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 first thing we notice is the sharp contrast between their gleaming white dresses and caps and their sun-bronzed faces and shiny brass horns.
There are subtle hints of a few smiles but mostly their expressions are neutral, almost inscrutable. Yet they clearly shared a love of music making.
They were the
Foxhome Ladies Band.
Eleven young women are posed on the grass in front of a house. Their instruments make up a typical brass band with two cornets, a trumpet, a few alto/tenor horns, trombone, tuba, helicon and a bass drum. All the women, with the exception of the young drummer, wear matching white dresses with military style hats. To one side of the house is a tiny glimpse of the horizon of a flat landscape.
This photo postcard was never mailed but the back helpfully has the imprint of a photographer: Oxley—Carlson Studio of Fergus Falls, Minnesota. It didn't take but a few seconds to find something about the Ladies' Band of Foxhome, Minnesota in the newspaper archives of the Minneapolis Journal. The report neatly confirms that the date the photo was taken was around 26 July 1909.
Minneapolis Journal 26 July 1909
Foxhome Woman's (sic) Band Wins Its Way
Special to The Journal. Fergus Falls, Minn., July 26 — The village of Foxhome, fifteen miles west of this city, boasts of a musical organization that is fast becoming famous throughout this section. This organization is a ladies' band of eleven pieces, organized about a year ago. It has practiced industriously and has become a really able musical organization. The band is becoming so popular that the ladies of Breckenridge, ten miles further west, have followed the example of the Foxhome neighbors and formed a similar organization.
Foxhome, Minnesota is a very small farming community in west central Minnesota just beyond the state's lake region and at the eastern edge of the great prairie. In 1910 its population was 206 residents while in 2022 it is around 123. It's about 75 miles east of another small town whose band I wrote a story about in November 2023, Music in Rutland, North Dakota.
I was unable to find any more information on the Foxhome Ladies' Band and it's a shame that the Minneapolis Journal report did not include the band members' names. It's very likely that some of the women are sisters or cousins. Typically a small band like this would have been directed by a man, but it's also possible that the older woman seated 3rd from left with a cornet was the band's leader. Many ladies' bands like this were established by men who had a least one, or maybe more, talented daughter. Perhaps the report's seemingly erroneous headline may have been correct and a woman was the official bandleader.
Given the size of their village, inevitably a band like this would lose members to marriage, employment, or even college, so it's very likely that it only performed for a few years. In the age before radio this band was probably the only live music outside of a church service that the folks of Foxhome might ever hear.
The first subjects of early cameras were people. The novelty of a photograph portrait was irresistible. It was relatively quick and inexpensive, and though it wasn't in color like a painted picture, it still preserved a person's true likeness. Everyone want one, especially married couples who wanted a memento of their lives together.
Taking a photograph was a special occasion. It demanded the best clothes, and slickest hair style. Smiles were not really necessary but eye contact with the camera lens was important. And for this most personal of photos a couple might display symbols of their enduring love and marital pride.
Like a trumpet.
My first happy couple are pictured on a small ferrotype, aka. a tintype photograph. The original is fairly dark but through the magic of computer software I can adjust the contrast to add more light, so here is a comparison of before (left) and after (right). The photo shows a man and a woman seated, he is holding a trumpet and she has a book or letter in her lap. Behind them is a painted canvas backdrop of a landscape, though only a thin pointed treetop is visible. I think they are husband and wife, but judging their ages is difficult so I could be mistaken. They might be mother and son, or sister and younger brother for all I know. But I'm going with married couple because that seems the most likely reason in this era for taking such a photo.
Ferrotypes are made on a thin sheet of iron, not 'tin', coated with a dark lacquer or enamel which supports the photographic emulsion. Placed into a camera the light through the lens produces a direct positive image on the metal just like on a mirror. There is no negative to reproduce more photos, so the image is a unique one-of-a-kind image. [Though there were cameras with multiple lens that could take several ferrotypes simultaneously.] It was also called a melanotype and was first introduced in 1853 by Adolphe Alexandre Martin in Paris.
Using software I can flip the image to give a true real-life perspective. Looking at them in this view shows that the buttonhole edge of their garments are now in a traditional orientation: to the right on men and to the left on women. The trumpet is also now correct with valve keys set for right-handed playing. (More on the instrument later.)
This photo is a sixth plate size, roughly 2.75 x 3.25 inches, and has been carefully preserved in its original paper mat frame. On the back of the photo is an orange 2¢ United States Revenue stamp with the face of George Washington. This was a tax stamp first issued in August 1864 during the American Civil War. It followed similar revenue stamps established in 1862 that were duties collected on other proprietary items such as playing cards, patent medicines and luxuries, as well as various legal documents, stocks, transactions and other legal services. Portrait photos like this were understandably very popular during the war, and the small sales tax collected by photographers, usually only 2¢—4¢, became an important source of public funds for the federal government's treasury. The requirement for revenue stamps on photographs was repealed in August 1866.
My second happy couple are similarly seated in a photographer's studio but their photo is a carte de visite. or cdv. Like in the other photo, the man holds a trumpet, but here his wife only clasps her hands. The man has a chinstrap beard and a curious oiled top wave in his hair. His wife, like the woman in the ferrotype, has hair heavily oiled and pulled tight at the back. They look about the same age, roughly in their mid 30s or late 20s.
This photo is actually a duplicate of another cdv of the same couple that I have in my collection. Both prints are the same image but have different designs on the photo card's back.
It's a great example of how a cdv's albumen print process using a collodion negative could make multiple copies easily and cheaply. I acquired the first photo several years ago but it offered few clues for identification with only the photograph studio's name: Bundy & Williams of 314 & 326 Chapel St. in New Haven, Connecticut. The back of that cdv is pictured on the left in this composite image.
However the second one, pictured on right, I bought two years ago because it has two first class clues. On the bottom of the back is a green 3¢ U. S. Proprietary stamp, so it dates from 1864 to 1866. But more important was a name written on the top by the dealer: "Benjamin Lord + Wife".
[The tiny Latin words in the center illustration on the right card are "Qui Trans Sust", a short version of the Connecticut state motto "Qui transtulit sustinet" ~ "He Who Transplanted Still Sustains"]
This photo was trimmed to fit into a very large photo album which the dealer was breaking up to sell each individual photo. They helpfully wrote down the names as recorded in the album by its original owner. Many of the photos were taken by the same photographer, Bundy & Williams and clearly date from New Haven in the mid 1860s, during or shortly after the war.
I could not help but purchase some of them. Unfortunately all the clues in these photos connected their subjects to other family names and not to Benjamin Lord and his wife, who must have been only friends or neighbors. And most frustratingly, I've been unable to find Mr. & Mrs. Lord in any New Haven records. There were a few men named Benjamin Lord who lived in other parts of Connecticut and adjacent states but there are too many puzzle pieces missing to connect them to New Haven and the family names in the photo album. So this is another genealogy dead-end, so to speak. At least until I stumble upon more photos or better clues.
Advert for Bundy & Williams Photography Rooms 1863 New Haven, Connecticut city directory
The photographers were Joseph K. Bundy and Simon Williams. They both had received training under other photographers making ferrotypes and daguerreotypes. In 1863 they set up their own studio in New Haven joining a group of a dozen photographers who all worked at addresses on the 300 or 200 blocks of Chapel St. In their first advertisements in the city directory they promote CARTE DE VISITES! and also that they are able to "COPY PORTRAITS from OLD DAGUEREOTYPES, all sizes up to life, and colored in OIL, INK, OR PASTEL."
I'm intrigued by this offer to copy a daguerreotype because I feel there is something odd about Benjamin Lord's appearance. I think his haircut and chin beard resembles an earlier fashion seen in gentlemen pictured in older daguerreotype and ambrotype photos from the late 1840s and 1850s. Could this be one of those copies that Misters Bundy & Williams offered to take "particular pains" to make? It's only a hunch but there is another thing in the photo that doesn't fit with a musician from 1864-1866
Benjamin Lord's trumpet is an unusual type of early brass instrument design that was very uncommon in the United States. It has double piston valves that likely came from Wien, Austria.
In the mid-19th century brass instruments were evolving very fast. The industrial revolution inspired countless musical innovations with new metal working tools and better metal fabricating techniques. Many of these novel musical inventions came from improved valve designs that lengthened the instrument to give it more chromatic notes. Most of this development originated in Europe. German and Bohemian brass instruments makers favored rotary valves. Those in France, Belgium, and Britain preferred piston valves. But in Austria, especially in Wien~Vienna, the double piston was the popular style. It is still used on the horn played today in the Vienna Philharmonic.
The mechanics of the double piston involve spring-wound key levers and tightly fitted twin pistons which we can see in a closeup of Mr. Lord's instrument. It was a type of early valve trumpet first introduced in Austria in the 1840s but not typical of the rotary and single piston instruments played in American bands of the 1860s. So why would this relatively young man have this kind of trumpet? It seems very outdated and out of place. Could the reason be that this image is a copy of an older photograph? Who knows?
And to further complicate the question, in my first ferrotype photo, also dating from around 1864-66, that man is playing a Viennese double piston trumpet too!
His trumpet is larger with longer tubing so it plays in a lower natural pitch. It also has a peculiar coiled crook for the mouthpiece, called a pig's tail, which was a way to lengthen a brass instrument by a half tone. A brass instrument really only needs three valves and here we can see the arrangement of six doubled valves. It resembles an instrument made in 1835 by Joseph Riedel in Wien. Here is a photo of that instrument from the Wien Museum collection.
I know next to nothing about the couples in these photos. I could not find any records of their domestic life like where they lived or how many children they had. As to whether the husband was a professional trumpet player or an amateur musician, much less a band leader or music teacher, that too is unknown. But I think it is fair to say that these two couples shared a common love of music since they chose to include a musical instrument in their photo. And I bet the photographers got to hear those trumpets too. It was a special keepsake that they wanted for other people, most likely their grandchildren, to appreciate their faces and remember them by symbols of their interests and pastimes. Those future generations of their families may have forgotten them but at least I can honor their memory here.
As I have often mentioned before in other stories, brass players like to talk about plumbing. It's a topic I will explore later in more depth with other photos from my collection.
Since my subject for this post is partly about Viennese brass instruments
it seem appropriate to hear some music from my favorite brass ensemble,
who happen to be from Wien. Here is the Mnozil Brass performing their version of Rossini's Wilhelm (William) Tell Overture. None of their trumpets have double piston valves but some do have another novel design with rotary valves activated with piston style buttons.
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.
