Family Newsletter

Welcome back to the Hitch Family Newsletter (HFN)! This is the seventh issue of this well-received publication. I want to continue to thank those of you who continue to send me very useful information regarding your specific parts of the HITCH family. This continues to be the single most important area from which I have received my information about the family and, in one of my future issues of this newsletter, I will properly acknowledge everyone of you personally.

In this issue, I tell two stories. One is a happy tale of a gifted Curtis A. Hitch of Indiana. His musical talents as a pianist enabled him to go far in the annals of Indiana music history and even to meet up with the famous Hoagy Carmichael. The second tale is a rather macabre account of a murder in 1870s Maryland involving Alfred J. Hitch. Ol' Alfred, described as having a "quarrelsome and overbearing disposition," met his fate at the wrong end of a very sharp axe.

I hope you enjoy each of these entertaining stories. I also hope that they help to enrich your knowledge of the Hitch family as it contributed to history of the United States from both good and bad perspectives.

Finally, I have embarked on a new crusade - autograph collecting. However, this is not your typical way of collecting autographs, I want to gather those "John Hancocks" from the Hitch people of the past.

Thus far I have been able to assemble some autographs from some pretty unlikely sources. For instance, Levin Hitch was a census taker in 1840 for Worcester Co., Maryland and had to sign his oath to the list. Samuel B. Hitch was likewise for Sussex Co., Delaware in 1850. Spencer Hitch was a bank President in Greensboro, Maryland in the 1860s and signed a 3-dollar note that I have in my possession issued by the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Greensborough on August 15, 1862.

If any of you have any old signatures on deeds, letters, etc. please make a photocopy of them and send them to me. They will go well in the information I am putting together on the family. Also, please continue to write to me with your thoughts, suggestions or comments about the HFN and, continue to send me information and stories about your branches of the family. Thank you and happy reading,

Mike Hitch

Curt Hitch, Musical Sensation from Indiana

1. Robert Montgomery Hitch (born 4/8/1881)

2. Clarence Zachariah Hitch (born 10/3/1882)

3. Dorothy Clyde Hitch (born 1/30/1884)

4. Gladys Hitch (born 11/1/1886 [died 12/1886])

5. Hazel O. Hitch (born 10/26/1888)

6. Martha Isabell Hitch (born 1/10/1891)

7. Raymond James Hitch (born 4/5/1893)

8. Curtis A. Hitch (born 11/23/1897)

9. Bruce K. Hitch (born 9/1/1900)

10. James Hitch (born 9/1/1900)

James M. Hitch was a farmer for many years on a farm near Patoka, Indiana. In 1908, he and son Clarence entered the employ of the gas company in Evansville, Vanderburgh Co., Indiana. In 1931, he was a foreman in the construction department at the company. He was described in A Hitch Orchard as "a staunch Republican, an honest upright, straight thinking individual. The very salt of the earth."

Nancy (Nannie) Hitch was the daughter of Robert and Martha (Perkins) Montgomery. Aunt Nan, as she was called, was described in a 1931 letter by Allen Spain Hitch (her real nephew) as "a most remarkable person and entitled to special mention."

She was a teacher by trade, having taught several years in the Gibson Co. Schools. During World War I, she taught school in Evansville to help relieve a shortage there for teachers. It was there that she became very active in the women's suffrage movement and also became one of the first women elected to the School Board. She was very active in southern Indiana politics and the Republican Party.

Curtis Hitch's lineage continues backwards with his grandfather Zachariah Hitch who was born in Caroline Co., Maryland on January 26, 1818 and grandmother Mary Adeline Spain, born in Indiana ion November 7, 1824. Zack and Mary were married in Indiana on November 28, 1849. Zachariah Hitch was son of Sovereign of Spencer of William of Solomon of Adam Hitch.

Curtis A. Hitch lived until age 90, passing away just a few years ago on August 10, 1988. Early in his life, he had the opportunity to be a part of musical history in the state of Indiana. In the 1920s, with his group Hitch's Happy Harmonists, he made original music and associated himself with musical great Hoagy Carmichael.

Mr. John W. Powell, of Evansville, Indiana sent me a photocopy of a story from a book on Indiana music history that he found in the library there (sorry, I do not have the exact name of the book). It details the history of Curt Hitch's music as follows:

HITCH'S HAPPY HARMONISTS

This Evansville band, as evidenced by its Gennett recordings, offers a clear example of how one orchestra, upon hearing another, could make a significant departure from its accustomed style, and embrace that of its competitor.

The model in this case was the Wolverines. According to the Happy Harmonists' leader, Curt Hitch, and its cornet star, the late Fred Rollison, the change was a conscious one. Hitch's band was then four years old.

Curt Hitch was born November 23, 1897, in Gibson County, near the town of Princeton. His father was a farmer; his mother taught public school. Of the ten children in the family, Curt and a sister played piano, and a brother played drums. All were self-taught. Curt says that during his whole musical career he remained an improvisor.

He was twenty-three years old when he was approached by his friend Earl "Buddy" McDowell, who had booked a dance and needed a piano player. Curt's reply was quick: "You know I can't read music - besides, I know only a few good tunes."

Buddy was persuasive: "Don't worry about that. Just play them over and over again. Nobody'll care. All they want to do is dance."

Intrigued, Curt signed on. The dancers at the little community of Haubstadt thus became merely the first of many thousands who would be stepping in tempo to the music of the genial pianist and his men for the next seven years.

Curt and Buddy were the nucleus of a five-piece combination formed that year. The others were: Dewey Neal, bass sax; Maurice "Piggy" May, banjo; and Fred Draves, clarinet and alto sax. Dewey's brother Myron ("Rookie") was then working in the jazz leagues at Davenport, Iowa, with Carlisle Evans' band. He was in fast company as he played his C-melody sax beside such future jazz greats as Leon Rappolo and Lou Black (both to be members of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings) and a New Orleans cornetist, Emmett Hardy, whom many consider to have been a prime influence upon the still-developing Bix Beiderbecke. Rookie was brought back to Evansville to replace the departing Fred Draves, in 1922.

Their first solid booking had been at the Vendome Hotel Tea Room and Pastry Shop. At 10¢ a dance, the weekly take amounted to several hundred dollars. "Not bad," says Curt, "considering a dollar was worth a lot in those days."

That year the band's sound was given more balance by the addition of two brass players: trombonist Jerry Bump and cornetist Fred Rollison.

Soon, through the influence of an Evansville youth serving as president of the ATO Fraternity at Bloomington, they got an introduction to the IU campus. Other organizations were soon bidding for their services, among them the Kappa Sigs, represented by Hoagy Carmichael.

"Remember," Hitch says, "in those days IU wasn't the giant place it is today. There were only several thousand students then, and when a new band came to play, everybody knew it. They'd parade you all over campus on the back of a truck, then maybe down to Sorority Row to serenade the girls. It was a lot of fun."

Curt says this was about the time the band settled on its name, borrowing in part from the historic Hoosier communal settlement of New Harmony. They were indeed "happy" harmonists, hardly any older than the college crowd they served. Using no music, their explorations were new each night. Fred Rollison in particular was in search of a jazz style, and must have had a spiritual kinship with the also-questing Carmichael. Roth would be transfixed at the sound of Beiderbecke.

Fortunately, the Happy Harmonists were on the scene when the Wolverines arrived to play a dance on campus. The wild enthusiasm provoked by Bix and his friends (especially when they blew Copenhagen, a tune they'd picked up from the Charlie Davis band in Indianapolis) was instructive. The Hitch men listened, and absorbed.

Maurice May listened to George Johnson, whose musical lines were in that day as highly-admired as Bix's (May was about to make a change to tenor.) Within the hour, Fred Rollison, too, had sensed discovery. Together, the Harmonists probed just what gave the Wolverines such a special sound: the ensemble voicing...the breaks...the musical "explosions."

In a matter or weeks, the transformation was complete. It was for the Indiana men a good move, and they rode it for all it was worth right through the mid-20s. As a unit, they outlived their model, for (unlike the Wolverines) they were capable of a well-rounded dance program-waltzes,

and slow, romantic foxtrots-with which to complement their "hot" specialties.

As the face of the music changed, so did the face of the band. New additions from Evansville were the slightly-built clarinetist, Harry "Mousey" Wright, and serious, steady Arnold Habbe. Maurice May was on tenor, and Haskell Simpson, on tuba, provided his deep tones.

In the reorganization, Rollison became the musical director, though the band retained the Hitch name.

Though they played a great deal in and around Evansville, the Happy Harmonists were to be seen all over Indiana in the next years, making occasional forays into Illinois and Wisconsin, where they had a summer-long booking at Appleton's Waverly Beach.

Their name was spread by a series of recordings at Richmond. Curt says they had no illusions that making records would make them any money. "We considered them as promotion - it didn't hurt to advertise yourselves as a 'recording' orchestra."

The initial session in September 1923 produced Cruel Woman and Home Brew Blues. These represent the band's early sound. Five months later, there were three more releases: Steady-Steppin' Papa (a follow-up to Cruel Woman, according to Curt); Ethiopian Nightmare (Alexander's Ragtime Band in blackface); and Baptistown Crawl, named for Evansville's Negro district. In this session, Jerry Bump's talent for solo breaks is evident, and Rollison's pre-Bix style is mature.

By January 1925, when the Harmonists made their third visit to the recording studio, Jerry Bump had left to join Charlie Davis in Indianapolis. The instrumentation was now identical to that of the Wolverines and the style and sound of the band had moved in that direction. The repertoire

this session at Gennett was chosen by the recording company, who had asked for material with ragtime flavor. Cataract Rag Blues and Nightingale Rag Blues were the result of head arrangements built up by Rollison, Wright and May.

They were back in Richmond the following May, under the temporary musical influence and direction of Hoagy Carmichael. It was easy for Hitch to sit this one out on the sidelines, for he admired both Hoagy's keyboard ideas and his compositional skill. "Besides," he says, " I could

no more have played that stuff than the man in the moon."

"Hoagy had brought a couple of his own numbers along - had his own arrangements, too - Boneyard Shuffle and Washboard Blues. In those days you ran through the numbers a couple of times just to get the right position in front of the two recording horns sticking out of the wall. As I recall, Boneyard Shuffle went over OK, but when we had played Washboard Blues the guy came out and said they couldn't use it - it ran about twenty seconds short for a ten-inch record. Well, you can imagine how Hoagy felt at that.

"I told the man that these were Mr. Carmichael's own compositions, and his arrangements, and they both had to be recorded. Just then Hoagy took me aside and said if we'd all get out of the studio for a bit, he'd do something. Ten minutes later he had cooked up a piano interlude to go right in the middle of the thing, and it turned out to be the theme for his later hit Lazybones!"

That summer the Happy Harmonists played an engagement at Walnut Gardens, near Indianapolis. Following the Labor Day closing, Paulie Freed, a Moline pianist working at the Athletic Club, borrowed Buddy McDowell, Harry Wright and Fred Rollison for a pick-up session at Gennett, using the name of Paulie Freed and His Rhythmicians. Jerry Bump, along with Davisites George Harper and Min Leibrook was in attendance, plus banjoist Lennie Esterdahi of Moline. They cut two sides, neither of which were released. Fred later told Hitch that "everybody was trying to play lead - all chiefs and no Indians."

Despite this fiasco, Freed was able to lure most of the group to Chicago, with the exception of Rollison and Wright. Aside from a marathon recording session at Okeh with trumpeter Wingy Mannone (in which eight titles were cut, and never heard of again), there was little action for them. George Harper recalled years later a glorious moment in a rooming house when Mannone opened a package containing his new artificial arm. "My arm's here - my arm's here!" the trumpeter kept yelling. As he strapped it on, Harper's dry wit surfaced: "What are you going to call it, Wingy?"

Later, Rollison would make his break, joining Al Katz and his Kittens. His replacement, equally impressive, would be Evansville cornetist, William "Dub" Shoffner.

In 1927, the band quietly dissolved. Arnold Habbe enrolled at Indiana University, where he would become closely associated with the Hoagy Carmichael circle; Harry Wright and Shoffner headed for Indianapolis and the band of Connie Connaughton. Rookie Neal would follow suit in about a year.

Looking back at perhaps the most precious seven years of his life, Curt Hitch is grateful: "Money couldn't buy the extraordinarily satisfying experiences of those years, nor could more meaningful or lasting friendships be realized."

Curt echoes a thought common to all those who worked in the bands. The life was exciting. It was also rigorous, and the hours could be brutal. Travel was more often than not boring. Income was usually unpredictable, and the separations from families could work hardship, but the years have washed away much that was bad, leaving in high relief the friendships, the joy of playing and the gaiety of the crowds. These are the things that stick in the mind as musicians glance backward through the tunnel of time.

The Murder of Alfred J. Hitch

Terrible Murder!

A Man Split Open With An Axe!

HE DIES IN THREE MINUTES

Last Wednesday, (December 31^st,) at about five o'clock P.M., a terrible tragedy was enacted at Eden Station, Somerset county, Maryland. The details of the murder, as related by an eye witness are as follows:

About half past four o'clock, William Taylor, who had been in the woods hewing timber, came in to Mr. Parker's store at the Station, with his axe on his shoulder, in company with Thomas Flemming. Taylor put his axe out side of the store door, out of the way, and sat down near the stove. Alfred Hitch, a man who bore an unenviable reputation in the neighborhood, by reason of his quarrelsome and over bearing disposition, picked up the axe, and by carelessness cut himself slightly. He immediately began cursing the owner of the axe and Flemming.

Flemming resented Al's conduct, and the two had pretty sharp words in the Store. Taylor persuaded Flemming to leave the store in order to avoid any disturbance, and both walked up the Railroad track, which passed directly in front of the door, towards home. They had barely started when Hitch left the store, picked up a club and followed them, saying that he could "whip them both, and intended to do it," and daring them to the test.

Taylor said to Hitch "Go away and let us alone or it will be worse for you." Hitch persisted in carrying his threats into execution, and advanced rapidly upon Flemming and Taylor. Flemming picked up a round stick of wood and was going to strike Hitch with it, when on looking around he saw Taylor advancing on Hitch with his axe drawn; he stepped off the track.

Taylor passed him, and the next moment the dull "chuck" of the axe was heard, as it entered Hitch's body, literally splitting him open. The murdered man, trembled a moment and then pitched forward on his face, in a perfect gore of blood, and in less than three minutes was dead. The axe entered Hitch's left shoulder and cut diagonally across the lower part of the breast bone, making a terrible wound. After the occurrence Taylor shouldered his weapon of death, and with his companion marched cooly away.

He now went to Captain T. W. H. White's to whom he related the particulars of the affray, at the same time asking him what he should do, Captain White advised him to go to Princess Anne, and deliver himself up to the State authorities. We learn that a warrant has been issued for the murderer's arrest, but as we go to press he is still at large.

Alfred James Hitch was born circa 1840, the son of William and Nancy (Pollitt) Hitch of Somerset County. William was born sometime between 1799 and 1804 ⁽¹⁾ and died on July 10, 1877. He was the son of John and Amelia (Disharoon) Hitch. William Hitch married Nancy (Ann) Pollitt Morris on October 23, 1827. She was the widow of John Morris who she had subsequently married in 1825. John Hitch, in turn, was the son of Benjamin and Mary (Pitts) Hitch, who was the son of Samuel and Rachel (Hardy) Hitch, who was the son of Adam and Ann (Elgate) Hitch to complete the line.

To give the reader some perspective of where the murder of Alfred Hitch occurred, I turn to a map of the area from 1876/77 (see illustration). The map is of the Princess Anne District of Somerset Co., Maryland. To the north (including the town of Upper Trappe - which is modern-day Allen) is Wicomico County and to the east is Worcester Co. The illustrated map is marked with numbers as follows:

1. The residence of William and Ann (Pollitt-Morris) Hitch where Alfred was living at the time of his death.

2. S.Q. Parker's store next to the railroad tracks (on the west side of the tracks) in Eden Station where William Taylor, Thomas Flemming and Alfred Hitch had their first altercation.

3. The railroad tracks where Taylor and Flemming started walking after the altercation in the store. Alfred Hitch followed - ultimately to his death.

4. The residence of Captain Thomas W.H. White where William Taylor sought refuge and advice following the murder. His house is not shown on this map, but is for the Trappe District of Wicomico County.

5. Railroad tracks leading to Princess Anne approximately five miles to the south. It is the county seat and location where the murder trial was held in April 1874.

6. An aside, the residence of Handy Irving Hitch (brother of the author's great-great-great grandfather Washington Henry Hitch) which is on a tract of land called "Mount Pleasant" originally purchased by Benjamin Hitch in 1765. This land is just on the east side of the road that divides the counties of Somerset and Worcester (this is modern-day Meadow Bridge Road). The M.E. Church shown just to the south of the I. Hitch residence is gone today, however, the cemetery is still there and contains many Hitch and related graves.

I have traveled these roads quite frequently and have often wondered what it was like back when this map was produced in 1877; back when Benjamin Hitch bought his land in 1765 and; even further back when Adam Hitch moved here in the 1680 timeframe. The story of Alfred Hitch has piqued my imagination even further as I think what it must have been like to be sitting in Mr. Parker's store along the railroad tracks in Eden on New Years Eve 1873 and venturing outside with the three antagonists as that ghastly event took place. As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Alfred Hitch might have been a real bear to get along with, but I do not believe that anyone would deserve quite such a fate

By the way, our Mr. Taylor was subsequently apprehended and, it is from the May 2, 1874 edition of the Kent News (Chestertown, Maryland) that we learn his eventual fate for the brutal murder of Alfred Hitch. An article in that newspaper states "Alfred Hitch, murdered, William Taylor tried in Princess Anne, Somerset County, last week, found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to 17 years, 3 months in the penitentiary. He is considerably past middle age and not likely to serve out his term."