One documented concert, and the famous-name test

LANDMARK CONCERTS FROM PRINTED PROGRAMS ONLY · 1923, AND A NEGATIVE

House rule for this entry: a famous act's Mishawaka date enters only on a bill, a program, or a press record. One survives nicely. On Wednesday evening, 12 December 1923, the Notre Dame Glee Club, under the direction of Dr. J. Lewis Browne of Chicago, gave a concert in the Mishawaka High School auditorium, under the auspices of the junior class. The yearbook's account is a program notice in prose: Browne — "well known as a director, organist, and singer" — had "developed an exceptionally fine Glee Club"; the program mixed classical music with "a number of popular and humorous selections"; the assisting artists were Miss Josephine Decker, contralto, Mrs. Marjorie Bertling Galloway, pianist, and Miss Mause Weber, accompanist. The university across the river sent its singers five miles to a school auditorium, the juniors sold the evening, and the school printed the bill. It is the earliest fully documented concert by an outside institution of standing in the city's record, and it set the pattern the record keeps: Mishawaka's landmark room, for most of a century, was its high school auditorium — the same room in which the school's own orchestra and glee clubs were the standing attraction.

The famous-name test returns the other kind of answer. The touring band every small American city claims is Sousa's, and the claim was tested for Mishawaka — directed searches on the band, the Tivoli, and the city's auditoriums. No Mishawaka bill, program or press notice for a Sousa Band concert appears in any source reached. The nearest documented stands frame the negative precisely: the Michigan City Municipal Band's own history records Sousa Band concerts in Michigan City in 1914 and 1924, forty miles away — the March King's road ran through the region's lake and county-seat towns, and on present evidence it did not stop in Mishawaka. The negative is printed at that strength and no stronger: the Enterprise's amusement pages, unexhausted, are the settling source, and a single dated advertisement there would reverse it. What the record will not support is the lore version — a famous band in an unnamed year in an unnamed hall — and none is printed.

Sources:

1. Miskodeed 1924 — the "Notre Dame Glee Club" account (12 December 1923; Dr. J. Lewis Browne; the assisting artists; the junior-class auspices), read first-hand.
2. Michigan City Municipal Band, published band history — the Sousa Band's documented Michigan City concerts of 1914 and 1924, carried as the regional frame of the negative.
3. Directed searches of November 2026 (Sousa Band with Mishawaka, the Tivoli, and the city's halls) — no Mishawaka engagement returned; the negative and its settling source are stated in the entry.