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It is not known for certain whether the next phase of the Alleghanians career began with a July series of shows in Perham's Concert Rooms at 663 Broadway in New York City or sometime a little earlier, perhaps in some other hall.  We are not told whether a female voice or voices joined with those of the men of the original Alleghanians lineup.  Indeed, we must take it on faith that Oakley, Boulard, and Dunning were all three singing together once again.  Typically enough, we are not told even this much.  What we do know is that by the summer and fall of 1855, the Alleghanians were on tour and giving lots of concerts.  The group was entertaining in Boston at the end of August.

The Alleghanians sang "The Dearest Spot of Earth to Me Is Home" by W. T. Wrighton, a highly popular sentimental song which must have originated about this time.  The score is dated 1855.

Two years after the death of opera star Agatha States, an encyclopedic volume about music and musicians said that, when young, she "became known as principal vocalist of the Alleghanians."  The natural reading of the Agatha States entry in this 1876 book would imply that Agatha sang with the Alleghanians when both she and the vocal group were on the West Coast, which limits the possibilities considerably.  But a more extended San Francisco Chronicle profile of States  -  coupled with information, from independent sources, about her first marriage  -  makes this timing seem a great deal less than likely.

Though she was very young, huge-voiced Agatha States was already singing in public, apparently professionally, before leaving the East Coast for California.  The San Francisco Chronicle piece said specifically that she and her sister "came here to follow their profession" as singers.  So it seems by no means out of the question, nor would it be unprecedented, that States may have sung as a member of the Alleghanians when she was still a girl on the East Coast.  Abby J. Hutchinson was age 12 when she joined her brothers to form the original Hutchinson Family quartet.  Mary Durgin  -  the future "Marie" Packard of the Alleghanians  -  was a veteran featured singer in substantial professional entertainments before she reached her teens.  And just because one source called Agatha States the Alleghanians "principal vocalist" does not necessarily make it so.  She could have been, say, one of two female voices in the group, and the nature and importance of her role in the Alleghanians could have been improved upon as the story was told and retold and as she became a star vocalist, under her own name, years later.

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Since we are left to guess  -  as is so often the case  -  the official best guess of this work is that Agatha States sang with the Alleghanians in some capacity sometime in the greater 1855-1856 concert season.

The Alleghanians often sang a cappella, as did the Hutchinson Family; but the Alleghanians also liked to tour with a piano accompanist or a singing pianist.  Going back as far as the late 1840s, the Alleghanians had been working into the group's repertoire a few songs from the popular operas of the day.  And, as will be seen, the company showed a real inclination to take its music into many corners and many different cultures of the world.  One might wonder, then, whether this combination may have influenced a fascinating Agatha States innovation.

Sometime later, States organized a small company which performed complete operas, while a single pianist took the part of an entire orchestra.  Thus, with a relatively compact cast, she was able to boldly take opera to spots on the globe where full operas had never gone before.  Possibly the most frequently cited example, an early 1870s trip through Hawaii to Australia, looks suspiciously similar to the Alleghanians South Seas tour of a dozen years earlier.

The career of Agatha States as an opera star lasted less than a decade.  All but one genealogical and biographical source consulted for this work agreed on States' year of death and they all got it wrong.  Agatha States, for the record, died at New York City on Wednesday, September 2, 1874.

The effort of the Alleghanians to get back into the field of popular entertainment was next given a slight setback.  The group was to hold a series of concerts at Academy Hall, 663 Broadway, in connection with the Grand Dramatic Diorama of the Battle of Bunker Hill and Conflagration of Charlestown, a large-scale historical display  -  evidently a vintage yet must-see presentation  -  which was then postponed for some reason.  Before the postponement, an advertisement said, "The marching of troops, the prancing of horses, ships sailing, &c., all moved by singular mechanical skill, and with a precision to nature, and displays one of the most life-like and interesting exhibitions ever witnessed in this country."

In anticipation of the actual opening of these shows on Monday, October 1, advertising said that the Alleghanians would introduce "a varied programme of songs, glees, duets, &c."

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Group members were accustomed to singing around and in front of a great spectacle, their tour of the California Gold Rush being all the example that is needed.  In the instance at hand, the troupe may have been a bit upstaged by the mechanical marvel and overall splendor of the Battle of Bunker Hill diorama.  "The Alleghanians are giving concerts here every evening," reported a New York Times writer, "in connection with the dramatic Diorama of the Battle of Bunker Hill.  The latter is a remarkable work of mechanism, and decidedly worth seeing."  We are left to guess as to the worthiness of seeing and hearing the former, the Alleghanians.

Though attendance figures are not available, this New York production was said to have received strong patronage.  Evidently the vocal group also found encouragement in crowd sizes through this period.  Their own show, after all, did go on.

While this series of Alleghanians concerts was in its run at Academy Hall, Carrie Hiffert sang in the same building in one of the National Musical Union concerts.

After this came Alleghanians shows at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn on October 24 and October 25.  These engagements were billed as the group's first grand vocal concerts in Brooklyn "since their return from California."

The Alleghanians, as is quite often the case, seem to simply vanish at about this point.   A thing that is quite interesting this time is that Carrie Hiffert also appears to disappear.

Brooklyn's Summerfield Methodist Episcopal Church had a new building, and women of the church held a two-day fair.  On Wednesday, December 19, solo artist William H. Oakley entertained at this event.  But he was not among the company the second day.   Because . . .

On Thursday, December 20, 1855, in Connecticut, Richard Dunning married Mary Henrietta Olmsted.  How much longer Dunning remained with the group  -  or even whether he continued singing with the Alleghanians at all after this  -  seems to be unknown at the present time.  Contemporary lists of then-current group members are surprisingly scarce.  Either way, Oakley missed the second day of the Summerfield church's fair no doubt because he was in Connecticut attending the wedding of his friend, Richard Dunning.

In January the Alleghanians took part in the annual New York Typographical Society's printers banquet at the Assembly Rooms on Broadway.  This 1856 event must have been quite special, as it honored the 150th anniversary  -  a good round number  -  of Benjamin Franklin's birth.   A writer for the New York Daily Times said, "The main object of the festival  -  to aid the Printers' Free Library  -  drew together a very large number of persons, whose enjoyment of the varied entertainments continued until a very late hour, without occurrence of any kind to mar it."

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The Alleghanians sang at several points in the Typographical Society program, though the published report which was consulted only named one song title: "Glorious Union Forever."

One could easily get the impression that the sympathies of the majority of Alleghanians was with the Whigs.  As the Whig Party was rapidly coming unglued, group members may have feared the United States might do the same.  "Our Glorious Union Forever," the song selection at hand, may offer a hint at one very big thing that was on the minds of these singers in the first weeks of 1856.

The scarcity of documentation of the Alleghanians career is largely self-inflicted.  Most group members most of the time simply were not "keepers," as people more like the Hutchinsons are often called.  Members of the Hutchinson Family also were quite active in courting the press.  But at the same time, the Hutchinsons, who were outspoken social reformers, were "news" unto themselves in ways that members of rival groups seldom if ever were.  The Hutchinsons were the subjects of a tremendous amount of reporting.  Thus, the scarceness of documentation of the Alleghanians, relative to the documentation of the Hutchinsons, would be very difficult and probably even impossible to fix.

So, for instance, we are left to guess whether Richard Dunning stuck with the Alleghanians, following his wedding.  Chances seem pretty good that he may have.

We must guess whether Carrie Hiffert sang as a member of the group at this point.  This could probably go either way.  But it continued to be true that, at times when the Alleghanians disappeared from New York City-area concert rooms, Carrie Hiffert also seems to have vanished.

When we find a source saying that the Alleghanians sang at Mount Vernon in February 1856, we need to figure out in which state.  Ohio looks likely.

For years to come, the Alleghanians will provide opportunities for researchers to sharpen their guessing skills.  Yet slowly but steadily, holes in our knowledge of their individual lives and group career are getting filled.   A first rough draft of a book-length second edition of Voice and Spirit now exists, and additions and other changes are being made as opportunity permits.

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Odd as it may seem, in February 1856 and sometimes even later, the Alleghanians were still being presented as having just come home from California.  Though this is a mighty stretch, it must have been thought to be as good an explanation as any regarding why the group had been out of the public eye for a very long time.

On Friday, May 16, 1856, the Alleghanians once more resorted to an old stronghold, the Broadway Tabernacle.  Advertising for this event said, "The Alleghanians respectfully announce that they will give their first concert in this City since their return from California, at the Tabernacle, on Friday evening, May 16, when they trust the programme selected will meet the approbation of their former friends and patrons and the public generally."

Buckley's Serenaders, an uncommonly acclaimed minstrel troupe, was easily one of the most fascinating companies in New York at this time.  The Buckleys typically started shows with a variety of high-quality minstrel songs mixed with assorted comic antics.  Then the company shifted gears, most famously swinging into a burlesque of one of the popular operas of the day but at other times performing various works of comic musical theater.  The Buckleys led off the week of Monday, December 10, 1855, with their version of "the successful tragedy of Villikins and His Dinah, in two acts and three sad scenes  -  with the beautiful trick horse, in his waltzes, shottisches, and his great pedestal feat," plus a new burlesque of the Hutchinson Family, and featuring the "popular comedian, Bishop Buckley, in his original jokes, witticisms, &c."

The week of Monday, January 7, 1856, the Buckley company presented a new burlesque, Richard the Third; or, Shakespeare Murdered in Twenty Minutes.  Why wait for showtime for the comedy to begin, when we can work laughs right into the title.  Evidently this killing of a classic work by Shakespeare did nothing to tarnish the Buckley company's reputation, for soon enough the New York Times advised, "The only place worth going to for Ethiopian music is Buckley's Opera House."

The Buckleys revived their celebrated burlesque of the opera, Lucrezia Borgia, the week of Monday, February 18. The New York Times celebrated the event by heaping more praise on the company. "Buckley's Serenaders are by far the best in the City."

After this Buckley-style trip down memory lane, the troupe presented a new piece, The Court of King Iceberg; or, A Dream of Kane's Pole-ar Sea.

This new work closed the season for Buckley's Serenaders.

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The New York Times called the Buckleys' old theater "the only place where you can hear good negro minstrelsy free from vulgarity."  This was an important point for the Buckley company.  Nearly a year earlier, a Buckley's Serenaders classified advertisement came with the slogan-like phrase, "fun without vulgarity."

Though it was certainly news that the season was ending, the Times column had even bigger news.  "Buckleys are about removing to a new Hall, opposite the Metropolitan Hotel  -  built expressly for their increasing business."  The fact that reference to the Buckleys' "increasing business" came from an independent news source and not from the company's own promotional puffery is worthy of some attention.  The Buckley troupe was doing just fine.

The company's advertising said, speaking of the old location, "This Hall will be let, as the Buckleys intend traveling during the building of their new Hall. . . . "   And with those words, Buckley's Serenaders took temporary leave of the New York stage.  Soon after, Buckley's old hall became the site of a new presentation of the Battle of Bunker Hill and Conflagration of Charlestown.

"Thus far the Lord hath led me on."   - Isaac Watts

One of the main goals for this first edition of Voice and Spirit has been to lay the foundation for an eventual revised, greatly expanded second edition.  Thus far the Lord has led us on.   A full-length biography of the Alleghanians is very much needed, and it is starting to look feasible.  Whether it would take the form of a traditional, hardcopy book or remain as a World Wide Web-only publication is yet to be seen.  Either way, I am hoping many readers of these pages will keep an eye out for Voice and Spirit II.  If it is possible to make a full-length Alleghanians biography happen, my plan is to do it.

Alan Lewis,  August 14, 2007