"He who lacks the seeing mind is more truly blind than he through whose eyes no light shines."
-Almeda Adams’s response to a comment once made about her being blind.
Almeda was born on February 26, 1865 in Meadville, Pennsylvania to James and Katherine Adams. Her father was an itinerant Baptist minister. According to notes from Doris Robertson, one of Almeda’s many voice students, Almeda became blind when she was 6 months old, due to a bad decision by her doctor to administer some drops to her eyes.
Not much is known about her childhood other than she attended the state school for the blind in Columbus, Ohio from age 7-18. She apparently had significant musical gifts—she learned to play the piano, studied composition, and took voice lessons. (This photo is one that the Cleveland Sight Center found in its archives—it shows Almeda at a piano lesson. Our best guess is it dates from the late 1880’s.) Singing was her main focus. She is described as having a beautiful, clear and resonant voice.
In 1891, she heard about a scholarship offered by The Ladies Home Journal to the person who sold the most subscriptions to their magazine. Almeda really wanted to attend college and she knew a full scholarship was the only way she would be able to achieve that goal. Traveling from one Ohio town to another (her father arranged for her to stay with the family of minister friends of his in each town), Almeda went door-to-door in Tiffin, Oberlin, Cincinnati, and finally Cleveland. By the end of the year she had sold 2,500 subscriptions, winning the prize. The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston was the school of her choice. However, upon learning that Almeda was blind, they informed her that they could not accept her. At this point The Ladies Home Journal interceded and persuaded the school to give her a 10-week trial period, during which time she proved herself to be more than qualified.
Upon graduation in 1894, Almeda took a job teaching voice and piano at the Nebraska School for the Blind. She taught in Nebraska for 5 years and in 1900, she moved to New York for further vocal study. Her teachers felt “her fine voice and excellent training held promise of a brilliant musical future”, but those dreams were dashed at the end of her first year in NY. Her mother fell and broke her hip, necessitating Almeda's return to Cleveland to help out at home. She returned to Cleveland in 1901. Perhaps because Almeda was living as a student in NYC, her official address was still her parents’ home.
This snapshot from the 1900 census lists her living with her father and mother along with a servant by the name of Nellie Hutchins. Her father’s occupation is listed as the Superintendent of the Foundling Home and 6 wards, all 1-6 months old, are listed as living at the Adams household as well. Can you imagine that household filled with 6 babies and a 51-year old recovering from a broken hip?
Upon her return to Cleveland, in addition to helping out with infant and elder care at home, she started giving voice lessons and directing children’s choruses at Friendly Inn and Alta House. Almeda was also very involved in the formation of the Cleveland Sight Center in 1906.
This is a picture of Almeda’s father, James Adams. One evening circa 1910, Almeda’s father read aloud to her an article describing the music school in NYC that David Mannes had begun, dedicated to providing music lessons for children who could not afford them. That article helped inspire Almeda to establish The Music Settlement.
During an interview once, Almeda described that evening with her father: ”He read rather slowly, and it took over two hours. When he finished reading he put the magazine down and said to me, “You must do that thing for Cleveland. There is your work.”
This is Adella Prentiss Hughes, a prominent person in Cleveland's cultural life who would found the Musical Arts Association in 1915. Then in 1918 she founded The Cleveland Orchestra, becoming the first American woman to establish and manage a major symphony orchestra,
In February 1912 when Almeda presented the vision and idea for what would become The Music Settlement to Adella, Adella was so impressed that she suggested the establishment of such an institution to the members of the Fortnightly Musical Club, which included many prominent Clevelanders. They worked most expeditiously and 3 months later in April 1912 the Cleveland Music School Settlement was legally incorporated.
This is a newspaper article that appeared shortly after the opening of the school. In the bottom-right photo, Almeda is seen with one of the pupils.
By the end of the first month their enrollment had more than doubled to 111 students. It was a small faculty that first year—lessons were offered in voice, piano, and violin. Almeda served as the voice teacher.
By its second season the faculty had grown to include several more standard instruments.
In 1926, Almeda (now 61 years old), was asked to chaperone a budding young soprano by the name of Esther Cadkin on a tour of Europe. Esther’s teacher felt her pupil needed to acquire a more “Cosmopolitan culture” in order to meet success as a singer. A trip abroad was something Almeda had dreamed of her whole life, so this was indeed wonderful beyond words. This trip was funded for both Esther and Almeda by the “Wonderful Lady with a Great Heart”, who specifically requested that Almeda be the chaperone. This grand tour of Europe began in August 1926 and ended a year later.
Upon Almeda’s return to America, she wrote a book about this trip called Seeing Europe Through Sightless Eyes, which was published in 1929 by Grafton Press of NY. In addition to telling the details of Esther Cadkin’s experiences and opportunities, Almeda discusses every museum and site she visited. In each city they visited, it seems Almeda was greeted by pretty spectacular docents and guides, who gave her personalized tours and described to her in great detail many works of art. All I can surmise is there must have been some significant behind-the-scenes work going on at the direction of the “Wonderful Lady with a Great Heart”.
On the concluding page of her book she writes, ”. . . this [trip] has been the supreme experience of my life. . . Shall I ever pass this way again? God alone knows. But of this I am sure, life is immeasurably bigger and finer and more intelligible for this marvelous experience. I am kin to all the world. My family of adoption are of every race and kindred. . . . above all, I know that love transcends race and environment and clime and that it is the supreme heritage of life.”
Almeda stopped teaching at the Settlement in 1926 in light of her year-long European tour, subsequent book writing, and then a second trip to Europe. So even though she may not have been teaching at TMS at that time, she stayed busy. In this photo, we find Almeda enjoying a moment of down time with her pet bird.
In her later years she was often invited to give talks at gatherings of clubs and institutions throughout NE Ohio. She also tried her hand at writing a novel— our archives include her manuscript for a novel-- seems to be a mix of Romance/Nancy Drew detective adventure.
A note in the TMS archives from one of Almeda’s students, Doris Robertson, also spoke to her love of live performance: “How she loved the opera. We would go to the Public Auditorium and sit in the blind section, where she could get in free and take one companion. She knew every word and would ask whoever was with her to describe every detail.”
She died in September 1949 at the age of 84, presumably of old age although no details regarding her death have been found. This newspaper article was published two years before her death, and highlights the naming of the Almeda Adams Club in her honor (the Settlement's version of a Parent Teacher Association).
From the Editorial Page of the Cleveland Press of September 1949, printed shortly after her death:
“The 84 years of Miss Almeda C. Adams’s life were a heart-warming inspiration to thousands. Cleveland was fortunate indeed to have this wonderful little lady for so long. … She was active in virtually every phase of teaching and appreciation of music. … Miss Adams will be missed, but she left this community an example that won't be easily erased.”
