W. H. W. Darley › Texts

Born: Sep­tem­ber 9, 1801.
Died: Ju­ly 31, 1872.
Buried: Laur­el Hill Cem­e­tery, Phil­a­delphia, Penn­syl­van­ia.

William Henry Westray Darley was a multi-talented compiler and organist in pre-Civil War Philadelphia. He was something of a polymath. The son of two popular English actors, John and Eleanore Westray Darley, Willaim Henry was credited by Durang for arranging the score for Weber’s Der Feichütz, given at the Chesnut on March 18, 1825, and also taking the part of Wilhelm in that production. In 1839, Darley, now the organist at Saint Stephen’s, and listed in the city directories as a “professor of music,” began a co-authorship with John C. B. Stanbridge.
Darley was a director of Philadelphia’s most influential music society. He was also a member of the Anacreontic Society, a men’s musical club organized in 1833.

--excerpts from “Food for Apollo: Cultivated Music in Antebellum Philadelphia.”
By Dorothy T. Potter