This month’s story is a personal one and part of my maternal grandmother’s family history, dating back almost 100 years to the time of the Great Depression. It’s a story full of music and the struggles of a large family trying to survive a period of financial hardship. The story begins in Allegany County, in the town of Allen, where Edward Hotchkiss and Emma Harwood fell in love and married in 1912. Both were accomplished musicians—piano, organ, accordion, harmonica, and several other instruments were part of their repertoire.  In the early years of their marriage, it wasn’t uncommon for them to pack up their instruments and children in their horse-drawn wagon to visit family for an afternoon or evening of music. They would move from Allen to Portage in the 1920s, and then to Castile in 1928 with six children in tow.

My grandmother, Marguerite, and her identical twin sister, Marie, were born in 1913; their brother, Cecil, in 1916; two more daughters, Ruth (1919) and Mildred (1922); and another son, Lloyd, in 1928. Daughter, Ada, who was born in 1926, died when she was 18 months old in 1927 after a brief illness.

Edward was a timberman who worked in Letchworth State Park while the family was living in Portage and Castile. Emma, a trained schoolteacher, homeschooled her children until they moved to Castile. Besides reading, writing, and arithmetic, she taught them to play the piano and sing. Edward was also involved in teaching his children to play other instruments. My grandmother and her sister, Marie, often sang duets at their church in Hunt, and the family also gave concerts there on special occasions. Instead of a horse and wagon, instruments and kids were stuffed into an automobile to climb the hills to Hunt Baptist Church—no easy feat.

The Hotchkisses lived on South Main Street in Castile in the well-known W. F. Graves house, which was located near where Elitsac is today. (If memory serves, the house was torn down sometime in the 1970s.) The stock market crash of 1929 changed everything for the Hotchkiss family. Work was scarce for everyone, but for Edward, it was especially hard as building jobs plummeted, and so did the demand for lumber. The challenge of providing for his family met a crisis point, and he turned to music for the answer. There was no question that both children and parents were skilled musicians, so Edward and Emma decided to form the Hotchkiss Family Band to generate much-needed income.

Their repertoire included gospel numbers, hymns, and old-time music that they knew by heart. It wasn’t long until they were playing for fund-raising dinners for fire departments and civic organizations. Edward played the zither and harmonica; Emma was the accordion player; Marguerite was on the guitar and harmonica; Marie and Cecil were violinists; and Ruth played the harmonica. Mildred and Lloyd were too young to be involved, and soon Emma had to step away after becoming pregnant and giving birth to another son, Clayton, in January 1931. A young man who boarded with the family replaced her on the accordion.

By 1932, Edward hired a booking agent, Jason S. Hewitt of Hunt, to help manage their appearances. The band’s calendar was full, but payment wasn’t always a set fee. Many times, they received just a meal and a freewill offering, having to depend upon the generosity of the audience. Many of the jobs were local, which helped with expenses, especially the Castile churches and the Castile Sanitarium, which often asked the family to play. The band was regularly in Nunda, Hunt, Springwater, Bliss, Pike, Hermitage, and Batavia. They were recognized in the Buffalo Evening News in May 1932 as a “noted family of musicians.” But May 1932 was also a time of loss for the family when nine-year-old Mildred died from complications of appendicitis. In June of that year, Marguerite and Marie graduated from Castile High School, remaining at home to help their mother with young Lloyd and Clayton while continuing to play in the band.

The band was booked in early 1933, and they also looked forward to the birth of another baby. But that joyful anticipation turned to tragedy on July 12, 1933, when both Emma and her baby son died during a difficult childbirth at Warsaw Hospital. Emma and her baby boy were laid to rest in Hunt’s Hollow Cemetery days later. My great-grandfather was devastated by their loss, struggling to keep his family together as everyone dealt with mind-numbing grief. Edward soon fell into a severe depression, but he kept the commitments the band had made through the fall of 1933 and into 1934.

In 1934, Edward received an offer from his brother, George, who lived in Cleveland and was employed by the Volunteers of America (VOA). This was a faith-based organization that organized summer camps for underprivileged children and worked with low-income families to secure housing for them. George offered his brother and family housing and pay if they would perform for VOA events, and he additionally promised to pay for Cecil’s tuition at an engineering school. It seemed like a good change for the entire family, and they packed up and drove to Cleveland late in 1934 or early 1935. Unfortunately, George didn’t make good on his promises to his brother, although Edward and the family kept theirs to him. Unable to make a go of it in Cleveland, the family dispersed in different directions in 1936. My grandmother, Marguerite, and her sister, Ruth, returned to Castile, while Edward, Marie, Cecil, and the two youngest boys went to Ithaca, New York. My grandmother worked briefly at a tearoom on Beechwood Avenue in Castile, where she received room and board as part of her wages. She soon met my grandfather, Ralph Howe, a native of Nunda, and they were married on November 1, 1936, settling in Castile. Ruth and Cecil also married in 1936, and Edward relocated back to Allegany County with Marie, Lloyd, and Clayton. He remained a timberman until his retirement in the 1950s and passed away from leukemia in 1962 at age 69.

Although the family never played together as a band again, my mother has warm memories of her grandfather playing the piano and singing at his home in Belvidere, and her Uncle Cecil played his violin at her wedding. My grandmother was very private about her music and never spoke to me about the band, but she played the piano or organ occasionally and could gloriously whistle songs like a bird. It was pretty amazing when I was a little girl. Although the family band ended on a sad note, the Hotchkisses remained a close and loving family over the years, and I spent many happy times with my grandmother, her siblings, and their families. And I’m grateful for the musical heritage passed down from my great-grandparents, Edward and Emma.