Alto Helen Travis discovered a flyer and score that add three previously unknown performances to the Society's total—856 performances in 135 years, and still counting!
The materials were found in a house that has been in Helen's family for many years. She has donated them to the Oratorio Society Archives on behalf of the Nichols/Taylor/Travis families.
     The flyer and score pertain to the three-day Ocean Grove Summer Music Festival, August 12-14, 1896. The concerts were conducted by Walter Damrosch and featured the Oratorio Society of New York, the New York Symphony Orchestra, and a chorus of 1,000 children conducted by Tallie Morgan, a leading music teacher and temperance orator. Tickets were sold through the OSNY office and cost 25¢.
     The flyer and score came from the estate of Olivia and Martin Travis (Helen’s parents) and was found in the basement of a 200-year-old house known as “The Homestead.” They were found in the cellar, in a file of old librettos, flyers, piano/cello/violin music, etc. that was compiled by Helen’s mother. As a child studying piano at the Mannes School, she heard Walter Damrosch give a children’s lecture on Wagner’s Ring, with members of the orchestra illustrating it. She wrote, “we all piled out to the auditorium during one of my lessons to listen to little Lenny Bernstein from Boston, age 11, play Clementi! I was 12." Her mother was also a member of Frank Damrosch’s People’s Chorus Union, founded in 1892 for the working people of New York City. Given the age of Helen’s documents, her grandparents were most likely also involved in Oratorio Society related activities.
     The house was purchased in 1809 by Helen’s great-grandfather, John White Treadwell Nichols, from Samuel A. Jones. It had been built by his great-uncle, Maj. Walter Jones, a descendent of Major Thomas Jones of "keeping up with the Joneses” and Jones Beach fame.