boltonlanding

Homer Family This is a series of portraits of the family of composer Sidney Homer (1864-1953) and his wife contralto Louise Dilworth Homer née Beatty (1871-1947). Sidney Homer composed many of his songs with the voice of his famous wife in mind. Among his most famous songs are "A Banjo Song" (Weeden), "Requiem" (Stevenson), "Casey at the Bat" (Thayer), and "The House that Jack Built" ("Mother Goose.") Sidney was Louise's music theory teacher in Boston, MA.  After their marriage in 1895, they went to Europe for further voice coaching. Louise Homer's European debut in 1898 was in Vichy, as Leonora in La Favorita, and in 1900 she made her American opera debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City singing Amneris in Verdi's Aida.  She sang at the Met for 19 consecutive seasons, often singing opposite such acclaimed singers as Enrico Caruso, Geraldine Farrar, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink. She made many phonographic recordings with Victor Co.  Composer Samuel Barber was her nephew, and Louise performed several of his songs.  In 1923 and 1924 she was listed as one of the 12 greatest living women by the National League of Women Voters. [1] They had six children, the next-to-youngest Hester Makepeace Homer (1911-1967) ("Miss Happy", Hester Homer Henry), appears in this portrait with her mother and father. Known to everyone as "Miss Happy", Hester graduated from Dana Hall in 1929 and studied at the American Laboratory Theatre School in New York City.  She married Robert E. Henry, Jr. (1906-1973) in 1930. [2] [3] There are currently 34 photographs of the Homer family in the Bain Collection on Flickr.  You can view them all here.   They were first identified by Art Siegel, B-59, pennylrichardsca (now at ipernity), Wystan, swanq, and Richard Norton.

Louise Homer: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Homer The baby is apparently Helen Joy Homer (1915-1946), later the first Mrs. William Main Doerflinger, the youngest of the six Homer children. She was always called Joy, but one of her wedding announcements calls her "Miss Helen Joy," and when her older sister Louise married in 1921, the youngest sisters Hester Makepeace Homer and Helen Joy Homer are listed as her flower girls. query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60710F83A5B11728... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Homer Joy Homer had an eventful short life: she was a medical relief worker in China, wrote a memoir of her harrowing journey on foot (Dawn Watch in China), edited Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory, worked for the OSS in New Delhi during WWII; while in India, she was hurt in a car accident, and she eventually died from her injuries. She's buried in New York: www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nywarren/cemeteries/bolton.htm

More Bain/LOC photos of Madame Louise Homer:

I always love learning about fearless women throughout history. Thanks for the postings.

wonderful in one word !

pennylrichardsca (now at ipernity) I'm just reading Joy Homer's book and she was a newspaper reporter in China and was apparently financed by some newspaper / media, but also offered reports to US papers as a freelancer. She didn't intent to write a book at first. She also says she was educated at Smith College, and that she was in London before and worked with "slum dwellers" there (she mentions this comparing them with the Chinese coolis). Do you have more information about her?