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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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.
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| Coudersport, PA Potter Enterprise 18 September 1947 |
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.
where it's all done with smoke and mirrors.
4 comments:
Thanks for this insight in rural community Roulette. Wonder where the village name came from.
The strongest organizations survive by reorganizing themselves as many times as it takes to keep going. The group I sing with - the Pine Cone Singers - began in 1979 as a handful of people sitting around a living room reading plays. Someone decided they should form a singing group. I joined them in 1981 when they had 12 singers. Over the years the number in the group has waxed & waned. We were over 40 singers before COVID struck. Two years later when we came back together again to sing in masks, there were 20 of us. Last Tuesday during rehearsal for our upcoming holiday concert in December, I counted 35 of us. I am the only original member in the group. We've had people leave and new people come in again & again. Over the years we've had 8 different directors. But the group continues, strong and determined as ever which says something about the character of all those involved as it must have been for the members of the Roulette Cornet Band. :)
I've had at least one ancestor who owned a tannery in Massachusetts. It shows on a map of the early town, near the harbor. But it wasn't anywhere as big as this one in Roulette. Speaking of names, it sounds a bit French to me.
Fascinating post. I was also curious about why the band was posed in that rocky location. My Civil War Union Army ancestor was from a family of tanners who also worked part of the time in Liberty Township, PA (east of Roulette near the NYS border). It's sad now much deforestation took place to feed the tanning industry without the ecological awareness of the damage this did. Now we are playing catch up for these environmental oversights. Also, re: your ephemera: have you considered digitizing some of it? Or possibly donating it to a local historical society/library? A shame to have it lost to time when one's family isn't that interested (a quandary I also face).
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