Mrs. Grace Kromer—née Grace Ernst—was born on this day, December 16, 1893, in New York. She shared that birthday with Ludwig van Beethoven. She was to be my piano teacher, and the piano teacher of countless young people in the town of Port Washington, Long Island.
The 1900 census for Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan reveals a mid-sized family composed entirely of females:
DELANEY, Isabella, head. White female, born May 1838, 62 years old, widowed. Mother of eleven children; five still living. From Ireland; parents from Ireland. Entered the United States in 1850. Can read and write.
—Mary, daughter, born October 1863, 36, single, born in Rhode Island.
—Matilda, daughter, born January 1866, 34, single, salesgirl, born in Rhode Island.
—[ERNST], Julia, daughter, born December 1867, 32, widowed, born in Rhode Island.
—Grace, granddaughter, born December 1893, 6, born in New York; father born in New York; mother born in Rhode Island.
That little granddaughter Grace, whose widowed mother was Julia Ernst, née Delaney, would often speak of her “German grandmother.” She didn’t mention her Irish grandmother, though clearly they lived together for a time…along with her mother and Aunt Mary and Aunt Matilda.
In long around 1920, the widowed Mrs. Ernst announced her marriage to a Fred Schlothauber, a stained class craftsman. They eventually settled in Port Washington, Long Island.
In later life, Mrs. Kromer could still recall her earliest memory of Port Washington: the day the Long Island Rail Road came into town. It was 1898. I do not believe they yet lived there permanently.
By 1920, the census showed them living at 31 North Maryland Avenue in Port Washington. There were Fred Schlothauber, born in New York, parents from Germany, 47 years old. Julia Schlothauber, graciously listed at her husband’s age though 52, still from Rhode Island, parents still from Ireland. Grace I. Ernst (the I stood for Isabella, her grandmother, mentioned above) was also listed a tad too young as 24 and already taught piano at home.
(PS: always take someone’s age, given in a census, with a grain of salt. Errors are pervasive, and even if a woman didn’t understate her age out of vanity, a man was always assumed to be older, also out of vanity!)
Later the family would move to 47 Davis, where Mrs. Kromer lived through two marriages and a long widowhood, still teaching piano at home.
As a girl, she studied first in the one-room schoolhouse in Port Washington, probably up School Street off Sandy Hollow Road… where the children’s rough path is still just discernible from that dead-end street down to the Mill Pond. Her teacher was Miss Annie Larkin.
Young Miss Ernst manifested musical talent and interest, and in due course was sent to study piano at the Metropolitan College of Music under Miss Kate Sara Chittenden, AGO. Miss Chittenden, of whom Mrs. Kromer always spoke with the deepest reverence, was a formidable pedagogue in those days, and a tireless worker. Chittenden eventually began to teach at Vassar, and her name is still one to conjure by at that school.
At the beginning, Miss Ernst had to study the rudiments from an instructor working under Chittenden’s supervision. This was Miss Nugent. I was told years later that Chittenden stopped by Gracie’s piano one day and watched a while; then asked her, “Who is your teacher?”
“Miss Nugent,” came the reply. “Miss Nugent,” Chittenden called out. “Very good!”
Somehow, Gracie began to frequent the organ loft at the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street. The organist there, the Leipzig-trained Professor John Pelzer (professor where, I still don’t know) would take Grace to lunch and then, perhaps, a silent movie.
One day, as she recalled the story, there was a film where the heroine looked amazing in her fur coat. Professor Pelzer whispered to Miss Ernst, “If you marry me, I’ll buy you a coat just like that.”
She would pause for effect, then add triumphantly, “And I got the coat!”
Professor Pelzer died in about 1948. Later, Mrs. Pelzer married one Mr. Kromer—gaining the name by which I knew her—and the marriage was brief. He was not as kind as Professor Pelzer, and he died soon.
Mrs. Kromer was organist of Saint Peter of Alcantara parish for twenty-two years, playing the pipe organ that used to grace the church.
Long years later, I would play its electronic replacement for her funeral.
But there is more to tell…and it shall be told at a future date.
For now, thank God for the life of Mrs. Grace Ernst Pelzer Kromer of Port Washington, Long Island. It was a long, beautiful life, and I am deeply grateful it intersected my own.
