By Joan Colburn Robertson<\/p>\n
According to our family stories, it is said that Ruby Harrington, a pianist who was from a wealthy family in Chicago, was disinherited for marrying George Alfred Colburn, a “poor” musician.\u00a0 Ruby’s father was of the Harrington & King, a metal perforating company.<\/p>\n
However, Ruby\u2019s husband George was not so poor that he had no education, as his father, Joseph Elliot Colburn,\u00a0was a physician (EENT) and artist.\u00a0 George had been educated at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago.\u00a0 He then taught music theory and violin at the Conservatory (1903-15), directed the band at the Northwestern Military Academy in Highland Park, Illinois (1902-15), conducted the Choral Society at Logansport, Indiana (1914-15), and was the assistant director of the Chicago Symphony at its summer home at Ravinia Park, Illinois (1913).\u00a0 He was hired to start the Winona Municipal Band in Winona, Minnesota (1915-18), which he left to accept a contract with the Northwestern Military School.<\/p>\n
George also composed and published music, some of which\u00a0is now archived in the Winona County Historical Society in Winona, Minnesota.\u00a0\u00a0He received a commission to compose and direct music for a 30-piece symphonic band for an historic pageant illustrating the discovery, settlement and history of the midwest to be presented in a theater at the Indiana Dunes.\u00a0 He also composed and published the music to be played with the silent film, Antony and Cleopatra, and directed a 15-piece symphonic orchestra for a performance at the Candler Theater in New York, where the 8-reel photoplay was shown.<\/p>\n
All in all, Ruby probably enjoyed her musical life with George, as she sometimes accompanied him in his violin performances, and played on many other occasions that we know of in her Winona years.\u00a0 They brought 6 children to Winona, including my father, who loved to sing.\u00a0 After George’s death in Chicago, Ruby returned to Winona with her two youngest sons, John and Robert, who both graduated from Winona High School.<\/p>\n
From later postcards she wrote to her son Robert we see that she lived for a while with John when he attended the University of Wisconsin.\u00a0 She seemed to long to go to Chicago to be near Robert, as she felt he would bring her near the musical life she missed.<\/p>\n
Some of this information was taken from an article in The Argus, the Winona County Historical Society Newsletter, Vol. 16, No. 4, July\/August 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Joan Colburn Robertson According to our family stories, it is said that Ruby Harrington, a pianist who was from a wealthy family in Chicago, was disinherited for marrying George Alfred Colburn, a “poor” musician.\u00a0… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drabek.com\/bobandfran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drabek.com\/bobandfran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drabek.com\/bobandfran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drabek.com\/bobandfran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drabek.com\/bobandfran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.drabek.com\/bobandfran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1054,"href":"https:\/\/www.drabek.com\/bobandfran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions\/1054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drabek.com\/bobandfran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drabek.com\/bobandfran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drabek.com\/bobandfran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}