Thomas P. Fenner

Born 22 Nov. 1829 in Providence, RI; died 15 Oct. 1912 in Hampton, VA. Was raised and spent his early career in Providence before being recruited to serve as the first music director for the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton University), which involved training and preparing a group of former slaves for a concert tour and transcribing their songs for Hampton and Its Students, with Fifty Cabin and Plantation Songs (1874). He worked at Hampton for three years (1872–1875) before taking a position at Temple Grove Seminary in Saratoga Springs, NY (1875–1880), then the New England Conservatory in Boston (1881–1887), then a return to teaching music in Providence (1887–1898). After his wife's death in 1898, he moved to Hampton to live with his daughter Lucia and her husband, and while there rekindled his connection to the music program he started.

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—Chris Fenner