Patrick Gilmore

• Name — Patrick Gilmore • Birth Name — Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore • Born — 25 December 1829 • Birthplace — Ballygar, County Galway, Ireland • Died — 24 September 1892 • Place of death — St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. • Occupation — * Composer • bandmaster • soldier • Years Active — 1848−1892 • Children — Minnie L. Gilmore

Gilmore was born in Ballygar, County Galway. He started his music career at age fifteen, and spent time in Canada with an English band.

He settled in Boston, Massachusetts in 1848, becoming leader of the Suffolk, Boston Brigade, and Salem bands in swift succession. He also worked in the Boston music store of John P. Ordway, performing as a member of "Ordway's Aeolians", a blackface minstrel group, with whom he played tambourine. With the Salem Band, Gilmore performed at the 1857 inauguration of President James Buchanan. • Illustration — "Front Piazza of Grand Hotel, 4 P.M. with Gilmore's Boston Band, Saratoga, N.Y.," mid-19th century Also in 1858 he founded "Gilmore's Band," and at the outset of war the band enlisted with the 24th Massachusetts Volunteers, accompanying General Burnside to North Carolina. Later, he played for the troops under the command of General Benjamin Butler in New Orleans, Louisiana. After the temporary discharge of bands from the field, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts entrusted Gilmore with the task of re-organizing military music-making, and General Nathaniel P. Banks appointed him Bandmaster-general. When peace resumed, Gilmore was asked to organize a celebration, which took place at New Orleans. That success emboldened him to undertake two major music festivals at Boston, the National Peace Jubilee in 1869 and the World's Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival in 1872. These featured monster orchestras of massed bands with the finest singers and instrumentalists (including the only American appearance by "waltz king" Johann Strauss II) and cemented Gilmore's reputation as the leading musical figure of the age. Coliseums were erected for the occasions, holding 60- and 120,000 persons. Grateful Bostonians presented Gilmore with medals and cash, but in 1873 he moved to New York City, as bandmaster of the 22nd Regiment. Gilmore took this band on acclaimed tours of Europe.

In 1858, he married Nellie J. O'Neil in Lowell, Massachusetts. It was back on home soil, preparing an 1892 musical celebration of the quadricentennial anniversary of Christopher Columbus' voyage of discovery, where Gilmore collapsed and died in St. Louis. Patrick S. Gilmore was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York.