Happy Birthday, America! In honor of 250 years since 1776, the Ohio Commission for the U.S. Semiquincentennial (America 250) has chosen a different theme each month to highlight and celebrate Ohio’s rich history. Each month, The Arboretum’s History team will be dropping a new collection to our archives that aligns with America and Ohio’s 250th anniversary monthly theme! This month, we’re celebrating Ohio Entertains: Music and Entertainment.
Even though The Dawes Arboretum is all about the beauty of nature, there are a few ways in our history where we’ve been in the world of music!
Perhaps the greatest contributor to music comes from the Dawes family history, when co-founder Beman Dawes’ brother, Charles Gates Dawes, created a song: Melody in A Major. The song made it on the Billboard Top 100, because it was re-recorded as “It’s All in the Game” by Carl Sigmund and officially went to number one in 1958 when it was performed by Tommy Edwards. He was the only former U.S. Vice President who made it on the list! Listen to the song: here.
The rendition of the song, Melody in A Major, was performed by his friend and violinist Fritz Kreisler.
Charles Gates Dawes was the second person to have a tree dedicated at The Arboretum, while Fritz Kreisler was the 48th! If you want to know how to find their trees, read “How To Find Tree Dedications” on our blog.
The Arboretum was also connected to music by building an amphitheater and hosting orchestras and other concerts beginning in the 1990s. Guests were encouraged to relax and bring a picnic to enjoy while listening to the music.
These concerts continued until 2012 when the concert stage was sadly destroyed by a derecho storm, which are storms that are fast moving bands of thunderstorms with destructive winds.
Several photographs of both Tree Dedications and the amphitheater have been digitized and are now available to the public on The Arboretum’s digital archive!
To see these materials, go to the Digital Archive. For questions concerning the digital archive, please email daweshistory@dawesarb.org.
Are you interested in doing in-person research at The Arboretum? Do you have a history question that you can’t find the answer to online? Don’t hesitate to use the Department’s History Research Request Form, where you can get answers to all of your Dawes history-related questions and research requests.