The R. S. C. Orchestra of Rogersville, Tennessee

 

This is Cecile Justa Bidez
with her father Dr. Leon Aloys Bidez.
Cecile, age 17, played cello
(her bow is in motion)
and Dr. Bidez, age 50, played violin.
Both were college music teachers.

This is Eva Elsa Bidez
Dr. Bidez's eldest daughter.
She plays violin and
in this photo is age 24.
She was also a music teacher.

This is Hope Amy Bidez
Dr. Bidez's youngest daughter.
She is 15 years old
and plays cornet.

Between them are the rest of their college orchestra,
1st Row (L — R) 

        Hattie McArthur,
                                                   Albert Price,
                                                                                        Miss L. Franklin,    
                                                                                                                                        Georgia Smith

 

2nd Row

        Jennie Mather,

                                        Mary Logan Caldwell,
                                                                            Helen Brown,
                                                                                                        Nell Divine,
                                                                                                                                 Mary Haverly

3rd Row

                Miss Loonet,
                                                "Bob" Caldwell,   alias, Auntie Dinah's darlint'.

                                                                                                Lulu Hale

                                                                                                                                Lida Merriman

4th Row

            Maude Haltenbeck

                                                                    Ruth Powell

                                                                                                            Will Graybill

They were all members
of the Rogersville Synodical College. 
And sometime around 1898 they posed outside
at the entrance of one of their college buildings.

This large format photograph shows a group of 19 musicians, all young women except for two young men, with their music director, Dr. Bidez. There are five violinists including Dr. Bidez; three mandolinists; three guitarists; four pianists, each holding a symbolic roll of music; two percussionists on snare drum and tambourine; a cellist; and one cornetist.  

I can confidently provide all their names because they were all neatly identified on the back of the photo.  

However figuring out the location was a challenge
because there is no imprint of a photographer
and the ensemble's name was just an abbreviation
written above the photo on the card mount.

R. S. C.  Orchestra

The name of the director was written as just "Dr. Bidez" but the surname proved to be unusual enough to be distinctive in archive searches, as did the names of his three daughters: Eva, Cecile, and Hope Bidez. I found all of them, except for Hope, in the 1900 U. S. Census for Rogersville, Tennessee. Listed on a single census page, with 50 lines for each individual, is the entire school population for that year—principals, teachers, and students for the Rogersville Synodical College.  

Leo A. Bidez, "Teacher of Music", was 52, born in August 1847 in Belgium to Belgian parents. He immigrated to the United States in 1876. His daughter Eve E. Bidez, also a "Teacher of Music", age 26, was born in April 1874 in Belgium. She immigrated a year later in 1877. Her younger sister Cecile J. Bidez, age 19, was born in March 1874 in North Carolina. Her occupation was also "Teacher of Music". Hope Bidez was not listed but I discovered her life facts later.

There were 30 students, all young women ranging from ages 13 to 22, averaging to 17½ years. Most were from Tennessee or Kentucky, with a few from Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, and even one young lady from Nebraska. 

Besides the three Bidez music teachers, there were two teachers of Latin, and one each for Art, Elocution, and Primary, all single women. There were two principals, Nannie McVeigh, the "Lady Principal" and William M. Graybill, "Head principal". Only Graybill and Dr. Bidez were married but it seems Mrs. Bidez was not then a resident. Principal Graybill's youngest son, William M, Graybill, Jr., who is the guitarist seated right on the bottom row, is age 18 in the census. But I think in this photo he looks younger, more like age 16, so that is how I calculated the ages of the Bidez family members.     

Rogersville is located in the northeast corner of Tennessee in the rugged ridge and valley region west of the Appalachian Mountains. It's actually just 90 miles northwest of my home in Asheville, North Carolina. Rogersville has always been a small town despite being the county seat of Hawkins County, and it current population in 2020 is 4,671 residents. In 1900 it was much smaller with only 1,386 residents. But that was still large enough to have a school of higher learning.  

According to a 1893 report in Higher Education in Tennessee by Lucius Salisbury Merriam, Construction of the school began in 1849 after the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) purchased a 66 acre parcel in Rogersville. In September of the following year it opened with 116 pupils as the Odd Fellows Female Seminary, which seems a strange oxymoron as the Odd Fellows were a non-sectarian and non-political fraternal men's society. In any case, the society was soon unable to afford the expense of operating a school and the property was sold to a joint stock company made up of members of Rogersville's Presbyterian churches. 

The school prospered before the Civil War but had difficulties afterward. In around 1880 it came under direction of the Presbyterian Synod of Nashville, Tennessee, which advanced its mission to become a female college in 1892. For the 1890-91 school year the college claimed 170 students and 13 teachers. It seems likely that the 1900 census record listed only those students living on campus and there were many more who lived in the town of Rogersville. 

In 1897 the Rogersville Synodical College engaged Dr. Brez and his two eldest daughters to teach music there. That summer Dr. Brez's name was included in newspaper advertisements for the college.

Chattanooga Daily Times
30 July 1897

    ROGERSVILLE SYNODICAL COLLEGE — The strong faculty, increased advantages, healthful location, beautiful college home and moderate rates continue to attract a large attendance of excellent young ladies to this old and honored institution.  The patrons of the school are pleased with the mental, social and moral culture of their daughters, and realize that they have at Rogersville the best advantages and kindest attention at very low rates.  Conservatory course of music with four teachers.  Director,  L. A. Bidez, LL. D., graduate of University of Brussels and Royal Conservatory, Germany.  Forty-eighth session begins Sept. 8, 1897.  For catalogue, address. 

                                                                                W. M. GRAYBILL, President, Rogersville, Tenn. 

I found Dr. Bidez in a family tree on Ancestry.com. His full name was Leon Aloys Henri Bidez which allowed for more name and initial combinations in search through newspaper reports on him. After his arrival in America he used Aloys Bidez fro several years. Then in the 1890s it was just L. A. Bidez, sometimes with the honorific Dr. or Prof.   

  

Compared to many music teachers of this era, Dr. Bidez earned an advanced  degree and studied with notable teachers in Belgium. According to a 1934 newspaper report on the Bidez family, Leon's father was fortunate to win a lottery exempting him from military service. Instead he got an education, entered the Belgian civil service, and eventually earned a promotion to a high office in the Belgian treasury. For this he was given a splendid jeweled sword from King Leopold II (which was the reason for this report.)   

When Leon was a young man he also won the same lottery exemption and used his freedom to study law and music. Evidently his musical talent won his heart as he became proficient on piano, organ, violin, and clarinet. In 1876 he came to America to take a position in one of New York's orchestra. Unfortunately an Atlantic storm lengthened his voyage and when he arrived the position had been filled. 

Charlotte, NC Observer
12 July 1878

After staying in New York for a short time, he arranged for his wife and two children to join him and moved to the Cleveland, Ohio area. In 1878 he was engaged as a music teacher by the Charlotte Institute for Young Ladies in North Carolina. Advertisements for the school promoted him as "a distinguished teacher of Vocal and Instrumental music, of Harmony, Through-base (sic) and Orchestration. and himself an author of a Text-book on Piano-Forte teaching." 

By 1881 the school had renamed itself as the Charlotte Female Institute and described its music department under Dr. Bidez as "unrivalled in the South for the thoroughness and high grades in culture."  The institute also took pride in its several "instructresses" of modern languages, mathematics and natural sciences, history, literature, and art. Today the institute is known as Queens University of Charlotte.

Savannah, GA Morning News
3 September 1887

Some time around 1885 Dr. Bidez and family moved to Rome, Georgia where he became a music teacher at a women's college there. This school was founded in 1873 as the Cherokee Baptist Female College by the pastor of Rome's Baptist Church. A few years later it became the Shorter Female College to acknowledge the financial contributions of Alfred and Martha Shorter. In the 1880s it adjusted its name to Shorter College, possibly to placate parents who considered their daughter's height to be average or even tall. This private Baptist school is now know as Shorter University. 

The Bidez family lived in Rome for only a few years when they left in 1889 for Lexington, Kentucky where Dr. Bidez was engaged as a music teacher at Hamilton College, another school for young women. It was established by a banker, James M. Hocker, in 1869 as the Hocker Female College. In 1878, like Shorter College, it changed its name to Hamilton College in honor of a generous benefactor. It was at this point Leon Aloys Bidez began using the initials Dr. L. A. Bidez in reports of his conducting concerts, playing church organ, and giving violin recitals with his daughters. This school closed in 1932, during the Great Depression, when the number of students declined.

Lexington, KY Herald Leader
23 July 1891

This job did not last very long at all and by the summer of 1891 the Bidez family uprooted themselves to be replanted in the great prairieland of Emporia, Kansas. A Lexington newspaper notice showed that they auctioned off a lot of fine household items before the move. In Emporia, Prof. L. A. Bidez taught music at the State Normal School. Newspaper reports cited his educational background and the talent of his two daughters on violin, mandolin, and piano. A Normal School was a common type of college for training teachers, primarily for women but also men. Evidently Bidez schedule was relatively light as he found time in 1892 to travel back to Brussels, Belgium to visit his parents. He sent a letter to the Emporia newspaper describing city life in Belgium in contrast to American cities. He considered America better.    

In the summer of 1897 Bidez returned to the east where he and his daughter's Eva and Cecile were hired by the Rogersville Synodical College. Later that fall he received the sad news of his father's death. He seems to have stayed in Rogersville through the winter as he conducted or performed several concerts. But I suspect he returned to Belgium sometime in the next year or two as his name came up several times in Tennessee newspapers until disappearing in 1900. The school must have been suffering financial difficulties as it canceled its 1903-04 school year. In 1916 the Synodical College closed though the school continued to provide grammar and high school classes. Over the next decade the college buildings were demolished and the property was bought by the city of Rogersville which turned it into a public school for preK to 8th grade. In 2023 it celebrated its 100th anniversary.   

In 1901 Dr. Bidez was in Maryland playing piano at the commencement exercises at Mount Saint Mary's College and Seminary, a Catholic college for men and now a co-ed university. Whether he was engaged as a music teacher there or at its companion school, Saint Joseph's Academy, a Catholic school for girls is unknown.

All I can tell from newspaper reports is that from 1902 the Bidez were now living in Emmitsburg, Maryland, just south of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where these two schools are considered the foundation for the Catholic parochial school system in the United States. One report on a June 1902 commencement at St. Joseph's Academy for Girls listed the names of Hope Bidez and Alix Bidez, the youngest sister, as playing violin and mandolin at the event. So perhaps this move was for advancing his daughter's education. As Emmitsburg is relatively close to Harrisburg, Washington, D. C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia this may have provided other cultural advantages for a musician like Dr. Bidez. 

However I suspect Dr. Bidez was developing health problems as sometime around 1905 he and his wife moved to Columbia, Tennessee, southwest of Nashville, to be close to one of his daughters who was now married. On 1 June 1909 Leon Aloys Henri Bidez died there after a lengthy illness. He was 61. He was survived by his wife, two sons, and four daughters. 

* * *

This story of Dr. Leon Aloys Bidez is not the one I expected to write about. After I properly identified him and his three daughters, placed them on the steps of a now forgotten school building in a tiny rural town, and figured out their narrow time frame of three years at the end of the 19th century, I might have ended it there. But I was intrigued by how a man from Belgium ended up in East Tennessee. He arrived in America in 1876 on the centennial year of our nation's founding. The Statue of Liberty would not grace New York's harbor for another decade. He clearly brought with him a special talent for music along with the skills to teach it. His background in what we now call classical music was not a sub-genre then. It was all the traditions of French, German, Italian operas, symphonies, and chamber music of Europe. He likely thought of it as the contemporary music of his time.

As a genuine professor, Dr. Bidez was in contrast to thousands of American musicians of the day who assumed that honorific, "Prof." just through their talent on an instrument, usually cornet, and their ambition to lead a band or orchestra. They had no educational credentials or degrees like Bidez. His knowledge of harmony, orchestration, and instrumental technique was the result of long study at a European conservatory, a type of music institution that was limited to only a few places in America.       

 

Bidez was also an example of a great cultural exchange in 19th century America when countless European musicians immigrated here to play in professional orchestras and bands. Perhaps he aspired to do exactly that, but circumstances in his life put him onto a different path as a music teacher. It helped that he had three talented daughters to inspire him.

When I began uncovering his career path I was surprised at the type of small academic institutions he found work. The development of small colleges in America, especially as railroad lines began linking town after town in the late 19th century was one of the important developments in the history of American public education. But we forget that in this era many schools of higher learning were restricted to men only. Yet Dr. Bidez found employment in schools for women, at a time when women were subject to many more civil restrictions and societal obstacles than they have in our 21st century. 

As I've outlined in this story, Dr. Bidez taught music at six different female institutions, possibly more. These schools promoted for young women a standard academic curriculum of Latin, elocution, literature, math, etc., but classes in music and art showcased a school's commitment to refined culture. I doubt that any mother and father expected to see their daughter become a successful concert pianist or opera singer. But they very likely believed such an arts education would provide their girl with better prospects in marriage.   

I came across the Rogersville Synodical College in an article found in a 1912 education journal entitled: The School Review, vol. 20, p. 458. Though the article was written over a decade after Dr. Bidez and his daughters taught there, the author was still describing the same college educational opportunities available to women in this era. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the article: 

STANDARDS OF SOUTHERN COLLEGES FOR WOMEN

by Elizabeth Avery Colton 

Meredith College, Raleigh, North Carolina 

    There are in the South one hundred and forty-two colleges for women distributed as follows: in Maryland, seven; in Virginia, thirteen; in West Virginia, Florida, and Oklahoma, one each; in North Carolina, eighteen; in South Carolina, ten; in Georgia and Alabama, nine each; in Mississippi and Texas, fourteen each; in Louisiana, five; in Arkansas, two; in Missouri, eleven; in Kentucky, fifteen; and in Tennessee, twelve. North Carolina appears ignominiously to head the list; but an equally close-range searchlight might prove several other states guilty of an equally absurd number of nominal colleges. For three institutions in Kentucky and an additional twelve in Tennessee failed to respond to requests for catalogues. In fact, I am not absolutely sure that the above numbers are complete for any state except North Carolina. But as hardly a fifth of the institutions enumerated are giving any standard college courses, it is safe to assume that no institution doing any college work has been omitted.

    Only four of all the colleges for women in the South have been recognized by the Association of Colleges of the Southern States; and only six others are included by the Specialist in Higher Education in either his third or his fourth class. The remaining hundred and thirty-one southern colleges for women have never been classified according to any national or sectional standard. I have, therefore, attempted to formulate a basis of classification which might indicate, however inadequately, some distinction between institutions which are merely inferior secondary schools and those which are really doing more or less college work. With this object in view, I have during the past year compiled statistics showing the specific admission requirements announced in the catalogues of southern colleges for women; and with these statistics as a basis I have grouped all these institutions under the following heads:

    1. Institutions belonging to the Association of Colleges of the Southern States.

    2. Institutions offering from three to four years above standard collegeentrance requirements, but not conforming to the regulations of the Association of Colleges of the Southern States.

    3. Institutions counting two or more years of preparatory work toward a baccalaureate degree.

    4. Institutions counting from three to four years of preparatory work toward a baccalaureate degree.

Using these rules the author goes into detail, assigning only four colleges to the first group; thirty-four in the second group; forty-nine in the third; and fifty-five in the fourth group. Rogersville Synodical College and Hamilton College in Lexington were placed in this last group as examples of so-called "colleges" which actually only offered a secondary level education and did not deserve to be called a college. The author's main critique was that most Southern colleges for women did not follow accepted collegiate curriculums and failed to engage enough fully credentialed faculty. They also accepted younger girls who had not finished high school. Essentially what her research showed was that most of these institutions were really only preparatory or "finishing" schools that failed to deliver proper degrees in higher education.    

This next excerpt from this review of Southern colleges for women caught my attention because it directly comments on the use of music in these schools. 

    The tendency on the part of the southern girl to specialize before she has acquired even a good high-school education causes one of the leading distinctions between eastern and southern colleges for women. Of the 1,030 students now at Vassar, for example, only 100 are taking lessons in piano, voice, organ, and violin, combined; at Greensboro Female College, on the other hand, there were last year out of a total registration of 215 exactly 151 studying music. This proportion of music students-one-tenth at Vassar and nearly three-fourths at Greensboro-is, I find, typical of women's colleges in the East and in the South; and perhaps I should add that even the few who study music in eastern colleges are working primarily for an academic degree. This is not true of the majority of music students in southern colleges. Eastern colleges do not try to compete with conservatories, and they no more think of advertising their music departments than their departments of mathematics. A department of music is, of course, indispensable in a woman's college; but if an institution wishes to be recognized as a college, it is safer for it not to try to be "the leading conservatory of music in the South!"

We have to wonder if Dr. Bidez thought he was making a difference for the young women he taught in these colleges. Did he envision a world where women gained the right to vote, found careers in law, business, science, and even music? Did he dream that his daughters' talents might earn them a life on the concert stage or a position teaching at a conservatory? I suspect that like every good teacher he hoped his lessons would motivate a young person to become the very best they could be.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where it's ladies day all weekend.