William Rogers Chapman

William Rogers Chapman (August 4, 1855 – March 27, 1935) was an American conductor, organist, pianist, composer, and music educator. He is best known as the founding director of two choruses in New York City (the men’s chorus Musurgia Society and the women’s chorus the Rubinstein Club), and for establishing the Maine Music Festival. Early life and education William Rogers Chapman was born August 4, 1855, in Hanover, Massachusetts. He was named after his father, the Reverend William Rogers Chapman, who died not long after his birth on October 25, 1855, at the age of 43. Chapman was christened on top of his father’s coffin when he was three months old. He grew up in Bethel, Maine, where he was raised by his mother, Emily Irene Bishop Chapman. He was educated at Gould Academy in Bethel. In 1868 William’s mother married a second time, to William Jacob Valentine, a New York banker, and the family moved to Fordham, New York. Soon after William was sent to a school in New York City operated by the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church with the aim of being trained as a minister. At the age of 14 he was sticken with sudden blindness and spent a year recuperating with bandaged eyes in