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New friend Luke Newland arranged a grand concert that would replenish the quartet's now-exhausted treasury and allow the singers to display their special talents before a large, fashionable audience.  Further, as the story goes, he gave them advice at a time when they were most likely to heed it.  Eliminate the instrumental performances, he said, and use the violins and cello only to accompany the singing,  "thus making the instrumental music subordinate to the voices."  And, he added, drop the name, the Æolian Vocalists; simply call yourselves the Hutchinson Family.

Newland left little for the singers to do in preparation for the big Albany concert, so they visited a boyhood friend, Josiah Fuller, at Bethlehem.  An incident, that no doubt seemed sad at the time, might be viewed today as vividly symbolic of the Hutchinsons' phoenix-like situation.  "[A]n insane woman,"  said John,  "climbed into our carriage in the barn, and busied herself by tearing our blank posters and programmes into little bits, leaving them as rats or mice would do, pulverized for their nests."

The quartet returned to Albany to find that Newland had been busy on their behalf.  He had secured gratuitous use of the hall at the Albany Female Academy.  Bills were posted.  The concert was advertised in the Evening Journal,  "while twelve prominent business men allowed their names to appear as high complimentary indorsers. . . . "   The Hutchinsons must have been in a state of great excitement over the interest being shown them.

The brothers bought themselves satin vests and silk hats; and they purchased a dress of a Queen Victoria pattern for Abby.  On Sunday, by arrangement of Luke Newland, they sang at various churches; and  "they met with much encouragement from the clergy."   "We took the hint thus furnished,"  observed John,  "and ever after sang in churches wherever opportunity was offered."

The entertainment fell on August 29, 1842  -  Abby's thirteenth birthday.  The hall was completely filled, while hundreds of would-be concert-goers were crowded out.  Afterwards, John was able to boast,  "We were cheered, and every selection sang elicited an encore.  The evening passed swiftly away. . . . "

Jesse Sr., in his letters, asked his children to come home; and homeward they went.  Nathaniel Leavitt acted as their agent, and they gave concerts along the way in Pittsfield, Springfield, and Worcester.

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On September 13, the Hutchinson Family sang at the Melodeon in Boston at fifty cents a ticket.  They made little money.  Nonetheless, John thought they did well.  "By this favorable début in the most cultured city of America, we felt our efforts were well repaid and we were ready for new conquests."

A review of their entertainment on the 17th suggests that perhaps the audience was small because of a high ticket price.  It reported, with approval, that admission to the next concert would cost only twenty-five cents.  By this time, press notices were becoming more numerous.  And many tell us that the singers were much admired for their selection of song lyrics  -  both for their poetic qualities and moral effect.

The Hutchinsons seem to have attracted a larger audience to their show at the Melodeon on the 20th, and the review in the Boston Transcript noted a crowd-pleasing instrumental trick.  "They sang most delightfully, and were again and again applauded to the echo.  We never heard such an encore as was that which succeeded the first performance of the  Wrecker's Daughter  by the three brothers on two instruments  -  the violin and violoncello."

The singers asked Professor George J. Webb for advice.  Without hesitation, he answered,  "Boys! please yourselves and you will not fail to please the public."

The tour moved from Boston through eastern Massachusetts to Portsmouth, where the Hutchinsons were welcomed as veteran entertainers.  They were guests of United States Senator Levi Woodbury.

In the coming years, Hutchinson Family notices will describe the perfection of the group's vocal harmony; express amusement at their original and topical songs; make sly reference to Judson's colorful, impromptu remarks or lectures between songs; and speak with excitement of long, brisk concert tours and crowded halls.  These factors which characterize the Hutchinson Family quartet, as we remember them, were absent from the early reviews.  Notices from the summer and fall of 1842 often spoke of the Hutchinsons' potential for greatness.  "[W]ith time and practice,"  said the Boston American,  "they will rank among the best of our singers in the performance of solos, glees, &c."

This tour gave the singers a great chance to perfect their group vocals.  By the time they left Boston, their notices showed improvement, gained from long, rigorous practice sessions, day after day, and from experience performing frequently before small but appreciative concert audiences.   "[T]heir voices,"  said one paper,  "attuned to that great degree of perfection, that their melody seems faultless.  Several of their pieces were indeed performed in a style of surpassing excellence."  A notice from the October 11 issue of the Portland Advertiser goes farther.  "The very first strain hushed the audience to an eager silence.  These singers know evidently what they are about, and never forget the first principles of their art.  They know that melody should be imbued with feeling (passion is the word) and that harmony should be smooth, proportioned and blended."

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"We boys,"  said John,  "were in the habit, in our rehearsals, of practising for perfect accord and harmony until in sheer exhaustion of brain and nerve we would resort to an extreme expedient for relief.  Each of us would take a separate tune, in different keys, and sing them simultaneously for about [a] half-hour.  By that time we would be sufficiently refreshed to go on with our practising."  Group members, though, did not always agree on the need for more work.  "Judson . . . was usually satisfied when a thing was well done, without seeking for perfection, and when I suggested that we try it once more, would abruptly turn on his heel and leave the room."

After concerts in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, the quartet made a final appearance at Nashua and then went home to Milford in triumph around the end of October.  Their career was turning an important corner, and they were planning to tour in a southerly direction.  They were warmly greeted by everyone at the homestead  -  everyone except their mother.  She took hold of Abby as though she would never let go.  "[H]er wonted courtesies were dispensed with toward the sons and her brother Nathaniel,"  as John told it.  "I was more anxious than I have ever been since."  Still,

Early in November, the group sang in Amherst and Manchester and then returned to Milford.  On the 8th they went to Nashua, for a successful engagement at Town Hall.  The next morning, they saw a familiar carriage coming down the street.  In it sat Jesse Hutchinson, Sr.  He hitched the horse to a post and asked to speak with his children privately.  "I have come,"  said he,  "to take Abby home with me.  Your mother has not slept all night, and is almost crazy."  The singers' hearts must have sunk.  Finally, a compromise was reached.  The brothers promised, in writing, to bring Abby home in three weeks.  The quartet was able to keep commitments already made, but the projected "southern" tour now seemed highly doubtful.

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When the Hutchinson Family quartet next sang in Lowell, John met a  "winsome and sweet"  young woman named Frances B. Patch, who he called Fanny.  She was a singer in a Lowell choir; and evidently by this time, she had sung with John Braham.

An early source speaks of John surrendering his  "susceptible heart."  Years later he said,  "As I left one evening she stood in the doorway.   I suddenly wrapped my soldier's cape about her and whispered,  'I love you.'"  Speaking mostly for himself, he added,  "With some reluctance we passed next day to Boston, and gave a popular concert in the Melodeon."

The Hutchinson brothers were known to throw themselves enthusiastically into everything they did.  By the time the group reached Boston, though, it seemed that Judson's fervor was for something other than singing.  On November 16, during the last concert of this series,  "Asa and John noticed a peculiarity in the conduct of Judson.  Whilst performing, something seemed mightily to tickle his fancy, and a roguish smile played over his face."  These memories, though, may have been lost for a time in the excitement, as their new Boston friends swarmed around them to say farewell.

The next morning Judson was nowhere to be found.   A search turned up nothing but a note saying,

Since boyhood, Judson's manner, as well as his style of dress, had been peculiarly his own.  However, his curious behavior occasionally ran well beyond mere eccentricity.  Judson experienced periods of depression; and the thought that he might consider suicide now occurred to his brothers and sister.

The singers settled with Uncle Nat, and he went home.  John and Abby went to Lynn, in hopes that Judson might be with Jesse.  Asa hurried to Milford, arriving at 10 PM.   He knocked on the door; and after a wait that must have seemed much longer than it was, Brother Benjamin let him in.  To the question,  "Do you know where Judson is?",  he answered,  "[H]e is safe, and is gone over to attend the singing school at Bedford."  Actually, Judson went a-courtin'.  In the morning this welcome news was sent to Lynn.

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The details of what happened next have been obscured a bit through the passage of time.  Boston was in the grip of great excitement over the arrest of George Latimer, allegedly a fugitive slave.  Jesse and John were in the city, probably looking for Judson, when they met a company of forty or fifty men who had an idea to rescue Latimer.  Now, Jesse had joined the antislavery cause after hearing English abolitionist George Thompson speak in the mid-1830s.  So, not surprisingly, he and John fell in.  They marched along Washington Street and continued to Marlboro Chapel where a meeting was going on.   "I still recall,"  said John,  "my impression of the contrast between singing before a popular audience two nights before and the somewhat unpopular mission in which I was now engaged."  Soon a man walked briskly up the aisle and onto the platform, shouting,  "He's free!"

After the Latimer incident and the arrival of news that Judson was safe, John and Abby went home to Milford.  Plans for a trip southward were abandoned because Judson was unwilling to go.

On the last two evenings of November, the Hutchinsons sang in Concord.  Their audiences were small  -  one evening they were at an out-of-the-way hall; and on the other, a major snow storm hit.  But Nathaniel P. Rogers occupied one of the seats.

Frederick Douglass, just before he died, wrote,  "More than fifty years ago they were introduced to the country from the granite hills of New Hampshire, through the columns of The Herald of Freedom, by Nathaniel P. Rogers, one of the most brilliant and gifted writers of that day.  He was an Abolitionist of the Abolitionists, and in thrilling words and at the very top of his sublime enthusiasm in that cause, he hailed with welcome the Hutchinsons, as did all Abolitionists, regarding them as a splendid acquisition to that then unpopular and persecuted cause."  But surely being identified with the often hated antislavery agitation was not without its risks to the group's young career.

Next, the family made plans for a short series of concerts involving all their number  -  even Brother Zephaniah, who would be coming from Illinois.  John served as the advance agent, traveling to Manchester, Nashua, and Lowell to arrange and advertise the entertainments.  Ultimately it was a party of thirteen Hutchinsons that traveled to these engagements in their double-sleigh, accompanied by Fanny B. Patch.  John crowed that the group  "met with grand success in all of the three places."

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On December 23, the Herald of Freedom ran a call  -  signed by Jesse, Susan, and John, among many others  -  for an antislavery meeting in Milford early in the new year.  Some of the Hutchinsons  -  possibly members of the quartet  -  participated, though Jesse is the only one named.  An article in the Herald of Freedom, notable for being so early, called him the  "bard"  of the family.  N. P. Rogers said Jesse's talent at parody is scarcely inferior to the quartet's talent for performing it,  "in the popular and striking music of this day of Advent and Revival."

Late in January 1843, the Hutchinson Family traveled to Boston, where they participated in the anniversary of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society.  "Boston,"  predicted Nathaniel P. Rogers,  "would stand amazed at their mountain melody.  They are native to music and cannot fail  -  and Jesse is too much of an abolitionist, to lack genius for the occasion, to give them language."

That year the meetings were held at Faneuil Hall.  It was feared that the attendance might look tiny in such a huge building; but, in fact, the hall was crowded much of the time.  N. P. Rogers, having lost none of his enthusiasm, proclaimed,  "The distinguishing incident of the Anniversary was the co-operation of the New-Hampshire Hutchinsons, aided by their brother from Lynn."  He speculated that the group was an attraction that was responsible, at least in part, for the unexpectedly high turnout.

Rogers wrote that those who had heard the Hutchinsons feared their special qualities would be lost in such a cavernous building.  Yet, he reported,  "I never saw such effect on human assemblies as their appeals produced.  -  They made the vast multitudes toss and heave and clamor like 'the roaring ocean.'"

Rogers said the Hutchinsons  "were not there as musicians, in the orchestra.  They were not hired performers.  They were there as Garrison and Boyle were, as Douglass and Remond and Phillips, and the rest of us all.  'To help the Cause along.'  -  And they did help it. . . . [I]t was what they said, as well as how they said it, that sent anti-slavery like electricity to every heart."

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An incident one evening sealed Jesse's reputation as a writer of inspired, impromptu song lyrics.  Wendell Phillips, a gifted speaker, was addressing a full house at Faneuil Hall.

The  crowd  interrupted  this  song  repeatedly  with  cheers  and  thunderous  applause.

"I wish the whole city  -  and the entire country could have been there  -  even all the people,"  wrote Rogers.  "Slavery would have died of that music,  and that response of the multitude."

An historic resolution was adopted at these meetings.  "Resolved, That the compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell  -  involving both parties in atrocious criminality,  and should be immediately annulled."

After this anniversary,  word about the Hutchinsons spread with gale force through much of the Northeast,  particularly among antislavery people.  This created an anticipation,  favorable to the singers,  in places where they had not yet performed.

On Tuesday, February 21, 1843, at Milford, John W. Hutchinson married Fanny B. Patch.  If he looked a little nervous, it would be easy to understand why.  After all, he was an impulsive man making a commitment for a lifetime.  He said that, following the wedding, he intended  "to continue in the pursuit of agriculture."  His devotion to farming was not meant to last.

"Ten days after we were married,"  John said of Fanny,  "she cried all day long.  Then I learned she had quarrelled with her real lover, and had married me in a fit of pique.  So, though we weren't truly in love, we lived happily enough. . . . "

By the 9th of March, the Hutchinsons were touring through Essex County, Massachusetts, going to antislavery meetings with various speakers.  On one such occasion, with George Latimer, they left Lynn in two sleighs and had an uneventful journey until they reached the Merrimac River.  After crossing, the sleighs started up the far bank.  The first one reached the top; but as the second vehicle was ascending the grade, its horse grew wild and tipped over the sleigh  -  which landed on top of Sister Abby.  Latimer and John rushed to her aid, while Jesse recaptured his horse.  The party gathered together their belongings and continued to the church in Haverhill, where the meeting had just gotten under way.  The audience cheered their entrance; and soon Latimer and the Hutchinsons were seated safely on the platform.

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Events that would mold the Hutchinsons' individual views, as well as establish their image with the public, were taking place quite fast.  The singers visited the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education, in West Roxbury April 3.  "[I]t was the theatre where famous men and women were seeking to demonstrate not only the feasibility but the superiority of the apostolic mode of living, as a community.  Horace Greeley's 'North American Phalanx' became famous and the Florence Community was successful after that at Brook Farm was given up.  But none of these experiments attracted so many of the class of people who were doing, or preparing to do, a great portion of the brain-work of the country for some decades, as Brook Farm."

The brothers may have already made the acquaintance of founder George Ripley, from his days as minister of the Unitarian church on Purchase Street in Boston across from Brother Andrew's store.  Also they had a family connection with one of Brook Farm's neighbors, the Rev. Theodore Parker.  Nancy Leavitt, the youngest daughter of their grandfather, married one of the famed preacher's brothers, Hiram S. Parker.  Other well-known Brook Farmers included journalist Charles A. Dana, classical music critic John S. Dwight, and authors Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

"Every heart,"  said John,  "seemed bounding with hope, delightful to the soul; cheerfulness seemed to pervade every individual, man or woman. . . . "   "That occasion was one which lingered long in our memories; for with the delights that inspired us at that time, we seemed to catch a foretaste of a realm in which our spirits could bask and grow."

For a time, the homestead in Milford was operated along communal lines, each member taking part in chores with joy and enthusiasm.  Benjamin and Rhoda must have wondered how long their wandering brothers and sister could maintain such commitment to the day-to-day operations of a farm and household.  No doubt the Hutchinsons, to varying degrees, believed in this way of life  -  in principle.  On the other hand, the apostolic farming community did not compete for long with the life of the touring musician.