EUTERPE: A MUSICAL HISTORY OF THE MID-HUDSON Barbara A. Pierce*
A double quartet, composed of the Poughkeepsie area's best tenors and bases, substituted for the regular choir at the annual Memorial Day service at the Washington Street Methodist Church in 1886. The octet was well received. The singers enjoyed performing together. The situation was right for the formation of a men's glee club. They called it Euterpe, from the muse who presided over the art of music in Greek Mythology. The club's eighty-four year history is a record of some of the Hudson Valley's most prominent musicians and musical events, and of the area business and professional men who knew the pleasures of fellowship in song. Twenty-five men assembled that summer in a room above Hickok's Music Store at 342 Main Street, now a part of the Luckey, Platt and Co. department store. Among the businessmen were Charles A. Brooks, who operated a woodworking factory on Front Street, Hubert Zimmer of a jewelry firm, Albert A. Simpson of Adriance, Platt & Co., Thomas J. Swift, a attorney and graduate of Yale, Lucilus H. Moseley, a Market Street haberdasher. Other Poughkeepsie residents included Clarence J. Reynolds, William Schickle, cashier of the Fallkill National Bank, Frank J. Schwartz, pharmacist, and Alonzo H. Vail. Well-known musicians among the charter members included Charles G. Buck who was associated with the First Reformed and Congregational Churches and who later became professor of church music at a California theological seminary; Peter Deyo, father of the prodigy Ruth Linda Deyo, who made her professional debut in Poughkeepsie in 1904 as a concert pianist; and Charles M. Eastmead, associated with the Congregational, Washington Street and Presbyterian Churches, and conductor of the Orpheus and Mendelssohn Glee Clubs and the St. Cecelia Society; Charles Hickok, son of music dealer James Hickok, and a famed accompanist who became Poughkeepsie's musical entrepreneur in the 1890s and brought Pederewski, Schumann-Heink and others to the area; George W. Halliwell who performed as a bass with several clubs and choirs. Other musicians were singers Elmer E. Eastmead and Byron M. Marble, St. Paul's organist Claude H. Valentine, and well-known conductors Thomas J. Macpherson and Edward M. Valentine. The remaining charter members of Euterpe were Charles Rosenmaier, Thomas Davies, William G. Esser, Charles E. Schaffer, Henry M. Taylor and Robert E. Taylor. *Mrs. Pierce, a member of the Dutchess County Historical Society, is the wife of Richard T. Pierce, a Euterpe member and former president of the Glee Club. Mrs. Pierce is a graduate of the University of Rochester, a former teacher of secondary school social studies, and the author of historical teatures which have appeared in weekly newspaper of Dutchess County.
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