The Seventh Regiment Band

 

It's not just their tunics with braided trim,
or their bright white trousers and baldric belts
that draws our attention to this band.  

The sepia tone can't reveal
the full gleam of their brass buttons
and swallowtail epaulettes,
but we can see the shine of their brass instruments.

What we can see are the faces of bandsmen
showing the proud professionalism
of a military band.

Today I present a postcard photo 
of a band that was once
one of America's premier military bands,

The Seventh Regiment Band of New York City.

The photo shows a large ensemble of 59 men all dressed in the same fancy gray uniform with white trousers. They all wear the soft Kepi or forage cap that was the standard service hat of the United States Army during the Civil War. There are lots of cornets, trombones, french horns, euphoniums, tubas, clarinets, drums, and maybe a piccolo too. Behind them are several large canvas tents and a wooded hillside. In the top right corner someone has written:

State Camp
Peekskill, N. Y.
6 — 16th 1905

There is no other message since this postcard was intended to have only the address written on the back. It was sent from Peekskill, New York that very day and arrived at the home of Miss M. Chapman of 190 Vernon Ave., Brooklyn, New York that same afternoon.  

The band is not identified but I could guess that they were a band engaged for a national guard training camp. I've written stories about such bands before in Tenting on the Old Camp Ground and The Band at the Old Campground, but those bands did not wear uniforms like these fellows. In the time before World War One a typical state national guard unit would hire a professional band for a week or two each summer to provide march music and entertainment for the officers and guardsmen doing their annual training encampment. Guard bandsmen were civilian musicians for the rest of the year and only wore a quasi army uniform for a couple of weeks. 

The band in Peekskill however wore tailored uniforms of the highest grade. And they counted over twice the number of bandsmen found in a standard state guard band. Who were they? The answers were easy to find in New York newspapers from June 1905.

New York Daily Tribune
4 June 1905
[click image to enlarge]

The location for the camp was at Peekskill, New York, a small city on the Hudson river about 50 miles north of New York City. It was here in 1882 that the New York State Camp of Military Instruction was established on a farm situated on a bluff that overlooked the Hudson River. In a few years it would be renamed to Camp Smith in honor of Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York. But in 1905 it was just called the State Camp and this was the 24th summer for the annual training of New York's National Guard units. 

For the first week of June 1905 the Tenth Regiment was resident. It was a new regiment formed in May of that year. Newspapers around the state published long lists of its officers' names and their positions. The Gartland Band of Albany was engaged to provide music for the 10th's parades and camp entertainment.  

Each regiment brought their own tents and equipment but this summer's training had a few innovations. The soldier's uniforms were now made from an olive drab fabric which previously had been in different colors for each regiment. The camp also had a new telephone system, which can be seen in the photo as a line of white poles in the photo. The Y. M. C. A. also had a new restaurant which reportedly had better food than the camp mess. Unfortunately the men endured a wet week with rain on six days out of seven.

During the week signalman practiced their semaphore flag waving, engineers built bridges to ford streams, and riflemen tried to improve their marksmanship at the rifle ranges. The men were issued new Norwegian Krag rifles, considered superior to the old heavy Springfields. However the Krag's lighter barrel was easily bent if dropped which ruined its accuracy. Even the weight of a bayonet was said to eventually put it out of true. 

On Sunday 11 June the Tenth regiment departed and the Seventh Regiment arrived. They wore the new olive drab army uniforms, but had brought along their gray full dress uniforms for ceremonial parades. This regiment did not travel light and also brought along their celebrated Seventh Regiment Band.  If they were going to march in camp, they would march with style.

Seventh Regiment Armory, 
66th and 67th Streets,
Park and Lexington Avenues, New York City
Source: Wikimedia

The Seventh Regiment of the New York Militia was one of the oldest infantry regiments in New York. It was originally formed in 1806 as a city militia to defend New York City from a British blockade of the port. Over the next few decades the militia was called out to quell riots and protect private property during disturbances in the city. In 1847 it became the 7th Regiment of Infantry in the New York National Guard. During the Civil War the 7th served in the United States Army for several short duties of 30 to 90 days at a time, mainly guarding government positions around Washington, Baltimore, and New York. The unit became known as the "Silk Stocking" regiment or the "Blue-Bloods" because many of its soldiers came from families in New York City's social elite.

Following the war the 7th remained in the State Guard and in 1880 moved its headquarters into a privately funded building on Park Avenue and 67th Street. The Seventh Regiment Armory, now known as the the Park Avenue Armory, housed the administration for the regiment and each of its companies, as well as storage for equipment, rifles, and other arms. The armory's drill hall was under an immense vaulted ceiling supported without columns and measured 200 by 300 feet (61 by 91 m). There was even a 300-foot rifle range in its basement.    

The Seventh Regiment Band was organized in 1852 using German musicians from the city's orchestras and theaters. At the beginning of the Civil War, under the leadership of Claudio S. Grafulla (1812–1880), the band expanded from just brass instruments to including more woodwinds. Grafulla was born on the Spanish island of Menorca and immigrated to the United States in 1828 where he first found work playing the horn in one of New York City's many brass bands. He was also a talented composer and arranger whose popular marches helped establish a new American style band music.   

The band had its own practice room in the armory which is a short distance from Central Park. During the summer months the Seventh Regiment Band regularly performed concerts in the park. Programs were heavy on arrangements of German symphonic and Italian operatic repertoire. The band also played at events in Madison Square Garden and led parades for all sorts of civic and political events in New York.

In November 1899 George Llewellyn Humphrey was appointed as bandmaster of the Seventh Regiment Band to replace Ernest Neyer who had died earlier in August. Humphrey was selected from 150 applicants. He had previously led bands in Revenna and Akron, Ohio and was then musical director at the Herald Square Theatre. Like many of the musicians in New York he worked with both orchestras and bands following the city's entertainment seasons.

Philadelphia Inquirer
26 October 1900

In late October 1900, New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt returned to New York after several grueling weeks spent on the campaign trail. He was the new Republican candidate for vice president, on the ticket with President William McKinley who was seeking a second term. Roosevelt had only been New York's governor since January 1899 but in less than two years had earned a reputation as a reformer and opponent of New York's machine politics.

The Republican County Committee of New York planned a huge reception for Governor Roosevelt at Madison Square Garden. Part of the entertainment would be the assembled turnout of New Yorkers singing the Star-Spangled Banner with "500 trained singers, fifty military bands, and a chorus of 30,000 persons, directed by George L. Humphrey, bandmaster of the Seventh Regiment Band."    

In order to conduct this gigantic choir and band, Bandmaster Humphrey came up with the idea to use the powerful searchlight on the Garden's tower like a giant baton beating the time for the thousands of singers and musicians. The Boston Herald reported the next day that:

    The programme announced that the light would appear at 8:15 o’clock to lead the Roosevelt crowds about the square in the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner," but the singers were ready and waiting long before that signal.

    Promptly to the minute the searchlight flashed out its signal.  It was waved over the crowd and directed upon the various bands.  There was a hush in the assembly as every one strained his ears to catch the first blare of the horns.  Then came the strident note of a bugle, taking up the opening note of the anthem.  This was followed by the full crash of a dozen bands in and around the square, and the thunder of thousands of voices, whose volume rose even above the noise of the instruments.

    When the crowd reached the lines,

        And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,”

        Gave proof to the night that our flag was still there.

the bombs appropriately burst far above the heads of the singers, revealing red, white and blue stars, and showing the banner of the republic, “still high advanced.”  A mighty cheer arose, as the thousands raised in their singing to hail the colors of the flag.

    The light was waved up and down, in short, though precisely regulated, strokes. It was difficult to follow at first, but the singers soon got accustomed to it, and when Mr. Humphrey directed the singing of “America,” the crowd followed with ease and with tremendous effect.  

This was just one example of a monster concert in the golden age of bands. But from our perspective 126 years later, it was also a hint of the many spectacles to come in the new century. One can only imagine the excitement Teddy Roosevelt felt as he listened to the music and saw the adulation of the crowd. Five years later Bandmaster Humphrey and the bandsmen of the Seventh Regiment Band surely remembered that event with great pride as they traded stories over a campfire at Peekskill.

In August of 1905 the Seventh Regiment Band furnished the music for the thirty-ninth annual commencement of the New York College of Dentistry. Three weeks later the band led a parade of firemen in Larchmont, New York. In September they accompanied a male chorus of 400 voices from the United German Singing Societies at a concert in Central Park. And in November the Seventh Regiment Band "of 100 pieces" provided music for a mass meeting of lawyers at Carnegie Hall.

Bandmaster George L. Humphrey continued leading the Seventh Regiment Band until poor health forced his retirement in 1916. He moved to Washington, Pennsylvania where he died of tuberculosis on 28 December 1918. He was 64. 

I think the bandsman standing second left in the postcard photo is Bandmaster George L. Humphrey. He holds no instrument, the horn to his left belongs to the next man. He looks to be around age 51 which was Humphrey's age that summer in 1905. He looks like someone who could wield a searchlight for 4/4 time if he had to.  

Footnote

Despite a very thorough search of the infinite internet archives I have been unable to find any other photos of the Seventh Regiment Band. This was the band that once led every important parade in New York City for decades. It's bandmasters were highly regarded musicians who composed marches in the same way that John Philip Sousa did with the U. S. Marine Band and his famous Sousa Marine Band. So this little postcard may be the only photo of this premier ensemble which once made a significant contribution to American band music.

Here is the 7th Regiment March

composed by Ernest Neyer (1847–1899)

who was briefly the bandmaster of the 7th Regiment Band
from 1898 to his death on 31 August 1899.
He was succeeded by George L. Humphrey
who was the bandmaster in my postcard.

The 7th Regiment Band led by Lieut. Francis W. Sutherland
plays on this recording which was made in 1923
for the Vocalion label of the Aeolian Company. 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where camping tents are 20% off all weekend.