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Early Music Lessons

When Enos (Enos was Grandpa Harley's brother)and I were boys in the early seventies, maybe as late as 1874, when we were about 9 and 14; a man named Lewis Gade came around from time to time. He was an Italian peddler, a sort of roving musician, and an excellent accordion player. He sold organs and melodeons, and one summer we bought a melodeon. Mr. Gade knew a young girl, Fanny Wren, from Champaign County, who was a music teacher, and the family secured her to teach music to Enos and me.

Mr. Gade traveled around in a big covered spring wagon, drawn by two horses. He was about forty or more years old. After we bought the melodeon, Mr Gade organized a music class consisting of seven pupils…Ike and John Becker, Celia Wheelock, Mary Jennie and Sam Folkerth, Enos and I; and taught by Fanny Wren. She made her headquarters at our house and taught these pupils on our melodeon. Each one of us learned a different piece. Mine was "Shall we Gather at the River?"

Enos and I got our lessons free or rather in return for her board and room at our house. She was there for about three months, then went back to Champaign County. Our folks corresponded with her for some time thereafter. That is how music was introduced to the Harley family.

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