Katherine Quail Pearson, Washington, DC Organist

When I attend concerts at the Church of the Epiphany in Washington, DC, I feel that I have entered Augusta Browne’s world. She would have known the church well, and its organist, Mrs. Q. A. Pearson. This profile of Kate Pearson focuses on a lesser known but significant player in the musical life of Washington, DC, during the Reconstruction era and her connections to Augusta Browne.

Kate Quail was just twenty when she assumed the post of organist at DC’s Church of the Epiphany (Episcopal). Barely three years later, the Washington Evening Star paid a handsome compliment to the young woman in its preview of music planned for Easter morning, April 7, 1871, noting that her “ability as a musician is well known.”

The Evening Star (Apr. 8, 1871) described “Miss Kate Quail” as “directress and organist” of the Gothic Revival church at 13^th and G Street NW, where the choir consisted of a double quartet of vocalists, plus one extra bass. The extra bass was probably her future husband, Q. A. (Quincy Adams) Pearson (1838–1913). Q. A. Pearson, a bass, and his brother H. C. (Henry Clay) Pearson (1845–1929), a tenor, were stalwarts of choral productions and church services around the city.

Whichever brother was present at the Church of the Epiphany in 1871, the other “Mr. Pierson” (the Evening Star misspelled the name in both cases) sang in Augusta Browne Garrett’s Easter music that morning at Trinity Episcopal Church on Third and C Streets near the Capitol Building. Easter and Christmas services provided opportunities for the most elaborate and festive sacred music of the church year. Both Quail and Browne brought their best musical efforts to these occasions.

For the chief festival days at Epiphany, Kate chose choral works by such respected Victorian British composers as Joseph Barnby, Joseph Mosenthal, Henry Smart, Samuel Reay, Berthold Tours, and John Naylor. Kate frequently selected music by Dudley Buck (1839–1909), America’s foremost composer of sacred music during the nineteenth century. Other works by American composers included choral settings by J. Sebastian B. Hodges and George William Warren.

By contrast, Augusta Browne Garrett’s Easter music in 1871 included several of her own compositions and arrangements in addition to music by Mozart. Augusta also had an extra bass in the choir: her brother General William Henry Browne, a lawyer who came to work at the U.S. Patent Office in 1868, around or shortly after the time Kate Quail became organist at Epiphany.

Full Charge of the Music

Katherine Roberts Quail (1847–90) was born a generation after Augusta Browne (ca. 1820–82). Her parents were exact contemporaries of the older composer: Capt. William Quail (1821–60), a physician who served in the Mexican American War, and Ellen Lewis Quail (1820–74). Both Quail parents were Pennsylvania natives. They married in Uniontown, Fayette County, PA, on Valentine’s Day, 1844, at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. Their only known child, Kate, was born three years later in Uniontown (located not far from Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Fallingwater estate).

According to the U.S. census, the small family lived in Pittsburgh amidst William Quail’s siblings in 1850, but the three-member family had relocated to Washington, DC, by the time of the 1860 census. Dr. Quail died in December 1860, and his wife Ellen received a small widow’s pension for his military service until her death fourteen years later.

Kate likely studied keyboard and singing as a youngster in Pennsylvania. Middle-class families considered music lessons for their daughters to be a desirable element of social status. Kate grew up in the Episcopal denomination, judging by her parents’ affiliation when they married. No specific information has emerged that explains the high level of musical skills that Kate demonstrated by the time she was hired at the Church of the Epiphany at age twenty. She presumably received advanced music instruction for some years in Washington after the family relocated, but the names of her teachers remain unknown.

Miss Kate Quail began as organist at Epiphany in 1868, at a time when the prominent Washingtonian Lewis J. Davis led a volunteer choir. Kate soon “had full charge of the music” at Epiphany, as the Star described years later in her obituary (Mar. 25, 1890). She played for the services, chose the music, and recruited the four talented paid amateurs in the solo quartet and the additional small volunteer choir.

In addition to being church organist, Kate was listed as “Clerk, Treasury,” while her mother was described as “keeping house” in the 1870 census for the District of Columbia. Boyd’s Directory for 1870 cited Kate specifically as “Clerk, Internal Revenue.” At just twenty-two, Kate was the primary breadwinner for the pair. She and her mother lived on 12th Street, near the Church of the Epiphany at 1317 G Street.

One of the Best Known

At the time of her death in 1890, the Star lamented the loss of “one of the best known and most popular members of musical circles in this city.” In addition to her musical duties at Epiphany, Kate had long participated in choral concerts and played solos or accompanied others in charity events.

As a twenty-something, she appeared onstage with the women’s chorus in an amateur production of Friedrich von Flotow’s opera Martha. The advance publicity in the Star (Dec. 10, 1870) regaled readers with descriptions of the costumes for the “Belles of Washington on the Stage” in the cast and chorus. “Miss Kate Quail” wore a white muslin dress with blue sash and trimmings, then donned an overskirt of calico, an apron with “cherry-colored ribbon[s],” and a cap of the same colors. The second violinist in the small orchestra was Q. A. Pearson, whom she married in 1872 at Epiphany.

Quincy Adams Pearson came from a musical family. He worked by day as a clerk for the Department of the Interior, but on his own time he played baseball for the “Interior Club,” in addition to amateur music-making in the Epiphany choir and the occasional orchestra. He became a permanent fixture and frequently an officer in music societies across the city: the Choral Society, for which Kate Pearson was a founder as well as the accompanist; the Washington Musical Society; the Georgetown Amateur Orchestra; and the Richard Wagner Society.

Augusta Browne’s brother William Henry also belonged to such music organizations, including the Choral Society and the Washington Philharmonic Society. The two men would have crossed paths regularly in these pursuits and in church choirs. Similarly, when Augusta was organist at Trinity Episcopal Church, she and Kate surely became acquaintances and musical colleagues in Episcopal circles.

That Happy Faculty

By the time of her marriage, Kate Quail Pearson had already earned “quite an enviable reputation among our amateur musicians,” according to the Evening Star (Nov. 18, 1872). Years later, the Washington Post noted how “she had that happy faculty which enabled her to humor the musical temperament of the soloist who was accompanying” (Mar. 26, 1890). Her keyboard skills were enhanced by diplomatic communication as she directed singers or rehearsed with instrumentalists.

Kate’s musical friends—vocal soloists and instrumental chamber players alike—collaborated with her consistently year after year. She recruited and retained some of the best amateur performers in the city to make music at the Church of the Epiphany, at charity fundraisers, and soirées, and at public concerts. Her support at the piano was critical to the Choral Society and to concerts of the Chamber Music Society.

Kate Pearson and Augusta Browne Garrett circulated in the same religious and cultural spheres in Washington, but there is no direct evidence of their relationship. Augusta was listed as organist of Trinity Episcopal Church only during 1871. She and her brother William Henry lived together near Trinity, and presumably continued to worship there until they built a house at l645 K Street in 1878.

The move to K Street brought the siblings close enough to attend Epiphany
regularly. William Henry taught a Sunday School class there, and Augusta
presented a lecture on “Hints for a Sunday School” at Epiphany during a
conference on the subject in 1879. It is possible that Augusta played at
Epiphany for Sunday School or substituted at church services and ceremonies when needed. Augusta may have wished that she could be the organist at Church of the Epiphany, but Kate continued in the position throughout Augusta’s remaining years.

Long and Tried and Devoted Service

St. Paul’s (Rock Creek) was the oldest Episcopal church in Washington, and St. John’s held special prestige as the “president’s church,” but Epiphany had the largest congregation in the District of Columbia during the nineteenth century. By 1871 Kate oversaw the church music and managed the choral singing through a select choir (some paid) that was pronounced “among the finest in the city,” according to the Washington Post (May 11, 1878). “Mrs. Q. A. Pearson is organist and leader; Mrs. Louise K. Camp, soprano; Mrs. Z. Root, alto; Mr. Frederick Knoop, tenor, and Mr. Charles H. Root, Basso. Beside the quartette are Miss Annie Bentley, Mrs. N. H. Camp, Mr. N. H. Camp and Mr. Q. A. Pearson.” These dedicated amateurs remained in Kate’s church choir for years. Mrs. Louise Camp was later described as “the most beautiful singer of the District” (Washington Post, Oct. 15, 1904).

In 1874 a major renovation took place that raised the church ceiling and added the distinctive hammerbeam roof. The Church of the Epiphany was described in 1878 as “large, roomy, and with an air of sober reliability.”

The renewal of the church included a new organ. The Hook & Hastings organ, which cost $7,500, was placed “at the choir end [i.e., the rear gallery] of the church.” The Evening Star (Nov. 9, 1874) described the premiere of the new instrument at a church service when Kate showed off the three manuals and forty-four stops in her handling of selections from liturgical chant and music by Dudley Buck.

Not long after the church renovation was complete, Rev. William Paret came to Epiphany as rector. Rev. Paret held Kate Pearson in high regard. He left the music in her capable hands from 1876 until 1883, when he embraced the notion that a larger choir of church members would boost congregational singing.

Kate had long managed the choral music successfully through careful curation of knowledgeable singers. Although Kate was customarily described as the director or directress of music, “she would not undertake to direct a chorus and resigned,” according to a retrospective account in the Washington Post (Oct. 15, 1904). She apparently had no wish to take on a choir of individuals who may have lacked music training or experience. She chose to give up her position rather than assume the added time and coaching that leading such a chorus would require. Kate left Epiphany and soon became organist at All Souls’ Church (Universalist) at 16^th and L Streets NW.

The choir in the gallery at Epiphany grew to about forty members, but the next year and a half saw first one choir director, then another. The choirmaster J. H. Tipton preferred a fully sung service with “heavy English choral music,” but the congregation did not take to this High Church style. In 1884 Rev. Paret was elected Bishop of Maryland, the Diocese to which Washington belonged until 1895. Paret and Tipton both departed Epiphany, and in 1885 Kate Pearson returned with “an entirely new choir of soloists and chorus” (Washington Post, Oct. 15, 1904).

Kate had been absent from the church for about a year and a half, but she seamlessly resumed her position at Epiphany and continued there until her death. Her smooth communication and people skills allowed her not only to remove herself, but to return without having offended the church or its ministry. The vestry of the church paid tribute to Kate in 1890: “It is to her skill and taste as a musician, her ability as a director, and her tact as a woman [emphasis my own], that Epiphany has been indebted for the phenomenal success of its music, which has combined in a rare degree artistic excellence with religious feeling.”

Tact with singers, ministers, and the congregation was indeed crucial to “that happy faculty” that promoted Kate’s longevity as a valued and cherished part of Epiphany.

Most Helpful Organist

Kate Pearson fell ill with flu in early 1890, followed by a secondary infection and gastritis. She had performed in a concert of chamber music in late January but gradually weakened until passing away on March 25, 1890. The Washington Post praised her “obliging disposition” and “goodness of heart” in a tribute titled “A Life Without a Discord” (Mar. 26, 1890).

The churchmen of Epiphany praised her for “the “ability of an artist and the devoutness of a Christian” that contributed so much to the “solemnity and beauty of the services of Epiphany.” The rector, wardens, and vestrymen commended her as a “Model to be Admired and Imitated” for the way Mrs. Q. A. Pearson “subordinated her art to the reverence which she rendered the Master whom she served” (obituary published in the Churchman, Apr. 5, 1890).

Bishop Paret returned to Epiphany to lead the funeral service for his friend and colleague. The reverend described her as the “faithful and most helpful organist and director of music in that church” in his report for 1890 to the diocesan convention of Maryland. The choir of Epiphany presented an elaborate floral arrangement for the funeral with the words “Joined Heaven’s Choir.” The Choral Society offered their own arrangement that added “Amen.”

Quincy Adams Pearson survived Kate by twenty-three years. His activity in the city choral societies dwindled after her death, but not before he took a brief turn as choir director at St. John’s Episcopal Church (Georgetown) in 1893–94. His duties with the Department of the Interior increasingly demanded travel to other states. In 1913 he was interred with Kate and their unnamed infant (b. 187?) in Washington’s Oak Hill Cemetery, a sylvan resting place for many of the city’s prominent citizens.

Church of the Epiphany Organ

The organ at Epiphany has been replaced several times since Kate Pearson’s death. The instrument was relocated to the chancel of the church in the 1890s. In 1968 an Aeolian-Skinner organ replaced a Skinner organ installed in 1911 (see https://pipeorgandatabase.org/OrganDetails.php?OrganID=10768). The current instrument numbers almost thirty-five hundred pipes and includes some pipes from both the 1874 and 1911 organs. The excellent acoustics and beautiful surrounds of the church provide a superb downtown setting for weekly concerts and special performances, as well as celebration of the liturgy.

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