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NELLIE BROWN MITCHELL (1845-1924)
Singer

Born in Dover, New Hampshire, Nellie Brown Mitchell began her professional singing career in church choirs first in Dover and then in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Her career gathered momentum while she studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and at the New England School of Vocal Arts in Boston. In the 1874 musical season, several Boston newspapers praised the quality of her voice and its careful training. The Boston Globe commented, “This lady is fortunate in her exceedingly sweet and well-trained voice, which, in conjunction with her fine personal appearance and stage manners, rendered her reception unusually enthusiastic.” By 1882, she had performed at concerts in several major cities: New York City; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; St. John, New Brunswick; Chicago, Illinois; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1882-1885, she toured with the James Bergen Star Concert Troupe as its “prima donna soprano.” In 1885, she left the troupe to take an extended solo southern tour traveling to New Orleans via Cleveland, Cincinnati, Memphis, and Nashville. She returned to Boston to sing in black churches before founding the Nellie Brown Mitchell Concert Company in 1886 which toured through the 1890s. Mitchell retired from concertizing in the late 1890s, devoting herself to teaching young African American women in Boston for many years. In the early 1880s, she invented the phoneterion, “an instrument used to reduce muscular tension in the voice.” In 1876 she married Lt. Charles Mitchell of the Massachusetts 55th Regiment, who later became clerk of the U. S. Customs House in Boston. Nellie Brown Mitchell died in Boston in 1924. She was “not only...one of America's first black classically trained singers, but also an educator, entrepreneur, financier, and arts-function organizer.”