Bits & Pieces: Horse-drawn Hearses, Local Boy Makes Good, and Music, Music, Music!

Bits & Pieces is a continuing series of posts containing scrapbook snippets that have great info but are too short for stand-alone posts. Some of these small items are too good to leave behind!

1. Hearses and Funeral Customs

The post of  July 31, 2016 included an ad for Kipping & Sons, Undertakers, showing a drawing of a stately hearse pulled by two horses. Sarah later preserved these other two images of hearses used during her childhood days in Carrollton, Kentucky. (She was born in 1883.)

 

 She wrote this brief commentary:
Beautiful hearses and horses with black nets with tassels thrown over them to keep off the flies. Sometimes there were plumes on the horses' heads. Often for a child's funeral there was a white hearse with white horses, etc., but the usual proceedure [sic] was to carry the little baby's coffin (and there were so many then).

  

2. Major Allan W. Gullion – Local Boy Makes Good

Sarah didn't say how this man was connected with her family. He was born in Carrollton about three years before Sarah, so maybe they were acquaintances – or maybe she saved his picture because he was a local hero. The undated article accompanying the photo reads:
Major Allen Wyant Gullion was born in Carrollton, Ky., in 1880. After completing his public school education he entered Centre College in 1897 and graduated in 1901, with the Degree of Bachelor of Arts. He was valedictorian of his class and prominent in one of the oldest literary societies. From Centre he immediately entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated in 1905. He later served with distinction in the Philippines, Hawaii, Mexico and many parts of the United States. While Commandant of the University of Kentucky, he received the degree of Bachelor of Law, in 1914. He was Judge Advocate of the Third Corps in the World War in France and Germany, and later was Judge Advocate of the Eastern Department and the Second Corps Area; at this time he was stationed at Governors’ Island, New York, and he was at this place from 1919 to 1924. Since that time he has been connected with the office of the Judge Advocate General. In 1918 he received a Distinguished Service Medal for “Exceptional Meritorious and Distinguished services in the National administration of the selective service law from May 4, 1917 to March 26, 1918. He married Miss Ruth Mathews of New Castle, Ky., in 1904, and has six attractive children. At present he is stationed at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.

3. Music, Music, Music!

Sarah's sister, Leonora Alice Howe (1896-1967) taught piano lessons in Carrollton and scheduled occasional recitals featuring performances by her students. This recital program (undated, of course) provides names of her students and also the titles of songs that may have been popular at the time. The names on the far right of the program identify the composers.

Items like this can be gold for researchers trying to place their ancestors in a specific location.

The  cover of the program gave the date and time – "Friday, May 20th, at 3:00 P.M.," but not the year. Based on the program's placement in the scrapbooks – and considering . . . 

• that Leonora was born in 1896 and apparently started teaching after 1920, when she was listed in the federal census as having no occupation, but before 1930, when she was listed as a musician ...
• that student Mary Alice Salyers (the teacher's niece) was born in 1910 and likely wouldn't be performing in a recital much before the age of 8 ...
• that Mary Alice and the Salyers family moved away from Carrollton to Richmond, Kentucky, circa 1929, when Mary Alice was entering her senior year of high school ... 

this event probably took place in the mid-1920s.

Names of Performers:
Mary Alice Salyers, C. B. Love Jr., Mary Alice Carlisle, Louis Tharp Jr., J. Leslie Miller Jr., Emma Frances Banks, T. B. Forbes Jr., Louise Banta, Emma Hollis Harrison, Anna Mildred Tharp, Wilhelmina Schuerman, Joseph Kee Wetherill, Margaret Deatherage, Martha Frances Mitchell, Artye Hill Boyd, Mary Anna Hayes, Kathryn Salyers, Martha Nan McCrackin