Minerd.com Photo of the Month: The Hopwood (PA) Community Band

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Many small communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries took great pride in their local bands which entertained at holidays, celebrations and festivals. The Hopwood Band, based in a village on the outskirts of Uniontown, Fayette County, PA, featured several Minerd-Minard-Miner-Minor cousins among the musicians. This image, from 1908, shows drummer Joseph M. Hopwood (3rd from left) and horn players Simeon Thomas Goff and daughter Lea Ray (Goff) Phillips Guyton (far right). Other known band members from the community were Tommy Hair (far left, who was blind) and Joseph Goff and Frank Goff.

Joseph Hopwood's great-grandson James Philip "Phil" Parker, who furnished this image, and of the family of Bessie (Hopwood) LaClair, says that the photo was "taken at Hopwood picnic grounds near the site of the Howard Johnson's restaurant."

If you can identify other of the faces in this photograph, please contact us. See other community band images as our Photo of the Month for April 2017 -- November 2012 -- and January 2002.

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Hopwood Band image courtesy Phil Parker