Feb 26, 2009 - Sale 2171

Sale 2171 - Lot 343

Price Realized: $ 18,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 8,000
THE ORIGINAL VIRGINIA JUBILEE SINGERS (MUSIC.) MCADOO, ORPHEUS. Large and rich archive of the McAdoo and Allen families and the McAdoo Jubilee Singers. Includes many early photographs, documents, correspondence and ephemera including several carved African objects, a large scrapbook kept by Orpheus McAdoo chronicling the tours of the group in South Africa and Australia, several smaller albums, address books, and objects collected by the McAdoo family. should be seen. Vp, 1886-1930's
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Additional Details

Orpheus Myron McAdoo was born in Greenborough, N.C. in 1858. He graduated from Hampton Institute in 1876. McAdoo taught for about ten years and in 1886 joined a quintet largely made up of members of the original Fisk Jubilee singers. They toured Europe, Australia and New Zealand for a period of three years and upon their return to the States, Orpheus quit to form his own group. He returned to Hampton, where among others, he recruited his brother Eugene and Mattie Allen, a coloratura soprano who would later become Orpheus''s wife. The "Original Virginia Jubilee Singers" began their first tour in Europe in the summer of 1889. In June of 1890, they opened in the Cape Colony in South Africa where they performed for a record-breaking 19 months. McAdoo had made valuable contacts in Australia during his first visit in 1886 and the group toured between South Africa and Australia until 1898. The Australian audiences proved so receptive that McAdoo leased a theatre of his own, and opened a stock company of African-American musicians in Sydney in 1899.
The present archive includes letters and documents, including Orpheus''s and Mattie''s wedding certificate from Johannesburg (1891); programs and tickets to concerts, several small albums, and scrap books as well as scores of early photographs of McAdoo and the group in Australia and Africa. One large scrapbook covering the tours of Africa and Australia is filled with contemporary newspaper accounts as well as programs, tickets and other ephemera, including several objects collected in Africa. An exceptional research archive, rich in visual material.