Item Detail
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University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries
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Civil War band collection : 1st Brigade Band of Brodhead, Wisconsin
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In 1857, a group of citizens of Brodhead, Wisconsin, decided to form a brass band. They initially called themselves the Brodhead Tin Band, from the set of inexpensive tin instruments that they had purchased. Soon they purchased a set of brass instruments, however, and became known as the Brodhead Brass Band, or B.B.B. Under that name, they performed at the debate between senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas on August 27, 1858 at Freeport, Illinois. A small collection of photographs was acquired by the University of Wisconsin along with the band books, which contains several carte-de-visite–type images of several of the band members. These are now located in the Wisconsin Historical Society image archives. Along with images of individual members of the band, four of the images are photographs of the wives of band members. The handful of miscellaneous photographs in the collection contain images of some nineteenth-century instruments, an image of a band(?) from Mason City, Iowa, and an advertisement from an unidentified issue of the magazine Current Opinion from between about 1918 and 1924. Since this last item appears among the 1st Brigade materials, it seems likely that whoever collected it believed it to be an image of the band (although it is not so identified in the volume of the Photographic History of the Civil War (1911: vol. 8, p. 197) in which it appears), this is unlikely based on details of their clothing and instruments. (from the website)
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Website
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Madison, Wis.
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University of Wisconsin-Madison
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English
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Internet
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13865