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On Monday August 27, 1877, at Pemigewasset House in Plymouth, New Hampshire, Lillie C. Phillips made her Hutchinson Family debut.  This was the first stop of a tour through the White Mountains, to the coast of Maine, and down to Boston.  Old favorites, such as  "My Trundle Bed,"  "Right Over Wrong,"  and  "The Ship on Fire,"  mixed with many new additions.  There was Händel's  "La 'scia chio Pianga"  -  a program entry that likely would surprise early fans of the Hutchinsons.  Lillie also enjoyed singing Händel's hymn,  "Angels Ever Bright and Fair."  It was probably the Welshmen who brought in John Parry's  "Flow Gently, Deva."  At this time the group was singing two of Brother Asa's new originals  -  "The Creed of the Bells"  and  "Prophecy of Better Days Coming."  John had picked up Henry Clay Work's  "Grandfather's Clock,"  which he sang often for years.  Another piece,  "Song for Reformation,"  had been a regular part of Joshua's repertoire.  Fanny was noted for reciting Will Carleton's  "Over the Hill to the Poorhouse."

"It was evident,"  said John,  "that we had a prize in Lillie; and we were much cheered by our wonderful success, rejoicing at the prospect of many engagements ahead."  Apparently though, the Hughes brothers were not caught up in the joy of the moment.  "One night in East Bridgewater, I announced a song in which they were to sing also.  They sat still in their places, and I scented trouble.  Begging the indulgence of the audience, I changed the song and went on.  We were particular to sing no song after that which needed their voices. . . .   In a few days I went to the boys, and suggested that I would give them one more trial.  Soon after they tried the same thing again.  Then I let them go."

John H. Pilley, who booked Asa's stunning series of concerts in Philadelphia, told John that a great demand existed there for his company.  Pilley arranged some fifty shows.  "[T]here was but one bass singer,"  said John,  "who really met my ideas.  No one could sing with me like my own son."  On Thanksgiving, at his father's invitation, Henry came from Baltimore and sang one song with the group in the concert that evening at Association Hall.  "He had never met Lillie before, but at once recognized his fate."  Henry rejoined his father's company on December 10.

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One paper said Lillie "has a charming mezzo-soprano voice, remarkably soft, sweet, fresh and sympathetic."  The singers, in one rather melodramatic song, pleaded,  "Don't you go, Tommy."  That same press notice said Lillie  "took all the merit out of Tommy's sacrifice by joining in the chorus with her fresh young voice."  Lillie sang,  "Don't you go, Tommy."  Tommy stayed.  "Who wouldn't?"  asked the reviewer.  Lillie "gave Topliff's 'Consider the Lilies,' so beautifully that the least emotional audience we ever lost patience with burst into raptures."

Perhaps Asa's recent string of successes couldn't last forever; but it wasn't played-out yet.   First, though, he had a stop to make in Milford.  On September 24, Rev. J. L. Harrison of the Methodist-Episcopal Church administered the rite of baptism to Asa in the Souhegan River.  "Just before they descended into the water  [ said the Cabinet ]  three doves hovered over head for a moment, then dipped their wings in the water and soared heavenward. . . .   [T]he party there[,] standing facing the west with the glorious sun just sinking in the horizon, . . . presented a scene most touching and beautiful."

That evening Asa's company  -  including Ella M. Ramsdell, contralto Etta R. Reed, and Dennett  -  sang to benefit the church.  Ella Ramsdell "was in excellent voice,"  said one notice,  "and rendered the ringing soprano with good effect, constituting one of the notable excellencies of the entertainment."  Afterwards church members remained and Asa was taken into membership.  According to published reports, Asa particularly wanted to unite with the Methodists in the church built by his father.

Asa did not find it easy to fill his daughter's place in the group.   In August that position was held by Carrie P. Wescott.  In September Etta Reed replaced her; and by November she, in turn, was replaced by a woman announced only as Lottie.

In November,  Asa began a series of engagements in and around New York.  Advertisements heralded his first concert  -  after an absence of fifteen years  -  at Chickering Hall on the 27th.  His company received a sparkling notice from the New York Times.

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Asa's troupe sang in New York and Brooklyn, took their tour south to Washington, and then returned to the New York area, for concerts at various halls and churches, including a benefit at Steinway Hall for the Women's Homeopathic Hospital.

By  the  time  John's  original  fifty  engagements  in  Philadelphia  were  past,   John  H.  Pilley  had  arranged  more.

Many voices suffer from the wear and tear of singing out to crowds day after day for years.  Notices, though, suggest that John's got steadily better, and his ability to manage it improved as well.  Lillie and Henry gave his company a youthful image and a broader repertoire.  They must have helped draw a younger audience.  Fanny's singing was important for producing Hutchinson-style harmonies.  Like Asa, when his own troupe included both Abby Anderson and Ella Ramsdell, John was now leading the classic lineup of his ensemble.

John's company finished their Philadelphia shows by the middle of March 1878 and began a trip to Washington, arriving on the 26th.  On April 18, they sang at the White House.  They had given twelve grand concerts in the past two weeks and had sung at nearly every charitable institution in the city.

In May, famed New York Times columnist Grace Greenwood wrote,  "[N]ot one of this family is a greater favorite with the public than a young recruit  -  Miss Phillips, a charming ballad-singer, with a peculiarly sweet, fresh, sympathetic voice."  John was always less ready to change his repertoire than was Asa, John being very much in sympathy with his listeners who wanted to hear the old songs sung in the old way.  Greenwood, though a personal friend, was not among that crowd.  Speaking again of Lillie, she said,  "It did not seem to me right to confine her to the Hutchinsonian style of music.  She is not of 'the tribe of Jesse,' or from 'the old Granite State.'  Indeed, I wish they would all resolve that they 'cannot sing the old songs.'  With a few exceptions they are completely of the past, and much of the old virtue has gone out of them  -  the first homely flavor of originality and quaintness."

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Members of John's company were making plans to visit California; but it was not until August that they started west.  Along the way, they picked up William L. Brown who acted as their advance agent from western New York to Chicago.  At Toledo they left Judson with Viola.  "We filled many engagements in Chicago,"  said John,  "with magnificent audiences.  We sang one night in the Baptist church at Lillie's home."  And at about this point or not much later,  we may surmise,  Henry and Lillie were married.

The Pattons, too, were on their way to the West Coast.   Around this time, they were in Minnesota on  "both business and family interests."  Those family interests were dear to their hearts; for on Tuesday, September 10, 1878, at Portland, Maine, Oliver Dennett Hutchinson married Nellie Drew.  No doubt, then, Abby and Ludlow came to give their love to the new couple.  Nellie, a real beauty, was the daughter of a Portland wholesale grocer and tea importer.  Not long after the wedding, she took to the road with the Tribe of Asa as their piano accompanist.

Asa's company toured through Indiana and Illinois  -  including a very successful stay in Chicago  -  and then through Missouri and on to Denver, Colorado, which they reached in early June.  They gave ten concerts and then sang their way to the high-altitude boomtown of Leadville, where they arrived on June 27, 1879.  Publicity for this tour gives the names of the members as Asa, Dennett, and Nellie Hutchinson, Carrie Wescott, and Alice Logan, with Mrs. Asa B. Hutchinson serving as secretary and treasurer.

John's family rode on the Union Pacific, making concert stops at such places as Omaha and Salt Lake City.  At Gold Hill, they sang to the miners hundreds of feet under ground.  From there they made their way through Sacramento to San Francisco.

Notices from this tour concentrate on John and Lillie.  "This lady,"  said a Fremont, Nebraska, paper,  "has a very fine soprano, broad in compass, remarkably full, sweet and pure in tone, highly cultivated and completely under control."  Lillie, said a Virginia City, Nevada, paper,  "possesses a soprano voice of great power and clearness and her singing is a real treat."

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Leadville, Colorado, was first settled as a gold-mining camp before the war; by fall 1861, 10,000 miners were at work in the California Gulch.  By the war's end, nearly everyone had moved on to other boomtowns; and Leadville remained a small camp.  This changed in June 1877, when the first building went up on the old town site.  Ten months later, Leadville boasted a population of 3,000, and it continued growing at a rapid pace.  One journalist cautioned that "This is a good place for men who have plenty of money and are experienced in mining."  It appears that most folks who rushed to Leadville at best had one or the other of these qualifications, but not both.  Yet, into this epidemic of Leadville fever stepped Mr. and Mrs. Asa B. Hutchinson.  They must have had ready cash from recent concert successes, but it is doubtful that either had experience in mining.

"The north side of Chestnut for a block,"  said a New York Times correspondent,  "has little else but drinking-saloons. . . .   These places are filled night and day by eager [ card ] players and drinkers, and double-shifts of dealers and bar-keepers are required to meet the ceaseless demand."  This, too, was one of the most notorious periods of lawlessness in the city's history.  One date  -  May 8, 1879  -  is called the  "Night Hell Let Loose."   A crime spree continued until November, when vigilantes took the law into their own hands.  None of this sounds like a situation Asa might be seeking.  Yet a later article said,  "So charmed was he with the place and its prospects that he at once disbanded his troubadors, renounced a profession that had made his name a household word all over the land, and became at once and forever a citizen of the 'Silver Queen.'  How thoroughly he has identified himself with Leadville, the records show."

"Mrs. Hutchinson,"  said a published report,  "made what was said to be a very profitable investment in a mine at Georgetown and proposes to own an interest in one at Leadville."   A follow-up article was headed, "A Lady's Luck: Mrs. Asa B. Hutchinson the Owner of the Richest Mine in Colorado."   "The information, coming from the source it does, is perfectly reliable, and there is no reason to doubt but that the popular singer's wife is this evening the wealthiest lady in the West."  Joanna must have been thrilled that she struck it rich on her first try.  Flushed with success, she planned further mining ventures.  Unfortunately, that perfectly reliable report was wrong.  Had she looked, she might have found words of caution in the news exchanges such as these which ran a couple months earlier.  "People were crazier about mining property than any other, and bought anything in the shape of a hole.  It was worse than gambling. . . .   Very little of what one heard about a mining camp was to be believed."   "[A]n old resident of Colorado expresses the opinion that there is something in the climate that 'warps the judgment or makes the people lie like blazes.'"

On July 1, 1879, Asa's company gave their fifth concert in Leadville, with more already announced.  Typically, the material was a mix of the old and the new  -  songs such as  "The Bridge of Sighs"  and  "King Alcohol"  alternated with his recent originals.  Carrie and Alice were given particular praise.

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One paper argued that many local people were  "starving for just what was given them by the Hutchinsons last night, namely, a cultured and refined evening of poetry, sentiment and song."

Soon Asa purchased the St. Julian Hotel and Restaurant.  One day, two freedmen came in to eat, but the waiters refused to serve them.  Asa and Dennett stepped in and showed these men hospitality.  The following day, the keeper of the saloon next door made remarks about Asa's actions which set off an altercation.  Asa was knocked down three times, but he kept getting up.  According to the Leadville Democrat,  "becoming dissatisfied, he retired from this."  From the fall of 1879 comes a report that he was investing in real estate and having several houses built, evidently as rental property.

Asa and Joanna had a bad case of mining fever, and Asa was thinking of ways to raise money for other ventures.  With Carrie Wescott and Alice Logan, he reassembled the Tribe of Asa concert company while Dennett went on ahead for a trip that would begin in St. Louis and make its way to Lynn.