Earl R. Cartwright, one of the best known citizens of
Portland, a professional singer of more than local note and who also is
interested in various industrial enterprises, an active factor in the
commercial life of the city, was born in Portland, and has been a resident
of that city most of his life, the exception being the period spent In New
York and Boston and in Europe in furtherance of his musical ambition. Mr.
Cartwright was born on January 9, 1879, and is the son and only surviving
child of Caldwell C. and Sophronia (Reed) Cartwright, who are still living
at Portland and further and fitting mention of whom is made elsewhere in
this volume, together with an interesting review of the busy life of
Caldwell C. Cartwright, the financier, whose activities for many years in
the commercial and industrial life of his home town have long caused him to
be regarded as one of the dominant figures in the work of development that
has marked this community during the past half century.
Earl R.
Cartwright was reared at Portland and upon completing the course in the high
school there entered Chicago University. From the days of his childhood his
chief interest was the cultivation of his instinctive love of music and
after a year at the university he abandoned the course there and went East,
where in New York and Boston he devoted himself to musical culture, with
special reference to voice culture, his studies in the former city being
carried on under the direction of Isadore Luxstone. He supplemented these
studies by a course in Berlin and has since devoted his chief attention to
his professional work, for years having been recognized as one of the four
or five really great baritones in America. Since attaining professional
recognition more than twenty years ago Mr. Cartwright has sung in all the
principal cities of the East and on the Pacific coast. He was one of the
soloists during the progress of the great musical festival in connection
with the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco and also appeared there
at a return engagement with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In common with
many of the country's great artists Mr. Cartwright’s "day of small things"
often was fraught with difficulties, but it was art for art's sake with him
and he persisted until in due time came the reward commensurate to his
talent, and an invitation to join the forces of the Metropolitan Opera
Company, which invitation, for reasons sufficient to himself, he declined
was convincing evidence that he had "arrived." His first appearance as a
professional was in his school days when he made a tour of the Middle states
cities with the old Chicago Glee Club. This experience provided the proper
whet to his ambition to become a real singer and he then went to Boston to
pursue his studies under Stephen Townsend, for a time eking out his slender
allowance by singing in the choir of the First Methodist Episcopal church of
Boston while thus occupied. Even after he had become qualified and was
conducting his own studio in Boston Mr. Cartwright was occupying the
position of soloist in the old Eliot church at Newton and later accepted a
call to sing in King's Chapel, Boston, under B. F. Lang, a position he
occupied for five or six years. During the period of his residence in Boston
he appeared for five consecutive seasons as a soloist with the Cecelia
Society and during this period also was singing with Handel and Hayden, and
for three seasons was on tour with the Boston Festival Orchestra.
In
1915, at Boston, Earl R. Cartwright was united in marriage to Ethel
Fredericks, of that city, and he and his wife have since made their home in
Portland, where they are very pleasantly situated. As noted in the
introduction to this review, Mr. Cartwright gives considerable attention to
a line of investments he has In hand, chiefly industrials, and he is a
member of the board of directors of the Sheller Wood Rim Company of
Portland, of the Lehigh Products Company of Iowa, of the Springfield Clay
Products Company of Springfield, Ill., of the Kokomo Malleable Iron Company,
and of the Midwest Stone Quarry Company of Indianapolis and is a stockholder
in the Haynes Automobile Company of Kokomo.
He is a Republican and
he and his wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Mr.
Cartwright is a Scottish Rite (32nd) Mason and a noble of the Ancient Arabic
Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, is a Rotarian, and is a member of the
Harvard Music Association of Boston and of the Indiana Society of Chicago.
Biographical && Historical Record of Jay County, Indiana
Lewis Publishing Company, 1887
Transcribed by Jim Cox
Buried in Green Park