Morrison County Municipal Bands

Ok, we don't know about more than Buckman and Pierz Bands, but those towns are MY Morrison Co, ya know?  (I'm still reading Nathan Richardson's History of Morrison County, and HIS Morrison Co was pretty much Little Falls.  We each call it our own way...lol)
The only evidence we've found of a band in Buckman is what my mom's dad, Anton Janson,  wrote.  He said

"Every age group had its special activities.  A  conspicuous group was the Buckman Concert Band, a clamorous tribe of 14 members.  I played the Baritone."

Nope, no picture, and no year mentioned.

BUT, we do have an undated photo of the Pierz Band, so clues to what year it was occupied us for some time.

Now, Larry and I have a really informal method of cross-indexing that works very well.  It's called "Larry's memory".We come across a photo like this one, and HE remembers that we previously found a photo on Ancestry of a man named Stumpf... didn't he have a band uniform on?  Wasn't he in fact holding a horn?

And, in our division of labor I'm the keeper-of-random-stuff-we-find, I'll go searching my endless picture files, and he's almost always right.





Taa-daaa:

The man he remembered was Theodore Stumpf, who was probably in this group.  Theo was born in 1863, and looks to be 35 or so?  Then the group photo would be about 1898-1900.

Another interesting possibility in the group pic concerns the director (probably the man right in the middle with Mitch Miller hands, behind the bass drum).  We think he might be William Bahns, who was married to Katherine Naber, mom's aunt.  "We" found evidence that William and Katherine were married in Iowa and moved to Pierz when a Band Director job opened up.  It's possible too that the rest of the Naber family moved to Buckman then.


So, how does the Stumpf family connect to the Hesch family?  Well, Mathias (the one mentioned in the blog header up there) had a son named John.  John had a daughter named Marion, who married Edwin Stumpf.

We found the name Stumpf in the Bohemian church books, too, so the relationships between families might be way longer than that.

Bonus Band leader:  This is Thomas Hesch, director of the Honolulu Community Concert Band ☺.  There are 71 videos of the band on YouTube, but this one, of the HCCB combined with the Hawaii Pacific University Symphonic Band is not only great music, but there are close-ups of Mr. Hesch.  Think he just might be family?

Let's claim him anyway, ok?