May Day at Elmira College

by Erin Doane, Senior Curator

May Day is an ancient spring festival that originated in Europe to rejoice in the coming of summer. In 1902, Dean M. Anstice Harris started what would become a 65-year tradition of celebrating May Day at Elmira College. 

The very first May Day at Elmira College took place on May 2, 1902. The freshmen students were in charge of organizing the festivities. The event began at 4:30 in the afternoon with the campus population gathering on the green lawn next to the pond. First, the freshmen voted for a May Queen from among the sophomore students. After the queen’s name was announced, she was whisked away to be dressed in her ceremonial gown and robes. Once appropriately dressed, she returned with her court to be officially crowned. She took her place on the throne and the freshmen performed a May pole dance. This was followed by a general promenade and social hour before a picnic supper. The evening ended with a lecture by special guest Dr. A.F. Schauffler who presented “Ruin and Rescue” about his mission work in New York City.

Elmira College May Day, 1910s

The celebration was so well received that the second annual May Day festival followed the next year. The event grew more elaborate each year as the new freshman class worked to outdo the previous one. In 1907, there was a dragon and the personification of Winter terrorizing Earth and her followers. The May pole dance was performed by ten young women dressed as milk maids carrying bright tin pails. In 1908, the students had a luncheon at Watkins Glen to celebrate May Day. Watkins Glen became the preferred location of the event from the early 1910s through the 1950s.

May Day dancers, photographed by Fred Loomis, 1926

Each year the freshmen organizers chose a theme. Many celebrations focused on ancient Greek and Roman myths including the stories of Persephone, Diana, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Cupid and Psyche. Olde England was also a popular theme with traditional folk dances and music. Later, the themes became more diverse. In 1935, the students built their May Day around the story of Alice in Wonderland. The dancing and dramatic performances became quite elaborate. Faculty in the physical education department coached the dancers while those in the art department supervised the production of costumes and props.

Elmira College May Day, c. 1930, photographed by Fred Loomis

Music and dancing were always major parts of the May Day celebrations. In 1939, the organizers decided to try something new. Rather than using classic springtime songs paired with traditional choreography, they created modern dances based on Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” A newspaper report at the time called the performance “well received if untraditional.” In 1940, modern dance was paired with Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. Before the event, miss Catherine Finter, head of Elmira College’s physical education department, went on WENY radio to explain the meaning of the dances. A reporter with the Star-Gazette who attended the festivities reported the “most colorful of the abstract interpretations was that of the third movement –‘a succession of capricious arabesques which pass through the mind when one has drunk wine and feels the first touch of intoxication.’”

A preview of the dance program for Elmira College May Day, Star-Gazette, May 16, 1940

At the peak of its popularity, May Day was attended by upwards of 800 students, faculty members, friends, family, and community members. The arrival of the second World War, however, put a damper on festivities. Less ostentatious celebrations were held on campus throughout the 1940s. During the war years, more traditional American music and patriotic songs were added to the program. Post-war saw the celebration’s return to Watkins Glen and when Elmira College acquired Strathmont in 1961, May Day moved there.

May pole dance at Strathmont, Star-Gazette, May 13, 1965

By the mid-1960s the tradition was winding down. Rather than a major stand-alone event, May Day became part of Class Day. The last May Queen was crowned at Elmira College on May 10, 1967, thus ending 65 years of tradition.

The college replaced May Day with Spring Weekend, an outdoor festival with live rock music and alcoholic beverages. I myself participated in the very last Spring Weekend celebration in 1997. The following year, a new May Days event was created which had no connection to the earlier May Day traditions. The reinvented May Days is still celebrated today with a carnival on campus complete with food, games, and music. 

How Grocer Girl Caused a Dictionary Shortage

by Erin Doane, Curator

On February 2, 1933, WESG aired the first in a series of weekly musical radio programs sponsored by Standard Food Stores. Just nine weeks later, on April 7, an article in the Star-Gazette reported that dictionaries were suddenly in high demand at the Steele Memorial Library.  “Legitimate” students were being crowded away from the library’s few available dictionaries as a direct result of this new radio show. How did this strange turn of events happen?

Postcard showing the Steele Memorial Library, c. 1940s

The perpetrator of the unexpected dictionary shortage was Standard Food Stores. In 1929, grocers in Elmira, under the guidance of C.M. and R. Thompkins, came together to form a group under the name “Standard Food Stores.” Each member business in the group remained independent but they worked together to give customers “better quality, better service, and better prices.” Initially, it was just grocers within the city of Elmira who were members of this group but it quickly grew to include stores throughout Chemung County and northern Pennsylvania.

Standard Food Stores Advertisement from the Star-Gazette, May 23, 1929

As part of its promotional efforts, Standard Food Stores started sponsoring a musical program on local radio station WESG in February 1933. For 15 minutes every Thursday morning starting at 11:30, listeners were treated to the sounds of the Standard Food Stores Orchestra under the direction of Don Huber. Also featured were Grocer Boy with his flowing tenor and Grocer Girl with her pleasing voice who would sing old time tunes. The duo was credited with much of the show’s popularity. Fans said they made the program one of the best broadcasts of its kind on the local station.

Many listeners wanted to know who Grocer Boy and Grocer Girl actually were. The pairs’ identities remained a secret until early May when their names were finally revealed. Grocer Boy was Paul Huber, brother of the orchestra leader. He was a regular performer on WESG throughout the early 1930s and also involved in local minstrel shows.

Grocer Girl was 31-year-old Florence Rohan. Florence was a musical prodigy who started playing the piano before she was three years old. Around 1925 she started touring with her two young daughters Jacqueline and Marilynn as the vocal group the Lullaby Trio. The group’s heyday was in the late 1930s and early 1940s when they performed on several national radio program including NBC’s Children’s Hour, the Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour on CBS, and Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour. The Trio also performed numerous times in Florida and once on a cruise ship to Bermuda.

Florence had moved with her family to Elmira from Hornell in 1932 and quickly became a regular on WESG. She was particularly active on the Arctic League programs. She ended up being the first woman announcer on Elmira radio, writing and presenting her own programs as “the Rosenbaum Stylist.” At the time of her unexpected death in 1962, she was one of the region’s best known musicians and performers.

But what does all this have to do with the shortage of dictionaries? Well, I’m getting there. On March 30, 1933, a word-building contest was announced on Standard Food Stores’ weekly musical radio program. During the 1930s, word games and contests became quite popular. In one particular type of word-building game, a song title was given and people tried to make as many words from the letters in the title as possible. Those with the most words could win prizes. A large dictionary was a great tool for such a challenge. I don’t know the particular details of the WESG contest, but because of the large audience brought in by the song stylings of Grocer Girl and Grocer Boy, many people heard about the contest and got working on word-building.

Headline from the Star-Gazette, April 7, 1933

Within a week, the three dictionaries at the Steele Memorial Library were in high demand. Librarian Kate Deane Andrew reported seeing people stand in front of their newest dictionary, which was tied to a table, for up to an hour at a time. “It is obvious that many of them are contest workers who hope to make some money by sending in the solutions to the word puzzles,” she told a reporter from the Star-Gazette. She seemed perturbed that the contesters were keeping those with more studious inquiries away from the dictionaries. The library did make efforts to accommodate these new patrons; they got a small booklet containing all of the three-letter words in the English language.

By mid-summer, the run on dictionaries at the Steele Memorial Library slowed down. The series of entertainments on WESG featuring Grocer Girl, Grocer Boy, and the orchestra with the associated word contests came to an end on August 3, and a whole series of novelty broadcasts commenced under the sponsorship of Standard Food Stores.

 

Three Generations of Local Fame: Robert, James, and Henry Dumars

 by Erin Doane, Curator

There are different levels of fame. Some people are known within their own town or city, but no one knows who they are outside that community. Some people achieve regional fame with their names and deeds appearing in media across a couple of states. Some become national figures; typically, politicians and performers. And then, there are the international superstars who achieved the type of fame that made them household names. Here at CCHS we like to explore all levels of historic notoriety, but we really focus on those who are locally and regionally famous. That is the case with three members of the Dumars family: Captain Robert R.R. Dumars, James “Jimmie” Dumars, and Henry R. Dumars. Each one attained a bit of fame during their lives, but for very different reasons.

Henry Dumars (left) with Professor Joe Gaulteri in a promotional
photo that appeared in the Elmira Star-Gazette, December 22, 1913
when the pair performed in Elmira during a 3-day Christmas break
from their regular vaudeville circuit

My research began with Henry Dumars. Some time ago, I came across an article in the Star-Gazettefrom September 9, 1907 that included information about the young Elmiran. Henry, who was just 18 years old, was part of a vaudeville performance at Rorick’s Glen. He was billed as a lightning sketch artist who created crayon cartoons and caricatures of celebrities and politician before an enthralled audience.

Elmira Star-Gazette, September 9, 1907

Not only was Henry a visual artist, he was also a talented musician who got his start performing violin solos at the First Methodist Church as a young teen. By 1908, he was touring on local and regional vaudeville circuits as a rapid cartoonist and musician. For the next eight years, Henry performed throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic and won praise as both a musician and a cartoonist. The Marion Star of Marion, Ohio called him “the boy wizard of the violin and crayon.”  The Woonsocket Press of Woonsocket, Massachusetts wrote that he “proved himself a master of the violin and established his right to the title of ‘the little Paganini.’” Locally, The Star-Gazette declared his musical act at the Majestic Theater in 1911 “one of the best numbers ever put on the vaudeville stage in Elmira.” It is clear that Henry gained a fair amount of local and regional fame from his musical and artistic performances.

While reading local news articles about Henry Dumars, I noticed that his father and grandfather were also often mentioned. That made me wonder if either of those gentlemen had also achieved some level of fame. Captain Robert R.R. Dumars, Henry’s grandfather, was indeed locally famous as a Civil War soldier and newspaper man. Robert was the editor of the Elmira Press when he volunteered to serve in the Union army in 1862. He helped organize Company C of the 161^st New York Volunteers and was later assigned to the Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Elmira.

Captain Robert R.R. Dumars, early 1860s

After the war, Robert was one of the charter members of Elmira’s Baldwin Post No. 6, Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.). Robert went back into the newspaper business as foreman of the Elmira Advertiser’s composing room in 1868, and he later became telegraph editor there. Captain. R.R.R. Dumar’s name was well-known throughout the city because of his military service and his work at the newspaper. 

Captain Dumars’ Civil War sword was donated the CCHS in 1927

James Dumars, Henry’s father and Robert’s son, was also locally famous for his business dealings. After attending EFA, James got into the printing business. He began working in the office of Wheeler and Watts, and then went on to work as a clerk in the Hall Brothers’ bookstore. In 1871, he opened a bookstore in partnership with Arthur S. Fitch and seven years later went out on his own, opening the West End bookstore on West Water Street. James was in the bookselling business for 32 years.

Invoice from Fitch & Dumars, 1876

One would like to think that James’ hard work and dedication to business was enough to secure his local notoriety, but there was another reason that people in Elmira, and perhaps a wider area, knew the name of Jimmie Dumars. In 1864-1865, when young James was known as Jimmie, he would run messages in and out of the Confederate prison camp for his father. The guards were so used to seeing him come and go, he could just yell his name, Dumars, and they’d let him pass. Well, a prisoner named Benni Orcutt bore a striking resemblance to Jimmie. One day when the young messenger didn’t come to the camp, Benni took the opportunity to walk up to the gate, declare “Dumars!” in a loud, clear voice, and was waved on through. The story of the escape never made the papers, that I could find, but I’m sure it was the talk of the town and made Jimmie famous for at least a time.

Guard house at the Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Elmira, 1864-65

 

Elmira’s Whistling Prima Donna: Alice Shaw

by Erin Doane, Curator

In 1885, Alice Shaw was living with her father in Elmira. Her husband had gone off to make a living for himself and didn’t return, leaving her with four young daughters to support on her own. She tried to make money as a dressmaker, but it wasn’t enough and they were struggling. What was the poor woman to do? Alice screwed up her courage, took a deep breath, and whistled her way to international stardom.

Alice Shaw, The Cotton States and International

Exposition and South, Illustrated, 1896

Alice Horton was born in Elmira in 1853. She married W.H. Shaw when she was 20 years old. He was a widower with four sons, and ran a successful wholesale ration business in Detroit. Alice moved into her husband’s home in Detroit and the couple had two daughters. Around 1878, his business failed, and the family moved to New York City. They had two more daughters there, but he was never able to find profitable work. Alice gave up on living in New York City, and brought her four daughters to her father’s home at the corner of West Water and Grove Streets in Elmira. W.H. came with her but soon struck out on his own. Alice, too, decided to go her own way.

Music had been a part of Alice’s life from an early age, and she had always been oddly skilled at whistling. I say oddly, because, at that time, it was considered improper for women to whistle, and it was also considered difficult for them to learn in the first place. A reporter for the New York Times in 1887 explain that, “from the earliest times it has been agreed that it is a very hard thing for a girl to learn to whistle. The position of the lips is such as can only be maintained for any length of time in stern isolation from the male sex.” Alice somehow managed to overcome those difficulties, and in December 1886 she was a featured soloist at the holiday reception of the Teachers’ Association in Steinway Hall in New York City.

Illustrations of Alice Shaw and “the Pucker,” New York Sun, January 1, 1888

That one performance got such rave reviews that Alice was soon working as a professional whistler at high class concerts, private musicales, and society entertainments. The New York Sun ran an article on November 16, 1887 describing her talents:

Rather a unique figure in the amusement world is Mrs. Alice J. Shaw, who appears at benefits, private musicales, and similar performance. She is a wonderful performer, whistling without any instrument whatever in her mouth. She gives airs of the utmost intricacy and elaboration with complete accuracy and truth of expression. She is of rather majestic presence, decidedly handsome, and she has a larking expression of the left eye when she whistles which is no little factor of her success.

Recording of Alice Shaw whistling, 1888

After two years performing throughout New York City, Alice went to London. She was very well received in England, and even performed for the Prince of Wales (who later became King Edward). From there she continued touring the world. She spent a year in Russia, where she performed for Czar Nicholas. She was in India for a year, spent six months in Germany, and then returned to England for several more years. In 1899, while touring South Africa, she and her daughters had to hastily leave Johannesburg when the Boer War broke out. Her children traveled with her most of the time. Her twins, Elsie and Ethel, actually whistled with her on stage, starting when they were just five years old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmoREPRdSJw

Recording of Alice Shaw and her daughters whistling, 1907

On February 24, 1889, Alice’s ex-husband was seen at her concert at Lafayette Hall in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Their divorce had become official just four months earlier. He did not meet with her in person that night, and it was the first time he had seen her in over two years. When a reporter spoke to him about his world-famous ex-wife, he had little nice to say about her. “The wealth of the Indies wouldn’t tempt me to call her wife again,” he declared. “She has changed very much since I saw her last. She is growing fleshier.” While the comment about her “fleshiness” was certainly rude, Alice obviously understood the appearance of her body, and even capitalized upon it. In 1897, she supplemented her income by endorsing Dr. Edison’s Obesity Pills and Salts.

Advertisement for Dr. Edison’s Obesity Pills and Salt

featuring Alice Shaw, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 4, 1897

Alice returned to Elmira several times through the years to visit friends and to perform. In 1888, near the height of her popularity, she whistled at a benefit performance in support of the Elmira Elks Lodge. She returned in 1900, and offered two performances daily for a week at Dixie’s Theatre. Her twins whistled and danced with her.

Advertisement for Alice Shaw’s performance at Dixie’s

Theatre in Elmira, Star-Gazette, December 10, 1900

On April 24, 1918, Alice Shaw returned to Elmira one last time. Two days earlier, she died from heart failure in New York City. She had been suffering from ill-health for the past seven or eight years. A private funeral service was held at her home at 388 Manhattan Avenue before her body was brought to Elmira for interment in Woodlawn Cemetery. She was 65 years old.

Over the years, Alice Shaw has faded into obscurity, but now and again, her extraordinary story is rediscovered.

Ripley’s Believe it or Not, Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin, June 5, 1983

Arnold Hager and His Famous Band

by Erin Doane, Curator

In June 1906, Hager’s Band of Elmira was the official band of the State of New York at the gigantic Old Home Week Celebration in Auburn. In just four years under the leadership of Arnold Hager, the band had gone from playing small, local performances to being one of the most celebrated musical groups in the state.  

Hager’s Band, early 1900s

Arnold Hager was interested in music from a young age. He was born in Elmira on November 26, 1873 to Frederick and Ida Hager who had come to the United States from Switzerland. His father was a musician, so it was natural for him to start taking piano lessons at age eight. He went on to learn the cornet and played with the 26th Separate Company Band before he was even a teenager. At 14 he started violin lessons and played in the YMCA orchestra. At age 17, he played his first theater engagement at the Madison Avenue Theater.

In 1892, Hager’s father died suddenly. So, at age 19, he took his music on the road to help support his family. He took a job as cornet player with the Sig Sawtelle Canal Boat Circus which traversed the Erie Canal. A year later he joined Lee’s London Circus out of Canton, Pennsylvania. Over the next few years he jumped from job to job playing music for theaters, circuses, and minstrel shows. Finally, in 1896 he returned to Elmira, took the civil service exam, and got a job as music instructor at the Elmira Reformatory.

Arnold Hager, c. 1936

When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Hager joined the Thirtieth Separate Company and was appointed leader of the regimental band. When asked by a newspaper reporter why he enlisted, he answered, “To charm or rather hypnotize the Spaniards with my reformatory band.” After his service, he returned to the Reformatory and was promoted to director of the music program.

In 1902, Hager got the opportunity to become leader of his own independent band. Ten years earlier, Haytt’s Military Band was popular around the city, playing at grand receptions and balls. In 1894, there was a schism in the band. Some members wanted Ralph Mulcare to become leader rather than Professor Haytt. So, Haytt and several of his most devoted followers left and the remaining musicians became Mulcare’s Band. The new band was very active through the late 1890s and early 1900s, but finances were a persistent problem. In 1902, Mrs. Julia S. Reynolds sued Mulcare for not paying rent for eight months on a room the band used for rehearsals. Mulcare settled the case out of court, but resigned as band director.

Program from a Mulcare’s Elmira Band concert, 1901

Hager was a member of Mulcare’s Band and when Mulcare stepped down, the other band members elected Hager as their new director. Thus, Hager’s Band was born. Their first engagement was playing at the annual military ball of the Thirtieth Separate Company on Thanksgiving night, 1902. From then on, Hager’s Band grew in popularity. They played at conventions, parades, parks, and fairs throughout the state, including their highly-lauded performance at Auburn’s Old Home Week Celebration. Under his direction, Hager’s Band became recognized as one of the foremost musical organizations in the country.

Hager’s Band, early 1900s

While Hager was leading his own band, he was also a member of the Grotto Band, and offered private musical lessons on the side. And on top of all of that, he was still musical instructor and director of the Elmira Reformatory Band. In order to devote more of his time to what would become a 40-year career at the Reformatory, Hager pulled back slightly from his outside musical interests. In 1922, Hager’s Band became the Elks’ Band. The Elmira Elks Lodge took over management of the band while Hager continued to carry the baton as leader. He remained director of the 35-person band until his death.

On April 13, 1936, after several months of ill health, Arnold Hager passed away. He was 62 years old. Hundreds of people came out for his funeral including family, friends, officers of the Elmira Elks Lodge, fraternal brothers, members of reformatory staff, former music students, and members of the general public who may not have known him personally but were touched by his music. Musicians who played under his direction in Hager’s Band played a funeral march as the procession moved through Woodlawn Cemetery to his family’s plot. It was a fitting tribute to the man who had devoted his life to music.

Members of Hager’s Band leading Arnold Hager’s funeral procession into Woodlawn Cemetery, Star-Gazette, April 17, 1936

Take Pride: Charles Tomlinson Griffes

By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

June is national LGBTQ Pride Month. For those who aren’t familiar with the acronym, the L stands for lesbian (women attracted to women), the G for gay (men attracted to men), the B for bisexual (people attracted to both sexes), and the T for transsexual (people who are a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth). The Q stands for queer, a blanket term which helps keep the acronym from becoming too unwieldy. Some of the identities covered under the Q include, but are not limited to, asexual (people who don’t experience sexual attraction), pansexual (those attracted to people regardless of their gender), intersex (people with the physical characteristics of both sexes), and non-binary (people who don’t identify as either gender).

Although a lot of the terms used today are relatively new, LGBTQ people have always existed. One of Chemung County’s most famous queer icons is pianist and composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920). Born in Elmira, Griffes studied piano and organ from a young age under the tutelage of Elmira College professor Mary Selena Broughton. In 1903, he traveled to Berlin where he studied composition. Returning to the United States in 1907, he took a teaching position at the Hackley School for Boys in Tarrytown, New York, where he worked until he died of the Spanish Flu in 1920.

Charles Tomlinson Griffes, ca. 1900

At the time of his death, Griffes was considered an up-and-coming composer with a unique voice which blended German Romanticism, French Impressionism, and Russian and Oriental styles. He composed over 100 songs for orchestra, piano, organ, chamber ensemble, and voice. He also wrote several pieces for stage productions, ballets, and pantomimes. His most famous pieces include White Peacock (1915), Piano Sonata (1917–18, revised 1919), The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan (1912, revised in 1916), and Poem for Flute and Orchestra (1918).

Griffes was gay. During his time in Germany, he became romantically involved with Emil Joèl, an older fellow student. During their years together, Joèl introduced Griffes to some of the famous European composures of the day and even supported him financially for a time. Due to the prejudices and laws of the day, Griffes kept his homosexuality a secret from his family and straight friends. Whenever possible, he would leave his lodgings in Tarrytown and head for the gay bathhouses of New York City. From 1907 to 1919, he kept detailed diaries, often in German, describing his experiences in New York City’s gay community. His favorite haunts were the Produce Exchange Baths, the Lafayette Baths, and the YMCA. Although he had two pianos at his home, he preferred to practice at the Y so he could meet other men. At the bath houses, he not only found lovers, but also like-minded friends who helped encourage his music career and find him lodgings. In his later years, he carried on a secret affair with John Meyer, a married New York City policeman.

Advertisement for the LaFayette Baths

After his death, his sister Marguerite destroyed a number of Griffes papers which dealt with his sexuality in order to protect his professional reputation. Despite her best efforts, his surviving diaries have proved invaluable to historians looking to study New York’s gay scene in the early 1900s.