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In the 1872-1873 concert season, the Alleghanians was a company of good size and widely varied talents.  Charles I. Phelon's vocal part was bass.  He sang humorous songs and played bells.  Like James M. Boulard, Phelon was a New Englander who learned music according to Lowell Mason's system.  His father, Capt. Henry A. Phelon, was a highly successful and famed sea captain, most noted, we are told, for his Arctic voyages, while Charles' brother, also named Henry A. Phelon, was a well-known Union navy captain during the Civil War.  Evidently an inheritance gave Charles I. Phelon independent means.  He served as the Alleghanians' treasurer.

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L. Percy Williams made his debut as a harmonica soloist at Boston in November 1871.  He must have played this instrument in a holder similar to the style popularized in the 20th century by Woody Guthrie.  It is said that Williams played melodies without use of his hands and played guitar and harmonica simultaneously.  Alleghanians publicity declared that, prior to this, the harmonica had been treated as a toy.  Williams sang tenor, and harmonica seems to have been his main instrument.

The Alleghanians' "brass" instruments evidently were actually made of silver and were created on order of D.G. Waldron under the supervision of Professor David C. Hall of the Boston instrument-making firm, Hall & Quinby.  It seems that the Alleghanians, or at least Waldron, affectionately called these instruments the Ladies' and Gents' Orchestrial Band.

William Henry Mershon's background with drums and brass band instruments certainly broadened the Alleghanians' musical range.  In addition to contributing dazzling drum and cornet solos, Mershon was a baritone singer.  Many, many people in these years called themselves professors of music, but this man actually became one.  He founded the Mershon School of Music, and he was on the faculty of Taylor University and other institutions of higher learning.  Mershon, who died in 1931, must have been among the last living Alleghanians.

Contralto vocalist and second bell player, Belle Durgin was the same person we met in 1852 as "Isabelle the Gipsey," though by this time she was fully grown into adult gypsy life.  While with the Alleghanians, she was a singer of comic songs.  Belle was a diverse musical talent who likely contributed to Alleghanians performances in many ways in addition to serving as a female humorist, playing bells, and taking her part in the group's harmonies.  The value of a contralto voice to Rainer Family- and Hutchinson Family-style singing cannot be overemphasized.  Later Belle married Frank Moore, who was previously noted here as a performer in a November 1863 Blaisdell Brothers Bell Ringers concert in New York.

For some reason probably uniquely his own, "Miss Marie Packard" was what D.G. Waldron liked to call the principal vocalist of this Alleghanians lineup.  Mary E. Durgin, once quite a remarkable child prodigy, became the second wife of veteran musician Jesse Bullock Packard of Charlestown, Massachusetts.  Jesse normally went by his initials, J.B.  Mary and J.B. had one child, Chester S. Packard, before moving from Massachusetts to Bloomington, Illinois, where a good number of J.B.'s brothers and sisters had settled.  This relocation must have happened in 1865.  J.B.'s brother, Dr. Charles R. Packard, moved from Massachusetts to Bloomington at about this same time, and it seems likely these brothers relocated together.  Charles and J.B. may have been the core of the Packard Brothers musical unit noted by D.G. Waldron in the 1873 Alleghanians songster in his capsule biography of Mary.

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J.B. is said to have died at Bloomington in 1866, though so far contemporary documentation has been elusive.  After her husband's death, Mary returned to Exeter, New Hampshire, where she supported herself and her son by teaching private music lessons.  She joined the faculty of the Robinson Seminary in Exeter when the school opened in September 1869.

Mary, who had a slightly otherworldly look, may have been the most interesting member of the group.  The troupe's publicity quoted the New York Tribune as saying, "Miss Packard has a voice so plaintive, sweet, and so easily controlled, and a charm and grace of manner so homelike, that we were almost in love with her 'at first sight.'"

Waldron, Packard, and Durgin gave this version of the Alleghanians as strong New Hampshire ties as those of contemporary lineups of the Hutchinson Family, who sang their New Hampshire-titled family theme song, "The Old Granite State," night after night.  Charles I. Phelon, additionally, was a Massachusetts man, while Frank L. Benjamin was connected with Connecticut.  By this time, the group had shifted its base from New York City into New England and most notably into southern New Hampshire.

By the time D.G. Waldron took over sole management of the Alleghanians, or possibly sometime after, he stopped serving as the troupe's advance agent.  In 1873, the person carrying out these duties was George C. Hurlburt.

This project has made very heavy use of two Alleghanians songsters, one being The Alleghanians, Vocalists and Swiss Bell Ringers' Songster, a volume we believe was issued in 1873.  It has some shortcomings, but they are truly trivial when compared to the vast amount of help this booklet has provided.  Without the 1873 songster, for instance, I would have never learned about Mary and Belle Durgin and would have never seen Mary's exceptionally informative letters.   A tip of the hat to D.G. Waldron and his 1872-1873 season musical colleagues.

"The Red, Red Rose," a love song by Robert Burns, was one of the pieces sung by the Alleghanians at this time.

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Other notable Alleghanians concert program selections from this time include "Then You'll Remember Me" from the M.W. Balfe opera, The Bohemian Girl, and the new "Was There Any Harm in That" with lyrics by the prolific George Cooper and music by C.F. Shattuck.  "When Daylight's Going" is a very strange gothic piece which seems to have more to do with the Dark Is Rising series of children's books than with any other songs in the Alleghanians' repertoire.  The apparently little-known "When the Dew's on Flower and Thorn" is passionate in a physical sort of way that songs of the genteel repertoire generally are not.

Mary E. Packard, in a letter to Florence E. Chipman, spoke of "years of singing every night."  It must have been the early to mid-1870s, a time when she toured with the Alleghanians, that she had in mind.  No other known phase of her career was likely to have been quite this busy.  So her comment would seem to speak to the success of these times, not just for herself but also for her fellow group members and for proprietor D. G. Waldron.  And this must have been a happy period.  Mary told her niece, in the same letter, "I . . . know how very sweet it is to be feted, admired, loved, and over all how grand it is to move an audience of 500 or 10,000 with a single throb of music. . . . "

The Plain Dealer of North Vernon, Indiana, announced a Tuesday, April 1, engagement of the Alleghanians in that community at Whitcomb's Hall.  Sometime no earlier than 1873, the Alleghanians gave a concert at Fort Worth.  And though we cannot specifically place this show in the year 1873, neither can we specifically place it in any other year; but it is worth considering here because it is a sign, and a great one, that the group was touring really widely still or once more.

In the 1872-1873 concert season, Frank Benjamin and Mary Packard were joining their voices in the song, "Oh, May'st Thou Dream of Me."

"Sweet Spirit, Hear My Prayer," from William Vincent Wallace's grand romantic opera Lurline, was another popular song the Alleghanians were touring with in and around 1873.

A song, "Come Once Again," by George S. Weeks was published in London in 1874 saying, "Sung by the composer at the concerts of the 'Alleghanians.'"  Weeks was previously a member of an 1870 James M. Boulard and Carrie Hiffert vocal and bell-ringing group and likely had a good deal of history entertaining with Boulard and the Alleghanians.

That spring, the Alleghanian company was performing in Canada.   A March 28, 1874, note from D.G. Waldron, which appeared on a poster advertising upcoming Toronto-area concerts, said that Frank L. Benjamin "is lying quite ill, having been under the physician's care since our last concerts here."  Some references to Frank Benjamin's death were made in connection with his Alleghanians membership, so it seems likely the 1874 note reported his final illness.

Agatha States died at her New York City home on Wednesday, September 2, 1874.  She returned to the United States from Australia, arriving at San Francisco in early July.  Evidently it was on her way from San Francisco to New York that "she caught a violent cold; this resulted in pleurisy, which proved fatal."  She was survived by her second husband and two children from her first marriage.

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Cal Mandeville, Jennie Mandeville Parsons, and Alicia Mandeville Thorne were close relatives of Agatha States.  Sources vary as to whether they were her siblings or her cousins, as sources vary as to whether Agatha's birth surname was Gaynor or Mandeville.  I believe Agatha's birth name was Mandeville and that Cal, Alicia, and Jennie were her brother and sisters.  These three and their families died on November 4, 1875, in one of the great West Coast maritime disasters of the 19th century, when the wooden sidewheeler, the Pacific, sank off Cape Flattery, Washington.

Family history postings on the World Wide Web agree that Agatha's first husband, William N. States, also died in 1875, though they offer no details.

The 1872-1874 lineups of the Alleghanians seem to have been major crowd pleasers.  It appears that the Alleghanians may have had two or three more successful years, but the currently available data starts thinning out quickly by this time.

The Great Depression of the 1870s  -  the longest period of business contraction in American history  -  had the economy in a downward spiral by this point, and no doubt it took a massive toll on the entertainment industry.

The Alleghanians were touring in the Canadian Northwest in July 1875.

In June 1876, James M. Boulard and Carrie Hiffert returned from London to New York on the steamship Anglia.  We may guess from a published passenger list that R.W. Bell and John Baird may have been with them as members of a concert company, but it really is only a guess.

An Alleghanians songster, The Merry Austins' Alleghanians Song Book, is dated 1878.  This is an inviting item for further research, and it is totally puzzling until then.  What, for instance, was a Merry Austin?   And why was this printed in St. Louis?

In 1879, James M. Boulard and Carrie Hiffert once again sailed for Europe, in company of veteran Alleghanian Walter Field.

The 1881 United Kingdom census professionally paired the name, Caroline Hiffert, with a wonderfully garbled rendering of the name, James M. Boulard.  But the age given for this Caroline Hiffert is off by a generation.  Since, later still, Carrie Hiffert was enumerated in the United States Census as the widowed mother of one child  -  a child who, by that time, was no longer living  -  it seems sensible to consider that Carrie Hiffert may have had a daughter, a singer, who was also called Carrie Hiffert and that, at one time, this daughter sang professionally with James M. Boulard.  Of course, there are other possibilities.  But any Hiffert who performed with Boulard or with some lineup of the Alleghanians would almost certainly have been a close blood relative or close inlaw of the Carrie Hiffert who was a featured vocalist with the group starting in 1846 or 1847.

A Web posting of information about happenings in and around Keswick in October 1880 includes the announcement of a concert by the Alleghanians.  Keswick is in the United Kingdom in Cumbria, south of Carlisle.  The Web document says, "Alleghanians! (Vocalists and Bell Players) - 'The most charming musical treat ever enjoyed' - will give their elaborate and surprising musical entertainment in the Oddfellows' Hall, Keswick."  It seems about certain that this was the group that included James M. Boulard, Carrie Hiffert, and Walter Field.

Boulard, Hiffert, and Field returned from London to New York on the steamship Circassia in September 1882.

What would a timeline be without an outlier?   The timeline used in this project has one.   A notice of a recent show by the Goodyear, Cook and Dillon Minstrels at Columbia Hall in Olympia, Washington, appeared in the April 19, 1889, issue of the "Mere Mention" column of the Washington Standard newspaper.  Columnist John Miller Murphy said, along with other things, that the minstrel performance had been excelled by those of the Jubilee Singers and the Alleghanians.  The obvious reading of this passage implies that the Alleghanians had played Olympia not long before the Goodyear, Cook, and Dillon minstrel company.  If this reading should prove to be correct, then the John Miller Murphy column places the Alleghanians in the concert-giving field far later than previously thought.

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A few group members were celebrated late in life close to home and perhaps, in a few instances, nationally.  James M. Boulard and William H. Mershon are two known examples.  Many other people connected with the Alleghanians may never have been allowed the priviledge of taking a final public bow, because of dying young and/or unexpectedly, dying far away from home, dying at a time generally beyond the reach of collective memory of their glory days on the concert stage, or from some other cause.  Possible examples include Frederick Buckley, Belle Durgin, Carrie Hiffert, Jesse Hutchinson, Jr., William H. Oakley, Jesse Bullock Packard, and Daniel G. Waldron.

The Alleghanians vocal group and band of Swiss bell ringers was a popular, diversely-talented, ambitious, long-lived, and intriguing company whose travels, for their times, were expansive almost beyond belief.  These musicians, no doubt, did some hard traveling because it was a way of life they loved.  But also it was their endeavor to make this world a lovelier place by performing popularly attractive music far, wide, and often.

One of the finest brief testimonials to this wandering festival of beauty, the Alleghanians, ran in Horace Greeley's prestigious New York Daily Tribune, and it is well worth repeating.  It said, "The Alleghanians deserve great credit for all they have done in the cause of Music, and for the high-toned character they have uniformly sustained through the land."

"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

[Since that August 14, 2007, date, in fact, I have pulled together a first rough draft of a second edition of Voice and Spirit.   I would hesitate to call the rough draft "book-length" quite yet.  But it is inching up in that direction.  The new manuscript has not only been lengthened:  parts have been reorganized, while other parts have been rewritten.  The rough draft second edition is now really quite different from this first edition.  How long it will take to finish work on the second edition and in what form it will be published are things that are totally unknown at this point.  Meanwhile, if you need more information or if you have comments to make, please e-mail us by way of the contact link toward the bottom of the Web page.  -  A.L.,  September 25, 2007]