Unidentified Musical Ephemera: A bit of Baltimore?

 

I had a great deal of fun, recently, winkling out the identity of an old playbill from Iowa, so when I saw this one, dated but no venue or familiar names, I thought 'well, have a go'!

So, 15 May 1855, where?

Somewhere in the Baltimore-Wilmington-Philadelphia area. But where?

Odd Fellow's Hall? They were all over the place. Marsh's Music Store? Stephen W Marsh had a musical shop 'opposite Court Square' in Springfield, Mass. Ah! There's one in Philadelphia ... John Marsh, music publisher .. New Masonic Hall ...

And Philadelphia turns up a pianist by the name of Edward William Magenis. Or Maginnis. 

And there he is, playing piano for a concert given by the same Sheppard girls at Wilmington a few weeks earlier! 

So who are these sisters?

Caroline M Sheppard, Georgie Sheppard and .. according to other announcements. Mrs M A Powell, late of Baltimore, who had been visible in Philadelphia concerts since 1851, alongside the chief purveyor of local concerts, Richard Turner, was a third sister.

I have found the family -- or part of it -- in the 1850 census of Baltimore. 

Mrs Powell is evidently already wed and gone.

I see Caroline teaching music and singing at Miss D T Kingbourne's Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies in 1853. And in 1855 ..

At some stage, they became 'late of Baltimore' and are taking lessons from the composer and singer Signor Natale Perelli (b Italy 24 December 1816; d Philadelphia 2 March 1867), sometime primo tenore of the Havana Opera Company and America's original Ernani. 

There is just one thing odd about this bill. Fifteen year-old Georgie (b 3 January 1840) was not 'Miss G'. She was 'Mrs G' and the mother of a baby daughter. She had married a John Woolman Sheppard -- a relative? -- 4 October 1854, and borne a daughter, Linda who, we are told, was born 22 February 1854. Yes, this family goes from curiosity to muddle.

The girls can't have been too bad. Concerting with Fred Crouch, and rubbing shoulders with Teresa Parodi.

Intially, Caroline seems to have been the most prominent of the sisters through engagements in concert which reached as far as the New York American Music Association at Dodsworth's Academy, the Boston Lyceum, the Yonkers Lyceum, Poughkeepsie, Bridgeton, but it was Georgie (who had claimed her employment as 'prima donna' in the 1860 census!) who had the longer life in music. She sang with the Old Folks Company, and went on to church engagements at St Peter's Episcopalian, Brooklyn et al, and concerts at Steinway and Irving Hall ('Sweet Spirit, Hear my Prayer', 'I waited for the Lord'), as 'first soprano of the Jersey Harmonic Society', and with Theodore Thomas into the 1870s. Now, apparently abandoned by her husband (she sued him in the Supreme Court for 'failure to support') she continued on till about 1875 ... 

I see Georgie, Linda, son Ferdinand/Fernando and brother Albert living in New York in the 1870 census, and mother and two children in East 31st Street in1880 ..  By 1900, in Lenox Avenue, she is knocking 4 years off her age, Ferdie is a bookkeeper and there is a baby Georgie McMartin, child of the deceased Linda (Mrs John F McMartin) ...  Georgie died 16 August 1912.

Caroline? No idea. Mrs Powell? No idea. Mr W Carroll? I can find nothing at all on him. Parents? Alas, no luck.

But it's a lovely bit of American musical ephemera.