Professor Hartnett

Back in the 1920s when newcomers first arrived at the Rap-Shaw Club camp at Beaver Dam Pond deep in the woods north of the Beaver River, one of the first club members they encountered was a rough-looking fellow, dressed like a bum, noisily cutting the grass in front of the clubhouse. At suppertime a man who called himself Professor Hartnett would appear in the dining room dressed in sartorial splendor and try to convince the guests that he was same man who they met earlier cutting the grass. 

No doubt, the befuddled guests wondered, “Who is this oddball?”

 

Dennis Edward Hartnett was born July 19, 1872 in Catskill, NY, son of Dennis and Mary Ann Byrne Hartnett. His father worked in the local wool spinning mill. His family was of modest means. As soon as they were old enough, he and his siblings also went to work as spinners in the mill. Dennis was born with an artistic temperament and a free spirit that did not equip him particularly well for factory work. Instead, he applied himself from an early age to the study of music. He especially loved playing popular tunes on stringed instruments such as the guitar, banjo and mandolin. He practiced hard, sometimes when he was supposed to be working at the mill. In 1892 at age 20 he was still living at home with his mother and siblings, his father having recently died.

 

In 1898, Hartnett moved to New York City. By that time, he was confident enough in his abilities that he believed he could support himself by teaching music. He started giving private lessons in his apartment on East 23^rd Street. His first attempt didn’t last long. On July 14, 1898 he enlisted in the New York National Guard. He was assigned to 203^rd regiment, that had been especially organized on account of the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. He attended basic training at Camp Black in Long Island. Following basic training the regiment transferred to Camp Wetherill near Greenville, SC where it remained for the duration of the war performing “usual military duties.” In the winter of 1898, Hartnett’s unit formed a military band. Naturally, he volunteered for that duty. Apparently, he played the clarinet since string instruments were not part of the band. He remained at Camp Wetherill until he was mustered out on March 21, 1899.

 

For the rest of his life Hartnett treasured a photograph that showed him and fellow soldiers in a tent at Camp Wetherill with the caption “Tenting Tonight.” Hartnett credited his love of the outdoors to his military experiences.

 

“This picture recalls vivid memories of my first tenting experience which occurred during the Spanish-American war of 1898. There is a primitive, irresistible appeal about tenting that once it gets under a fellow’s skin makes him a tent fan for life. Nothing brings one so close to nature as a tent, which is far removed from a four-walled city existence with all its limitations. Ever since that eventful war experience, I have spent part of every year in tents, mostly at Mountainville, New York [in the Hudson Valley] from which I garnered a wealth of cherished memories, and the romantic, spiritual and comradely aspect of single tent life and the lure for open spaces, that never takes a hit as life goes on.”

 

Hartnett returned to New York City after his military service and resumed teaching music. The City Directory of 1903 lists him at 120 E. 23rd Street under “banjo teachers,” and in 1906 he was listed as a “music teacher” at the same address. Hartnett quickly ascended into the mandolin, banjo and guitar elite. By 1908 he was on the executive committee of the newly formed American Guild of Banjoists, Mandolinists and Guitarists. He was vice-president of the American Guild by 1910 and president by 1912. 

 

Around this same time, he starting performing popular music on the mandolin at concerts around New York City. Sometime before 1908 he recruited ten other accomplished mandolin players to form a group that he called the Amorita [“dearly loved” in Latin] Mandolin Orchestra of Manhattan. A copy of a program they gave at the Grandview Auditorium on April 1, 1908 appeared in the next edition of The Crescendo, the magazine of the American Guild. 

The above photo of his mandolin orchestra appeared in the 1910 Gibson string instrument catalog. Hartnett was described as a Gibson teacher/agent. Like many teachers and professional performers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Hartnett combined his musical activities with instrument selling. He not only sold Gibson instruments; he owned a supply of them that he loaned to his students at no cost. He soon became a leading Gibson agent, often appearing in Gibson catalogs of the 1910s. He formed friendships with Gibson management and designers and with the designers of the Vivi-Tone mandocello, an early electric amplified instrument. Hartnett’s collection of instruments and ephemera is now part of the collection of the National Music Museum at the Univ. of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD.

 

A “personal note” in the August 1908 edition of The Crescendo reported that Hartnett was spending his summer vacation in the Adirondacks. Records of the Rap-Shaw Club confirm that he first visited the club that August. Unfortunately, there is no record of which club member invited him. One plausible explanation is that Hartnett initially intended to visit Beaver River Station to vacation at the Norridgewock Hotel. While there he probably encountered club members having dinner before meeting their guide to head up the Red Horse Chain to the Rap-Shaw clubhouse at Witchhopple Lake. The naturally gregarious Hartnett, a charming 27-year-old, probably struck up an amusing conversation leading to an invitation to visit the club. Photos in the club archive frequently show Hartnett among the Wheadon family and their guests. Perhaps they were his sponsors.

By 1910 his music teaching and instrument sales had grown into a profitable business. He created the Hartnett System of music instruction, based on the idea of dividing music into separate studies of time, pitch, and technique, focusing the student's attention on each in turn. Hartnett invented a device he called a "Developer," patented in 1912, which suppressed the audible sound of a stringed instrument, allowing the student to focus on technique rather than the tune. The mute also permitted a student to practice without disturbing others. He used his contacts in the American Guild to recruit teachers who would use his system of instruction and operate satellite music studios, first in the metropolitan area and eventually in a few cities across the country, to create what he called the Hartnett National Music Studio. He moved his own teaching out of his apartment into the Masonic Hall at 71 W. 23^rd Street in Manhattan.

Hartnett remained a bachelor into his forties, perhaps due to his uncertain financial situation. After his music business finally became successful, on Oct. 24, 1914 he married Nellie Dickinson McClellan, a 53-year-old widow from Springfield, Massachusetts. Following a honeymoon trip to Havana Cuba, they settled in an apartment in New York City. Hartnett continued to manage his chain of music studios for many years. According to the City Directories, he and Nellie lived at various locations in the city until he retired from teaching about 1940, at which point they moved to a 148-acre wooded property Nellie owned outside of Southampton, Massachusetts.

 

Hartnett was an enthusiastic member of the Rap-Shaw Club from 1908 until his death in 1947. He would typically spend a few weeks every August at the club’s camp. During the 1930s he was often accompanied by his nephew Dennis Hartnett, who he nicknamed “Ted,” and by his brother-in-law Bill Kitchen. Sometimes a few of his music students would come up to the camp with him where they would entertain members at the campfire and conduct lively square dances. Because he made his living as a music teacher, he insisted everyone at Rap-Shaw call him “the Professor.” Prof. Hartnett was first elected to the Rap-Shaw board of directors in 1923, and he served on the board continuously for the rest of his life. He is one of the very few club members who experienced the Rap-Shaw camps at Witchhopple Lake, Beaver Dam Pond and on Williams Island. Relatives of his, the Brace family, descendants of his nephew “Ted” Hartnett, are still club members.

 

Professor Hartnett was a devoted, some would say fanatical, fisherman. He haunted all the lakes and streams in the vicinity of the Rap-Shaw camp north of the Beaver River. In the early 1920s he became alarmed at the decline of the native brook trout in these waters and advocated that the club engage in fish stocking. He was appointed to chair the club’s “Fish Committee” and in that capacity he organized the first ever fish stocking by airplane in 1932 [see my post of 05/05/2023].

 

Although he was a devoted fisherman, he strongly believed that the camp existed primarily as a refuge from the cares of ordinary life. After a day of fishing and communing with nature, Hartnett often organized entertainment for everyone at camp. This sometimes included elaborate skits with homemade costumes and lots of slap-stick humor borrowed from the vaudeville shows of the time. Hartnett became a close friend of the camp’s steward, Herbie Nye. Herbie was only too happy to participate in Hartnett’s shenanigans. One of their favorite skits involved engaging in a ridiculous argument at supper and then pretending to start a fight. During these mock fights they dressed in funny oversize pajama pants and referred to themselves as the Higby Twins, an oblique reference to two nearby adjoining ponds of that name where the Professor liked to fish.

Prof. Hartnett died at the age of 74 on April 26, 1947. His wife, Nellie Dickinson McClellan Hartnett, survived him. She died on March 27, 1952 at the age of 90. Having no children, they bequeathed the 148-acre estate in Southampton, Massachusetts, to the New England Forestry Foundation. The Hartnett-Manhan Memorial Forest, as it is now known, was once the site of the largest colonial era lead mine in New England.

 

Even now, one hundred fifty-two years after he was born, Professor Hartnett is fondly remembered as “one of the most devoted and colorful members the Rap-Shaw Club ever had.” Perhaps the reason he was so beloved can be found in the slogan he emblazoned across the letterhead of his music studio, “Make It a Perfect First.” A perfect first in music means playing in unison. For musicians to achieve unison everyone has to play exactly the same note at the exact same time. Applied to social life, this slogan means you should always strive to work as closely as possible with others toward your common goal. That is what Hartnett hoped for in club life: people from all walks of life working and playing together in unison.

 

I wish I could have met him.

 

Sources

Correspondence with Denise Hartnett Brace.

Rap-Shaw Club archives and photo albums

Tony Williamson, MandolinCentral.com, “Episode 10 – Class of 1923,” found online at http://www.mandolincentral.com/breaking-news-1923

 

An earlier version of this article appeared in my book, The History of the Rap-Shaw Club.