I couldn't let the Vintage Band Festival pass without giving my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, a chance to be part of the fun.  So we brought him along with us – in cardboard cutout form – to Saturday's vintage base ball game that was played down the hill from St. Olaf College's Old Main.

William Reynolds, director of the Independent Silver Band, meets G. Oliver Riggs

The Northfield Silver Stars played the Rochester Roosters in a game using original "base ball" rules.  The Independent Silver Band from Mt. Vernon, Illinois, provided music to entertain the crowd.  Steve, Seb, Elias and I took a picnic lunch and stayed for several innings.

Music by the Independent Silver Band enhances the vintage experience of the game.

As we watched the players and tried to figure out how the rules were different (one example: no gloves are used), I also enjoyed watching and listening to the band members.  The Independent Silver Band is a recreation of Mt. Vernon's original 10-man band that performed for city events like balls and picnics from 1884-1889.  During this same time period, in Esbon, Kansas, my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, organized and directed his own cornet band that played for town events.

G. Oliver Riggs, started the Esbon (Kan.) Cornet Band in 1885 when he was 15 years old.  He's the third from the left; his father, Jasper Riggs, is second from the left

A few years later, after graduating from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, G. Oliver took a job teaching at Iowa Wesleyan University's Conservatory of Music in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.  During the summers of 1895 and 1896, he directed the Aledo (lll.) Cornet Band, 300 miles northwest of Mt. Vernon.

I don't know what G. Oliver thought of baseball, but I know he was familiar with the game.  My great-grandmother Islea Graham Riggs had a first cousin, George Frederick "Peaches" Graham, who played baseball for Aledo in the late 1880s.  Graham went on to greater fame in the early 1900s, playing for the Cleveland Blues, the Chicago Cubs, the Boston Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies.

A Rochester Rooster prepares to hit the ball with his "willow," now known as a bat.

We left the baseball game early to attend an afternoon concert in Way Park by Newberry's Victorian Cornet Band.  This band plays actual arrangements and instruments from the late 1800s.  It reminded me in style of uniform and in music selection of G. Oliver's early years directing the city band in Crookston, Minn.  G. Oliver and Islea moved to Crookston in 1898 from Aledo.  G. Oliver was a cornet and violin soloist as well as a band director, and he often played solos during the concerts, just as the Newberry band's director, Elisa Koehler, did at Saturday's concert.

G. Oliver Riggs meets another cornet soloist and band director, Elisa Koehler

After the concert, which concluded with the John Philip Sousa march, "Our Flirtations," I introduced myself to Koehler.  She's an assistant professor of music at Goucher College in Baltimore and has posted videos of the band's Vintage Band Festival performances on her blog.  Upon "meeting" G. Oliver, Koelher told me that her great-grandfather, Frank Joseph Kapralek, played E-flat clarinet with Sousa’s Band in the early 1900s.

I told her that we had something in common, because G. Oliver also knew Sousa and once played with his band, although I don't think G. Oliver was ever an official band member like Kapralek.

G. Oliver also visited Bridge Square on Saturday to hear concerts by the Lake Wobegon® Brass Band and the Chicago Brass Band before heading home.  A 139-year-old guy needs his rest.