Highlights from the Plains District Memorial Museum: Here Comes the Band
And HERE COMES THE PARADE!!! Bands and Parades: two of the most popular forms of entertainment in the early 1900s. Almost every community had a band and almost every town had at least one parade each year. Here in Plains District, the little community of Mayland had a band organized in 1906 with 33 members which played for about 10 years at parades and other special events throughout the Valley. Records indicate that they were playing in Staunton in 1910 when the city suffered a sudden catastrophic sinkhole which destroyed a number of its houses. Broadway had its own community band, “Broadway That’s All,” which played during the 1920s and 1930s. The best known local band, of course, was the Timberville Band organized in 1879, faded out in the early 1900s, and was revitalized after WW I by Henry Bull and Dr. W. B. Fahrney with more than 30 band members. The all-male band continued to play until the 1940s. In 1939 or 1940, the first woman, Mary Elizabeth Simmers, joined her father E. L. Simmers as a band member.
