Thanksgiving Concert in 1887

On Thanksgiving Night, November 24, 1887, “Ye Old Folkes” Concert was held at the Opera House in Sandusky. Mrs. John Mack donated the original concert program to the Sandusky Library. The November 25, 1887 Sandusky Daily Register gives a detailed account of the event. The reporter credited Mrs .S. W. Butler and Mrs. Leeson as the chief organizers of the concert. The paper stated: “Mrs. S. W. Butler proposed and planned the concert, and almost alone, through many discouragements, worked it through.”
Concert participants wore costumes from the style of “ancient days.” Hymns and tunes were sung, with Mr. A. J. Nusley serving as the “singing master.” A quartet called the “Foure of Ye Men Singers,” including Mr. Talcott, Mr. McFall, Mr. Lockwood and Mr. Stroud, were a crowd favorite and performed several encores. (Walter Talcott’s obituary, found in the 1926 Obituary Notebook in the Archives Research Center, details Mr. Talcott’s talent.) Miss Fannie Loomis sang a solo called “Jedediah.” Mrs. Norbert Becker sang a song as “Jubilee Pendegrass.” Another hit of the evening was “My Johnny was a Shoemaker,” sung by May Elwell as “Belinda Bugler.” Malcolm Jennings “rendered a solo with fine effect.”

Attorney S. C. Wheeler sang a solo entitled “Ri Ti Tu Ri.” The Register says that Mr. Wheeler was “called out a second time and finally led off the stage by the ear by Deliverance Higgins.”
The newspaper article listed the program from the concert, and stated that the concert would be “long remembered as one of Sandusky’s greatest local events.” To find historical documents, newspapers and photographs from Sandusky’s past, visit the Archives Research Center of the Sandusky Library.