The Cecilia Chorus and Iredell Orchestra Concert Collection consists of a concert program dated 1897 titled Choral-Orchestral Concert, by the Cecilia Chorus and Iredell Orchestra, along with two contemporary newspaper clippings documenting the event. These materials were retained by Ermine Willfong (1886–1972), a graduate of Winthrop College, Class of 1906, who earned a degree in Normal Music and later received a piano certificate in 1907. Willfong went on to serve as a member of the Winthrop music faculty for forty-four years, from 1907 to 1951. The collection documents a major musical performance held on April 30, 1897, at the College Auditorium in Tillman Hall on the Winthrop campus. The Cecilia Chorus, a hundred-member all-female choral ensemble associated with Winthrop College, performed in collaboration with the Iredell Orchestra, a local instrumental group based in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The concert was conducted by Wade R. Brown, with Winthrop music faculty member Octavia Williams serving as accompanist and pianist. The accompanying newspaper clippings provide contemporaneous accounts of the concert’s reception and significance. An article titled “Winthrop College” describes the performance as a “grand” occasion, while a second clipping from The Columbia Daily Register (vol. 22, no. 243), titled “‘Music Hath Charms’: Grand Concert at Winthrop College: A Delightful Occasion,” offers further commentary on the event and its cultural impact. The latter article also references a “floral party” attended by twenty-two Winthrop seniors on May 5, 1897, situating the concert within the broader context of student life and campus traditions. Together, these materials provide insight into late nineteenth-century musical performance, women’s choral education, and cultural life at Winthrop College.
Ermine Baskin Willfong (Thu,) studied this question.