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Friday, 29 November 2024

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN THE SECOND HALF OF 1800; ELLA SHEPPARD P/15

                                                                  Read Part One HERE

In this story I will continue to focus on a woman named Ellas Sheppard. She lived from 1851 - 11915. Ella's skill as a pianist immediately drew the attention of Fisk treasurer and musician George White, who appointed her his choir's accomampanist and assistant choral director as he prepared his troupe for a tour of the North. Though frail and sickly, Ella valiantly remained with the troupe for seven years. She accompanied the choir on piano, oversaw many of their rehearsals, conducted the Jubilees from her position among the singers on stage, and continued to collect and transcribe spirituals until the troupe's repertoire numbered over a hundred.                                                                                                                                     

When in 1878, an exhausted and exasperated White finally resigned as director, Ella stood in for him for the troupe's last months. She joined White's subsequent troupe of Jubilees but retired from Jubilee work when he disbanded the group in 1882.

Ella built a house for her mother and half sister in Nashville, and married one of the most prominent black ministers in the US, Rev. George Washington Moore. They lived at first in Washington D.C., agitating against the saloons in their neighbourhood until it had been transformed into one of the most desirable areas in the city.

Returning to Frisk, she trained and inspired generations of Jubilees, and by the time of her death in Nashville in 1915, Ella had become in intellect, in spirit, and in musical attainment one of the truly gifted women of the world.

Rrad Part Sixteen HERE

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