The Ladies' Band of Foxhome, Minnesota

 

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. 

Foxhome, Minnestota
Source: Google Earth

Foxhome, Minnestota
Source: Google Earth

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where every pretty face has a story to tell.