M. AUGUSTA LOWELL-GARTHWAITE
"Gussie" Lowell was born in San Francisco in 1857 of New England parentage and began her first musical study with Professor Striby, one of the earliest piano teachers. On moving to Oakland, when nine years old, she studied first with Miss Mary Simpson (now Mrs. Barker) of the Blake seminary, then Miss Gaskill (now Mrs. Andrews) and afterwards with Mrs. Blanche Emerson and Mrs. Babcock. Organ study (on the reed organ) was begun in 1874 with John H. Pratt, and when John P. Morgan in 1875 came to Oakland from New York, where he had for years been the beloved organist of Trinity Church, Miss Lowell took up the study of the pipe organ at the old Congregational Church in Oakland and practiced there, at the First Presbyterian Church and the Independent Church, where she later became organist after a two years' service at the First Baptist Church. As Mr. Morgan was the conductor of the San Francisco Handel and Haydn Oratorio society and the Oakland Harmonic, Miss Lowell had the unusual advantage as organist of these societies of playing in all the oratorios given under the direction of Mr. Morgan as well as Mr. Toepke and Mr. Gustave Hinrichs. After Mr. Morgan's lamented death, Miss Lowell took his place as teacher of the organ in the conservatory founded by him, where also taught Mr. Morgan (piano), Mr. Louis Lisser, Mr. Henry Heyneman and Mr. Julius Hinrichs (violoncello), Miss Susie Morgan, Mr. D.P. Hughes and dear old Stephen W. Leach (voice culture).
For three years prior to Miss Lowell's departure for New York in 1880, she was organist for Rev. Mr. Hamilton's Independent Presbyterian Church, where she conducted a large choir of sixteen voices.
She studied for a short time in the New England Conservatory of Music at Boston, but as New York had the greater attraction in the presence of Mr. Samuel P. Warren, the leading organist of the country, she went there and throughout her ten years' residence in the East studied solely with Mr. Warren, but added two seasons of study in harmony technique under that master, John H. Cornell. Miss Lowell's California experience proved of great advantage to her in obtaining church positions in the big city, and immediately upon her arrival in New York she became assistant organist at St. George's and later St. Bartholomew's, Grace and other churches, and for three years was organist at the Madison Avenue Dutch Reformed Church. The desire of her heart was attained, however, when the position was offered to her as organist at the beautiful new Roosevelt organ at the Church of the Incarnation (Arthur Brooks, brother of Phillips Brooks, pastor), to succeed Frederick Archer, the great English organist. This position she held for seven years, until her marriage in 1890. The choir of thirty paid voices was the finest in the city, and at this organ Miss Lowell gave over sixty recitals. While in New York, Miss Lowell played in many public and private concerts and was conductor for seven years of the Ladies' Vocal club at Montclair, N.J., and for three years of the Choral club (ladies'), Mt. Vernon, N.Y.
After her marriage in Oakland in 1890 to Edwin Garthwaite, a mining engineer of great reputation, she retired from public life and went with him to Mexico, where much piano and ensemble work was enjoyed, then later to South Africa for twelve years. While there was no organ playing in the parts where she lived, she was able to gather musical people about her always, and in her home near Johannesburg she conducted a fine glee club of mixed voices. Up in Bulawayo, Rhodesia, she was always identified with good music and formed a musical club, where much fine work in ensemble and choral music was accomplished.
On her return to her native land, five years ago, after nearly twenty years' absence practically from the organ, Mrs. Garthwaite was able to give occasional public performances, playing as organist in the First Church of Christ, Scientist, for a year and a half, and after all these years is again organist of the First Baptist Church in Oakland, the church where she began her career as a girl of nineteen for five dollars a month.
Mrs. Garthwaite considers the most noteworthy event in her career to be the anniversary recital given last year in the Baptist Church, when she repeated her performance of twenty years before, substituting her two sons and her nephew, Lowell Redfield, for Mr. Sigmund Beel and Miss Lizzie Bogue, and giving as a great surprise to her audience a wonderful and inspiring performance by Mrs. Blake-Alverson of "The Last Rose of Summer." It was said afterwards that it was like a song from heaven and would never be forgotten.