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Re: the Adelina Patti thread, an interesting offshoot...
To recap: Adelina Patti was a child prodigy singer who performed prior to and during the CW. (Per the earlier post you can actually purchase a CD of the recording made of her singing later in life!) Adelina travelled with famous pianist, composer and conductor (who would support the Union) Gottschalk, who among other things composed and performed several versions of (Northerner) Dan Emmett's "Dixie" for the few years leading into to the CW. (source: Robert Offergeld, The Centennial Catalogue of the Published and Unpublished Compositions of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, New York: Stereo Review, 1970, 32).
Adelina's brother Carlo was a renowned violinist who travelled with his sister and Gottschalk in those pre-war years. He by 1861 was a conductor himself, and it turns out he was the very person responsible for formally popularizing the otherwise apolitical song "Dixie" as an anthem of the CSA. He chose it to play, with revised lyrics, for a stage walk-around in New Orleans that praised Southern pride. The New Orleans Washington Artillery picked it up as a quick-step, the war broke out, and the rest is history. (source: Richmond Dispatch, March 19, 1893)
After an 1862 tour with Gottschalk, Carlos joined the 2nd Confederate Tennessee (mounted?) Infantry, and at some point married actress Effie Germon. That marriage estranged Carlos from the rest of his family. (Carlos died of consumption in 1873 and was buried in St. Louis. The family wouldn't pay for it. He much later was re-interred in an extended family vault in Paris, France). As for that marriage, it eventually ended in a divorce.
The rest of the story: A photo of Effie, Carlo's wife, was found in the pocket of John Wilkes Booth at the time Booth was apprehended and killed. That photo was actually the bigger claim to fame for her. (source: http://www.picturehistory.com)
Dan Wykes
To recap: Adelina Patti was a child prodigy singer who performed prior to and during the CW. (Per the earlier post you can actually purchase a CD of the recording made of her singing later in life!) Adelina travelled with famous pianist, composer and conductor (who would support the Union) Gottschalk, who among other things composed and performed several versions of (Northerner) Dan Emmett's "Dixie" for the few years leading into to the CW. (source: Robert Offergeld, The Centennial Catalogue of the Published and Unpublished Compositions of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, New York: Stereo Review, 1970, 32).
Adelina's brother Carlo was a renowned violinist who travelled with his sister and Gottschalk in those pre-war years. He by 1861 was a conductor himself, and it turns out he was the very person responsible for formally popularizing the otherwise apolitical song "Dixie" as an anthem of the CSA. He chose it to play, with revised lyrics, for a stage walk-around in New Orleans that praised Southern pride. The New Orleans Washington Artillery picked it up as a quick-step, the war broke out, and the rest is history. (source: Richmond Dispatch, March 19, 1893)
After an 1862 tour with Gottschalk, Carlos joined the 2nd Confederate Tennessee (mounted?) Infantry, and at some point married actress Effie Germon. That marriage estranged Carlos from the rest of his family. (Carlos died of consumption in 1873 and was buried in St. Louis. The family wouldn't pay for it. He much later was re-interred in an extended family vault in Paris, France). As for that marriage, it eventually ended in a divorce.
The rest of the story: A photo of Effie, Carlo's wife, was found in the pocket of John Wilkes Booth at the time Booth was apprehended and killed. That photo was actually the bigger claim to fame for her. (source: http://www.picturehistory.com)
Dan Wykes
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