In 1958, near the end of his long life, Herbert Stavely Sammond (1871-1964) authored a brief recollection of his musical career, Seventy Years at the Console . In it he credits his friends with the suggestion to write his life story, yet nonetheless finds purpose in the enterprise: "I am carrying out the suggestion, hoping that those who read it may find courage and inspiration to keep a’going, despite any handicap one may encounter along the way."
Sammond's life was a success story in spite of inauspicious early years. He was born December 4, 1871 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father, Charles Edward Sammond, emigrated from England and settled in Brooklyn where he married and had three of his four children. The family headed west and settled in Milwaukee where they remained until the untimely death of Charles around 1875. The youngest of four children, Herbert migrated to Brooklyn with his mother, brother, and two sisters to be near his mother's family. Two years later his mother followed his father to the grave, and Herbert and his two sisters were sent to the Brooklyn Orphan Asylum. Herbert spent four years at the asylum until he was adopted by an aunt and uncle (Jane and Joseph Ward) in Brooklyn, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Sammond developed an aptitude for music early on, taking piano lessons and becoming organist and choirmaster of the Greenwood Heights Reformed Church (42nd Street and 7th Avenue, Brooklyn) while still an adolescent. Greenwood Heights was the first in a long succession of Brooklyn- and Manhattan-based churches that Sammond served as organist and choirmaster. An abbreviated list of these churches includes: Park Congregational Church (7th Street and 6th Avenue, Brooklyn, 1893-1900), Our Lady of Victory Church (Throop Avenue and McDonough Street, Brooklyn, 1900-1904), Classon Avenue Presbyterian Church (Classon Avenue and Monroe Street, Brooklyn, 1904-1907), Clinton Avenue Congregational Church (Clinton and Lafayette Avenues, Brooklyn, 1907-1921), and the Middle Collegiate Church (Second Avenue and 7th Street, Manhattan, 1921-1956) from which he retired with the honorific Minister of Music Emeritus.
Sammond did not limit his activities solely to the console. During World War I he acquired a military job as the Song Leader of forts in Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Rockaway County. He granted private music lessons and served as conductor of several choral organizations, including the Flushing Oratorio, the Elizabeth (New Jersey) Oratorio Society, the Apollo Men's Club of Asbury Park (New Jersey), and most famously of all, the Morning Choral Society of Brooklyn. The Morning Choral Society was founded in 1919 by Sammond as a women's amateur vocal group. Over the years it gained an esteemed reputation among the churchgoing citizens of Brooklyn, and his retirement from the group in 1949 met with fanfare and local media attention. The Morning Choral Society eventually disbanded in 1962, two years before Sammond's death.
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Source:
- Sammond, Herbert Stavely.
Seventy Years at the Console. New York: published independently, 1958.
From the guide to the Herbert Stavely Sammond papers, Bulk, 1891-1958, 1885-1964, (Brooklyn Historical Society)
