Tom Benjey's Weblog

A month ago, I wrote that Carlisle Town Band member Dr. David M. Kammerer had taken the piano score for “Carlisle Indian School March” and scored parts for the various instruments in the band and they would be playing it at their concert the following Sunday. I had the pleasure of attending the concert and enjoyed hearing the march played with full instrumentation. Here is a link to a recording made of that portion of the concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OjPSdnaFmM

Before we could hear the march played, we had to listen to an introduction given by an archivist from the local college that scanned the Carlisle Indian School records from the National Archives files. She gave a fair recital of composer Dennison Wheelock’s history up to 1900. He was an Oneida from Wisconsin who enrolled at Carlisle in 1885, in part to improve his musical skills. A cornet player, he excelled at Carlisle, both in music and academics. After graduating in 1890, he returned to the school in 1891 as an employee and to attend cross-town Dickinson College’s prep school. There, he also sang with the College’s glee club. He soon became the Carlisle Indian School  bandmaster and married former student Louisa LaChapelle (Chippewa from Minnesota). They had a son, Edmund, in 1896, the same year Dennison wrote the march. They had a second son, Dennison Paull Wheelock, in 1899. A reason for the unusual spelling of the child’s middle name may have been friendship with or admiration of Carlisle teacher Fanny Paull. On March 28, 1900, Dennison and the Carlisle Indian School Band performed at Carnegie Hall. The first piece on their program was “Suite Aboriginal,” composed by Wheelock. He and the band toured, playing concerts at several venues in preparation for traveling to the Paris Exposition to perform. In late April, he was reported as saying the trip was not a certainty. In May, tragedy struck when their infant son died. After services at 2^nd Presbyterian Church, the child was buried in the Carlisle Barracks cemetery. In June, Dennison resigned and left for a vacation in Minnesota.

The young archivist claimed that he returned to Wisconsin to work as a real estate agent and practice law. I knew that to be a false statement due to having researched the government Indian school exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis World Fair twenty years ago. What he actually did after leaving Carlisle will be covered in future postings.