Manchester’s Zo Elliott served stateside in World War I in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Although Zo didn’t fight in the war, the song he had composed with college friend Stoddard King, “There’s a Long, Long Trail,” made a bigger contribution to the Allied cause than he could have made as a soldier.

Alonzo Elliott, Jr. was born in Manchester in 1891 into a prosperous family. His ambitious father Alonzo Elliott, Sr., had made a living as a railroad ticket agent and telegraph operator for over two decades and then made a fortune through businesses dealings in various industries. 

AFTER THE TALENTED young pianist Marian Nevins married her teacher, Edward MacDowell, in 1884, she decided to devote her life to fostering her husband’s musical career rather than pursuing one of her own. Edward found success as a concert pianist and educator, and at the time of his death in…

AT ITS performance of Jan. 24, 1908, the Philharmonic Society of New York City changed its program at the last minute to include the funeral march from Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony. This was performed in memory of the beloved composer Edward MacDowell, who had died the day before at the age…

IN 1884 THE 24-year-old, up-and-coming classical music composer, concert pianist, and piano teacher Edward MacDowell married 27-year-old Marian Griswold Nevins in a ceremony in Waterford, Conn. They had gotten to know each other in Frankfurt, Germany, where Edward had been Marian’s piano tea…

THE MacDOWELL COLONY in Peterborough is one of the most important cultural institutions in the United States. Its mission is “to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which they can produce enduring works of the imagination. The s…

In August 1916 the celebrated composer and concert pianist Amy Beach moved from San Francisco to her native New Hampshire. The 48-year-old had recently purchased a house in San Francisco near the residence of her two closest relatives, her 74-year-old aunt Emma Francis Marcy Clement, known a…

AMY MARCY CHENEY, a musical prodigy originally from Henniker, debuted as a professional pianist in Boston in 1883, when she was 16 years old. After a busy two-year concert schedule, she married a prominent Boston surgeon who was 24 years her senior, Dr. H.H.A. (Henry Harris Aubrey) Beach. Dr…

AFTER SPENDING the first four years of her life in Henniker, the musical prodigy Amy Marcy Cheney was blessed with ample opportunities to develop her latent skills after she and her parents moved to Chelsea, Mass., in 1871, then to Boston in 1875. Here, guided by her mother Clara, a pianist …

ONE OF THE MOST important figures in the world of classical music in America in the latter part of the 19th century, and well into the 20th century, was Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (1867-1944). Her ties to New Hampshire ran deep. She was born in Henniker and spent her early childhood there, and s…

The Post Band, the U.S. Army brigade band stationed at the headquarters of the Department of the South at Hilton Head on South Carolina’s Port Royal Sound, was mustered out on July 4, 1865, after two years of service. The band had been organized and led by Gustavus W. Ingalls of Concord, N.H…

From 1863 to 1865 the large and busy United States Army post at Hilton Head, S.C., was well-served by an excellent military brass band. The Post Band, as it was called, was led by seasoned bandmaster Gustavus W. Ingalls of Concord, N.H. The majority of his musicians were from New Hampshire a…

The late summer and early fall of 1862 saw the disbanding of most of the regimental bands in the U.S. Army. These had been established in 1861 at the start of the Civil War, but the government would now only pay for brigade-level bands. This was done as a cost-saving measure, as a brigade ge…

The Third Regiment of the New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry was organized in Concord in August 1861. By early November the unit was part of a major expeditionary force stationed at Port Royal Sound in South Carolina. The Union’s objective was to take Charleston, S.C., a seaport city vital to …

On Nov. 7, 1861, Union forces took control of South Carolina’s Port Royal Sound. Two days later the Third N.H. Regiment, part of a large U.S. expeditionary force, landed on Hilton Head Island where it made camp in an abandoned cotton field.

The newly formed Third Regiment of the New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry, comprised of more than 1,000 men, left Concord on the morning of Sept. 3, 1861 to great fanfare. Their commander was Colonel Enoch Q. Fellows of Sandwich, New Hampshire. He had studied at West Point and had served in th…

During August 1861 an open stretch of lowland along the east bank of the Merrimack River at Concord, known as the “Intervale,” served as a makeshift military camp. The site was dubbed “Camp Berry” in honor of the state’s new governor, Nathaniel S. Berry. Here recruits for the Third Regiment …

IN 1845, THE MILL village of Fisherville on the Contoocook River in central New Hampshire (now the Penacook section of Concord) got its first town band — the Fisherville Brass Band. During its five-year existence, this well-regarded band provided entertainment for events in Fisherville and i…

ONE OF THE MORE remarkable stories coming out of the brass band era of 19th century America originated in the village of Fisherville, N.H. The story begins with the founding and short life of the Fisherville Brass Band.

On Sept. 27, 1861, the newly-organized Fourth N.H. Regiment of the Union Army marched to the railroad station in Manchester, bound for war. The 1,000-man unit had its own brass band, which was essentially the reorganized Manchester Cornet Band led by its leader, Walter Dignam, now a Second L…

In June 1861 Walter Dignam’s Manchester Cornet Band accompanied the newly-organized Second Regiment of the New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry (Second N.H. Regiment) to war, arriving in Washington, D.C., on June 23. Less than four weeks later, on July 21, 1861, the regiment took part in the Fir…

Walter Dignam, an English-born immigrant of Irish heritage, moved to Manchester, New Hampshire in 1851. In 1852 he transitioned from working in the textile mills to a career in music when he was hired as the organist and choir director of Saint Anne Roman Catholic Church in Manchester. He al…

Edwin Thomas “E.T.” Baldwin (1832-1904) made his mark in Manchester, New Hampshire, as a music teacher, choral director, church organist, and composer. He also founded Baldwin’s Cornet Band, which existed for only a few months before it was transformed, in May 1861, into the military band su…

In June 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War most of the members of Baldwin’s Cornet Band had already arrived in Washington, DC, and were encamped outside the city when their leader, Edwin Thomas “E.T.” Baldwin joined them. He had enlisted in Washington on June 4, 1861, nine days after his…

BORN IN 1832, Edwin Thomas “E.T.” Baldwin grew up in Manchester and Nashua. A natural musical talent, he thrived on the formal education he received from several good music instructors, and also enjoyed playing brass instruments and the snare drum in the Nashua Band. He started his professio…

A short biography of prominent local citizen E.T. Baldwin in the 1891 publication “Leading Business Men of Manchester” reads, in part, “Teaching music has been with him a labor of love, and during all these years he has been closely identified with the progress of music in Manchester, Nashua…

New Hampshire's contribution to the music of the Civil War era extends beyond the rousing abolitionist tunes of Milford’s Hutchinson Family Singers, and Walter Kittredge’s sorrowful sweet song “Tenting on the Old Camp Ground,” which he composed at his farmhouse in Merrimack. During the 19th …

In 1855 21-year-old Walter Kittredge — singer, instrumentalist, songwriter and elocutionist — left his family’s farm in the Reeds Ferry section of Merrimack, New Hampshire, embarking on an adventure that would define his life. After this initial solo concert tour of New England towns, he beg…

THE HUTCHINSON FAMILY SINGERS entertained countless audiences over four decades of touring that spanned the 1840s into the 1880s. These talented siblings, who grew up on a farm in Milford, delighted and enlightened the public with a wide variety of music, including anti-slavery songs and oth…

In the early 1840s the Hutchinson Family Singers, a superb quartet with roots in Milford, performed to sold-out theaters from New England to Washington, D.C. The three brothers — Judson, John and Asa — and sister Abby (sometimes joined by brother Jesse, Jr.), also sang emancipation songs at …

The Hutchinson Family Singers of Milford began as a trio that toured southern and central New Hampshire in the fall of 1841. In 1842 12-year-old Abby Hutchinson joined her older brothers Judson, John and Asa and the quartet went on the road in New England — with brother Jesse, Jr. as manager…

The first tentative concert given by 12 members of the Hutchinson family in their hometown of Milford in November 1840 was the beginning of an extraordinary decades-long chronicle. In February 1841 four young adult sons of Milford’s Jesse and Mary (Leavitt) Hutchinson gave their own concert …

Milford produced one of the most popular and influential musical groups of the 19th century, the Hutchinson Family Singers. Members of this talented family began performing publicly in 1840 to audiences hungry for homegrown musical expressions. The various Hutchinson Family troupes would be …

The Great War — or the World War, as it was known until World War II—began in 1914 with Germany and Austria-Hungary fighting against the Allied countries that included Great Britain, France and Russia. The United States entered the conflict by declaring war on Germany on April 6, 1917. The w…

At 7:26 a.m. on the morning of Saturday, Aug. 6, 1921, a train traveling from Hoboken, N.J., arrived at Union Station on Granite Street in east Manchester. Two heavy steel caskets were unloaded from the cars, each bearing the remains of a young soldier who had died in battle in France during…

THE FEDERAL WRITERS’ PROJECT (FWP) left behind a variety of remarkable documents, mostly in manuscript form. Among its printed materials are two important books: “New Hampshire — A Guide to the Granite State,” published in 1938, and “Festal Days: Songs and Games of the Franco-Americans of Ne…

In New Hampshire, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal facilitated many noteworthy undertakings, both large and small. This complex network of federal programs provided work for thousands of New Hampshire citizens during the Great Depression of the 1930s and into the early months o…

THERE WERE MANY challenges to be faced in New Hampshire during the Great Depression. But all was not doom and gloom. For one thing, this era proved to be a boon for the visual arts in the state, due in large part to the availability of funding and professional guidance provided through certa…

The narratives recording the lives of ordinary New Hampshire people that were compiled through the federal Folklore Project during the Great Depression are treasures worth discovering.

From 1935 to 1943, the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) produced printed materials for the benefit of the public.

During the Great Depression, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) assisted municipalities throughout New Hampshire by providing paid work for many unemployed persons. The WPA supplied labor for everything from sidewalk repair to the construction of bridges and public buildings.