Earl R. Cartwright

   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