roulette township is in Potter County in north central Pennsylvania about 25 miles south of the New York state line. It's a convoluted landscape created by a triple watershed of numerous waterways that flow eastward to the Chesapeake Bay, northward to the St. Lawrence River, and westward to the Mississippi River. The largest of these is the Allegheny River which winds through Roulette on its way to Pittsburgh where it joins the Ohio River.

 

 

The back of this fine landscape photo has a note that the factory in the background is the Roulette tannery. This region supported many tanneries that produced a wide variety of leather used for shoes, gloves, garments, handbags, furniture upholstery, and industrial machinery belts. Pennsylvania's abundant timberland provided the tree bark which was used to prepare animal hides. Here is a photo I found on the Ulysses, PA Library Historical Archive, probably taken in the 1890s, of de-barked logs around the Roulette Tannery. 

Logs By the Roulette Tannery, c. 1890
Source: Ulysses Library Historical Archive

In a tannery animal hides were soaked in a sequence of tubs that used tannic acid, lime, dyes, and water rinses to produce leather. In earlier times the process took weeks, even months, depending on the type of leather desired—hard or soft, thick or thin, raw color or dyed, etc. The bark usually came from hemlock trees and was ground up into a coarse mulch that was then steamed for several days to make a liquor. Hundreds of tubs were filled with hides that soaked in this caustic stew for a very long time. 

The production of leather required a large workforce of 60 to 100+ workers who labored at various tasks like liming, fleshing, splitting, degreasing, frizing, bleaching, and pickling to name just a few. A tannery operation required an incredibly complicated system of vats and tubs filled with hot noxious solutions that used a lot of water. The odor from a tannery was especially obnoxious  which is why they were usually built in rural locations. It was also a dangerous place to work where dreadful accidents 

Loggers at the Roulette Tannery, c. 1890
Source: Ulysses Library Historical Archive

The manufacture of leather was an important industry in the 19th century which also included many other associated products. Tanning only needed the tree bark so after its removal the logs were hauled away to saw mills to become lumber. The animal hair scrapped from hides was sent to other factories that made felt, fabric, and upholstery stuffing. The animal fat and hooves were used to manufacture glue used in furniture making and book binding. 

All these industries found a place in rural areas of Pennsylvania and it made many small towns like Roulette more  vibrant places than they are today. Today Potter County is the fifth-least populous county in Pennsylvania. In 1860, at the start of the Civil War, it's population was 11,470, nearly double the number in the 1850 census. By 1900 it had almost tripled to 30,621 residents, the highest in its history. Today Potter County's population is only 16,396 as most of the 19th century industries have long since left the region. Surprisingly Roulette's population in 2022 is just 1,138 which is very close to the 1900 census number of 1,131. 

During the 1890s and 1900s America suffered through several economic downturns which affected rural American small towns. The Roulette tannery was originally independent but competed against larger leather trust companies that controlled the national market on leather hides. By around 1904 the tannery was sold and it's equipment transferred to another town. 

 

The photographer of the east view of Roulette left an embossed mark on the lower corner of the print. He was William S. Pfeiffer of Roulette.

Coudersport, PA Potter Enterprise
25 August 1910. 

Mr. Pfeiffer and his wife had lived in Roulette since the 1880s and evidently both had taken up photography with enthusiasm as their camera work was often mentioned in the Coudersport weekly newspaper the Potter Enterprise. Mrs. Pfeiffer ran a sewing notions shop and her husband had  various jobs including work as a foreman at the tannery. Around 1901, like many photography entrepreneurs of this era, William Pfeiffer began producing postcard views of his community and I think this cabinet card landscape was likely one of those pictures, though mounted on a cabinet card. 

  

Until I found the 1891 newspaper report on Mr. Kimball taking a photo of the band, I thought William Pfeiffer might have been the photographer. It's still possible that he was, as he was living in Roulette when it was made. The reason I know the date is that in August 1941 the Coudersport Potter Enterprise published the same picture and with the names of the musicians.

 

Coudersport, PA Potter Enterprise
14 August 1941

    Roulette Cornet Band – Fifty Years Ago

Roulette had a cornet band half a century ago.  The members were uniformed and the town was proud of it, as it had good reason to be.  Since Roulette's Fire Department is celebrating this week with parades and various other events, this is an appropriate time to show what the town boasted fifty years ago, when it had no fire fighting equipment such as in use today, nor uniformed firemen.

    In the picture the men in the front row are: Left to right—Charles Fessenden, Harry White, Oscar Johnson, Walter Welch*, Jordan E. Conner, Caleb Johnson.  Back row:  E. A. Johnson, Charles Woodard, Anton Gustwick*, Carl Bergland, Nick Gustwick*, Charlie Welch, Morda Kimm, Dayton Pomeroy.  Drum Major:  John Hall.  Those followed by "*" are still living.
                                            Coudersport, PA, Potter Enterprise. 14 August 1941

 

A band once played an important part in the social life of a small town. The members knew each other from work or were even family, as it was common for fathers, sons, and brothers to play together.  (Sometimes women too, but in this era that was very rare.) A band provided music for all kinds of local events like church picnics, county fairs, political rallies, school dances, funeral services, fraternal society conventions, holiday parades, and other musical entertainments. The Roulette Cornet Band also represented the township at parades and fairs in other cities. It was the way people of Roulette took collective pride in their community at a time when small towns were very isolated from the culture of big cities.

My favorite photos are those that either have the names of the musicians on the photograph or, like this one, have a newspaper report with the names. Though I'm prevented from finding all the bandsmen in the 1890 census, as tragically the records for the whole United States were destroyed in the 1921 fire at the Commerce Department, I was still able to find most names in the 1900 census and also in the newspaper archives of the Coudersport Potter Enterprise. That's where I found this next clipping from September 1947.  

 

 

Coudersport, PA Potter Enterprise
18 September 1947

   The above photograph of the Roulette Band was made at Coudersport July 4, 1925. The band furnished music for a two-day celebration. At the time the late Harold Sonnekalb was commander of Potter Post, American Legion. From left to right the men were:
    Leon Falk, Charles Chandler, Ronald Adams*, Earl Woodward, Gerald Marschner, Wilford Pomeroy, Levi Adams, Gerald Woodward, Don Fessenden*, Harlod Metz*, Harold Burt, Jessie Falk, Maurice Goodrich, D. C. Pomeroy, director; bass drummer, Robert Tauscher; snare drummer, Herbert Nolan.
    * Indicates deceased.

Like any volunteer organization of amateurs, the Roulette Cornet Band reorganized itself several  times. The brass instruments of the original cornet band were expanded to include woodwind instruments. The band also became sponsored by the Roulette Volunteer Fire Department. As you can see from the names there are several related to the names in the 1891 band. It is interesting that the tuba player in the older photo, Dayton Pomeroy, was now the Roulette Band's leader in 1925. I'm not certain but the band stopped performing in the late 1920s, probably related to the depression and also to the introduction of high school band programs.

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where it's all done with smoke and mirrors.

The Slippery Slopes of Austria

 

What's so attractive about snow?

Okay, it's pretty enough when it starts to fall.
And snowflakes can be interesting, I suppose,
after you've seen a few dozen.

But mainly snow is just really, really cold rainwater,
rendered into a frosty froth that gets crushed and compressed,
until it becomes hard as a rock, being frozen an' all,
which makes it even slicker.
Put snow on a mountainside and
it looks magical from a distance.
But try slogging through heaps of it
when it's three feet deep or more.

And when tramping down a hill
it doesn't take much melting snow
before your feet start a'sliding
as the white stuff shifts
like a rug's been pulled from underneath
and next thing you know you are tumbling
down a slope out of control, a danger to yourself
and menace to everyone in your way.

That's the way I felt a few years ago when I was reluctantly persuaded to put on a pair of skis at a local ski resort. I lasted maybe 10 minutes on the bunny slope, terrified that I was either going to injury myself or crash into one of dozens of small children gleefully flying past me. The moment  I stopped shuffling I suddenly recognized that I was a menace at any speed. So I unbuckled my skis, turned them into the hire station, and for the rest of the day sat in a warmish cafe chugging hot chocolate watching more agile folk slide down the mountain.

 

I have a hunch that the artist of this cartoon image of three skiers schloosing over a snow-covered precipice knew how I felt. His name is Fritz Schönpflug (1873–1951), one of my favorite postcard illustrators that I've featured many times on this blog. Fritz was a native of Wien (Vienna), Austria where during the last decades of the Hapsburg Empire he painted hundreds of mischievous pictures like this one that lampooned Viennese society. Evidently he knew something about this new craze for recreational skiing in the Alps.

 

This postcard was sent to Dr. Hans Lentel of Wien on 29 December 1911, which explains the card's printed caption: Glückliches NeuJahr ~ Happy New Year.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Fritz also took notice that for a young lady on the ski slopes there were more dangers than just a tumble on slippery snow. This poor woman has crossed skis with a rather boorish fellow and may have to use her pole to extricate herself from his mitts.

 

This card was sent on 22 January 1911 from Jena, Germany to someone in Berlin. Jena is a large city in Thuringia, about 50 miles southwest of Leipzig, situated between the Harz mountains in the north, the Thuringian Forest in the southwest, and the Ore Mountains in the southeast. The sender of this postcard kept their pen, and pencil too, at an exceptionally fine point. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Before the invention of four-wheel drive vehicles, people traversed snow covered roads using genuine four-footed steeds to get around in wintertime. Here a sleigh drawn by two horses has had a mishap, no doubt caused by operator error from the looks of the horses, resulting in a spill of the driver and his passengers into the snow. 

This card was never posted but it shares the same series number B. K. W. I. 560 with the previous postcards, all published by Brüder Kohn Wien whose business was established in 1898 by Salomon Kohn (1873–1944†). Schönpflug's signature includes the number 909 which stands for 1909, the year when he created this set of watercolor paintings.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

This next postcard shows how very popular skiing had become in the first decade of the 20th century. Here we see hundreds of energetic people marching up a snowy slope as an old man heading downhill looks mystified at such an exuberant crowd. I believe he is a postman as he carries a large sack on his back as well as his own skis, which for him are used for work, not recreation.

This postcard was sent on 23 December 1910 from Germany, where Schönpflug was also popular. Many of his colorful pictures appealed to tourists visiting the mountain resorts of Austria, Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and France, too.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

My last skiing postcard is a good example of how an artist can rework material by just changing the perspective. Schönpflug's talent for depicting movement sometimes puts the viewer in an unusual position. Here a quartet of skiers, just like the group of skiers in the first picture, are about to fly off a hidden cliff face. But here the viewer is floating in the air slightly above and ahead of the skiers, whereas in the other picture the viewer is below the overhang. Which is more thrilling?

Schönpflug's signature has 904 for 1904 which makes this the earlier image of the two pictures. However it was sent long after the end of WWI when Austria dismissed its Hapsburg Empire monarch, and just after the end of WWII when it got rid of a more malevolent dictator, as the Republik Osterreich 8g stamp is from a landscape series printed in 1946. There is no postmark and the writer's date on the message uses only two digits for the year: 20.12.46 for 20 December 1946. It's an example of how Schönpflug's witty artwork remained relevant and appealing even after the fall of two empires.

 

 

 

 

 I finish with some short newsreels of skiing in Austria
from the British Pathé archives.
This one is from 1934 entitled Ski Experts Of Tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

This next one has the title
Austrian Winter Sports (1936).
There is a horse drawn sleigh, too.

 

It's easy to see where Fritz Schönpflug got his inspiration,
probably while sitting in the ski chalet's cafe sipping hot chocolate.

 

This last video is from 1946
taken on the slopes of the Schneefernerkopf
at Zugspitzplatt, Germany.
It's titled:
First Ski Races Of Season (1946)

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where once you reach the top
everything else is all downhill.