Strafford News

City of Dover issued the following announcement on February 23.

The Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire had the headstone of prominent 19th-century African American soprano singer Nellie Brown Mitchell engraved with her name nearly 100 years after her death in 1924. Brown Mitchell, a Dover native, is buried with her Civil War veteran and Massachusetts legislator husband, Capt. Charles L. Mitchell, and her parents and siblings at Pine Hill Cemetery. While Mitchell’s headstone was engraved when he died in 1912, Brown Mitchell’s monument remained blank until last fall.

That’s when Chip Tasker of Tasker Monument Company of Dover engraved it after being cleaned at the behest of Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire. Tasker said the challenge of engraving the headstone was ensuring that Brown Mitchell’s engraving closely matched her husband. He noted that it took about a year to get the font right before starting the work.

The headstone is engraved with “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a hymn written in 1900 that became known as the Black national anthem.

The process of engraving the headstone began with the approval of Dover’s Cemetery Board in October 2020, as no descendants could be found to grant the permission to engrave the headstone. The Cemetery Board oversees Pine Hill Cemetery.

Brown Mitchell grew up in Dover and lived there into the 1870s. Some reports show she was born in 1845; online census records appear to have her birth in 1850. Records indicate they lived on Cedar Street, near Broadway and the train tracks. Cedar Street was later renamed Winter Street. Her father, Charles J. Brown, owned a hairstyling business in downtown Dover.

Brown Mitchell was the lead soloist at the Washington Street Free Will Baptist Church, the same location as today’s Dover Baptist Church. She remained the lead soloist until 1872, when the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts, hired her to be the lead soloist there. Brown Mitchell returned to the Washington Street Free Will Baptist Church from 1876-1878 before becoming the musical director and principal soloist of Boston-area churches.

In Maud Cuney Hare’s 1936 book, “Negro Musicians and Their Music,” she writes, “During her career, Nellie Brown had the distinction of being the leading soprano of four leading white churches in Boston, among which were the Winthrope Street Church of Roxbury and the Bromfield Street Church.”

Brown Mitchell studied at the New England Conservatory and the New England School of Vocal Arts in Boston, where she obtained a music degree. She also toured the country singing and launched the Nellie Brown Mitchell Concert Company in 1886 that included her younger sister, Edna, also buried at Pine Hill Cemetery. Mitchell Brown toured around the eastern half of the country, including local performances. Her concerts brought her back to Dover, where her shows received rave reviews.

Sen. David Watters, a member of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire’s board of directors, said last year that Brown Mitchell “rivaled the best singers of the day.” But he believes if she were not judged by the color of her skin, “she would have been performing with the top opera performing companies in the world.”

Her musical touring seems to have ended around 1890. She continued to make a living as a vocal teacher and invented a device she called the “phoneterion” to help train the proper tongue position for her students and other singers. She also sang and organized events locally.

She sang at William Lloyd Garrison’s funeral, where her husband was a pallbearer, and she also sang at the celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth. Watters said the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire is planning to add a plaque about Brown Mitchell at the cemetery. He said there is an ongoing discussion of creating a dedicated Dover trail to be a part of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire.

For more information about Brown Mitchell and her family, read the article in Dover Download published last year. The Dover Public Library also has webpage about about Brown Mitchell on their Dover History pages. 

Dover Public Library talk on Nellie Mitchell Brown

The Dover Public Library held a talk about the life of Brown Mitchell with Dennis Britton, president of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire’s board of directors, on Feb. 24. The talk virtual talk was recorded and will be posted to the library's Facebook page next week. 

Dr. Britton is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia and former professor at the University of New Hampshire. He researches and teaches early modern English literature, with a focus on the history of race, critical race theory, Protestant theology, and the history of emotion. He has served as a board member for the New Hampshire Humanities Council and as a past board president of the Black Heritage Trail.

Original source can be found here.