Notes on Two Hundred Years (and More)
by Douglas H. Parkhurst
Continued from November 2025…
This month we will look at Miss Adelaide Grabert’s life and her long association with First Universalist Church.
Adelaide Grabert, church organist and choir director for a total of sixty-four years, was born in Danbury [see note below] on November 2, 1870, to Herman and Anna Berends Grabert. Four younger siblings were John, Anna, Catherine, and Fred. Both parents had emigrated from Germany. Herman was a U.S. Navy veteran of the Civil War and a hatter in civilian life; Anna was a homemaker. Adelaide, known as Addie, attended Danbury College of Music, a private school offering training in voice, piano, violin, and chorus, as well as art and elocution. By 1890 she was teaching music, a career she followed for the rest of her life. Interestingly, while Addie was growing up, George Ives was among Danbury’s prominent musicians. George was the father of Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning composer Charles Ives; Charles was four years younger than Adelaide Grabert.
In the early 1890s Adelaide was listed as chorister [see note below] at Danbury’s Second Congregational Church, located on West Street. In 1893, when the Universalists moved from Liberty Street to their newly-constructed building on upper Main, Edward Sherwood, a Bethel resident, was appointed organist. At some point Addie Grabert became assistant organist and in 1897 the Universalists named her organist and choir director [see note below].
During these years Addie, born only five years after the end of the Civil War, became an active and enthusiastic member of the local chapter of the Woman’s Relief Corps (WRC), an auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). Her father, a Union veteran, joined the GAR in 1883; however, a family relationship was not needed for a woman to join the WRC [see note below]. The mission of the Woman’s Relief Corps was to provide aid and assistance to veterans and their families and to promote patriotism and honor sacrifices made during the Civil War. In 1892 Addie was a delegate from her local post to the Connecticut WRC convention and by 1895 she was junior vice president of the Connecticut group. In 1897 Addie attended the national WRC convention in Buffalo, New York, as a delegate at large from Connecticut.
Adelaide Grabert, a soprano, lent her considerable skills in music to the Woman’s Relief Corps. She sang at the 1892 and 1893 WRC Connecticut conventions, and continued such performances at subsequent state gatherings. Addie was nicknamed “the sweet singer of the G.A.R.” She also sang in public for other groups and on other occasions. After an 1895 program the Danbury News reported, “One of the most delightful features of the evening was the singing of a solo by Miss Addie Grabert who is an excellent fine soprano and her winning presence at once captured the audience.” Early in her career Addie Grabert was a popular vocalist at programs sponsored by the Concordia Society in Waterbury. She assisted with or directed musical programs in the Danbury community, for example a 1925 springtime song festival featuring seven church choirs and a 1947 union Thanksgiving service led by eight local clergy, including Rev. Harry Hersey. Adelaide Grabert also became a member of the venerable Woodbine Society, a women’s social group in Danbury.
And, of course, Adelaide continued to furnish her considerable musical talents to First Universalist. This writer estimates that during her sixty-four years as organist and choir director she made music on well over 2,000 Sunday mornings. Miss Grabert worked with more than a dozen ministers and coached countless choir members. For six decades she was present for weddings, christenings and child dedications, new member ceremonies, funerals, church anniversaries and special programs, holidays, and the ordination of Rev. Gustav Leining in 1922. Addie supported the Universalist “young people” as early as 1895 when they presented the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta “H.M.S Pinafore” at the opera house in Danbury. She played the role of Cousin Hebe. In 1903 Addie directed the musical part of the program when the local Young People’s Christian Union (YPCU) of the Universalist church put on a literary and musical entertainment at the town hall in Brookfield Center. Years later, when the Danbury YPCU celebrated its fortieth (1931) and fiftieth (1941) anniversaries, Adelaide Grabert participated. Annual meetings of the Connecticut Universalist Convention were periodically held at the Danbury church. For the 1939 gathering Adelaide played the organ and directed the choir in an anthem.
Membership records show Adelaide Grabert joined First Universalist on April 23, 1916. As noted above, she was active with the local Young People’s Christian Union two decades before that. All the while, Adelaide maintained her private practice of music instruction, primarily piano and voice. A news clipping from June 1955 announced a piano recital for Miss Grabert’s thirty students (she was then eighty-four years old), to be held at the Universalist church.
Miss Grabert retired from her position as organist and choir director, at what was by then renamed First Universalist-Unitarian Church of Danbury, on January 15, 1961. At ninety years old she was the oldest living member of the church, and was named “Organist Emeritus.” A plaque reading “The Adelaide Grabert Organ in Commemoration of 70 Years of Dedicated Service” was affixed to the Harrison organ she had so expertly played for so long. Rev. Gaston Carrier led the worship service that Sunday morning; his theme was “The Beauty of Faithfulness.” A testimonial dinner for Miss Grabert was planned for January 24 at the Masonic Temple, a few doors south on Main Street from the church. Parishioners, friends, former ministers, and Miss Grabert’s former pupils were invited to attend. Shortly after this, church member Jack Flatau succeeded Miss Grabert as organist and choir director. In 1963, Jack Rowland, Jr., a former pupil of Adelaide Grabert and also a church member, took over the two positions and served until 1966.
Adelaide Grabert died at her home at 330 Main Street [see note below], across and down the street from the church building, on November 25, 1961, less than a year after retiring. An obituary called her “dean of music teachers in Danbury.” A funeral service was held at the Tomlinson Homestead [see note below] on November 28 with Rev. Francis Rockwell, interim minister of First Universalist-Unitarian Church, officiating. Burial was in the Grabert family plot, section E of Wooster Cemetery in Danbury. On Sunday, January 21, 1962, a special service of music dedicated to Miss Grabert was conducted at the church. As a final gift to the congregation, Adelaide Grabert left money to establish the Grabert Fund, which still today supports the music program of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Danbury.
There is a picture of Miss Grabert in her later years, seated at the Harrison organ, on page 72 of Reverdy Whitlock’s The Story of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Northern Fairfield County, 1822-1995.
[Note – Danbury was still a small town in 1870, population 8,753. Most residents lived in or near the downtown, as did the Grabert family. Outlying districts were largely rural and agricultural.]
[Note – In American English a chorister can be a choir director as well as a singer in a choir.]
[Note – Some accounts say Addie Grabert began her association with First Universalist in 1892, as assistant organist, when the church was still meeting on Liberty Street.]
[Note – The Grand Army of the Republic was an organization of Union war veterans. The Danbury GAR chapter was James E. Moore Post No. 18. The Danbury chapter of the Woman’s Relief Corps was James E. Moore Post No. 21. Captain Moore was a local soldier killed at the Battle of Gettysburg.]
[Note – The house was later torn down and a bank building constructed in its place. That building is now a mosque, Baitul Mukarram Masjid. Between 1893 and 1966, First Universalist-Unitarian Church was located at 347 Main Street. Today a commercial office building stands in its place.]
[Note – The Tomlinson Homestead was a funeral home at 336 Main Street, often used by members of First Universalist Church. Today an auto parts store occupies the site of the funeral home.]