Woman of the Century/Alice A. Andrews

ANDREWS, Miss Alice A., composer and director, born in St. Peter, Minn. She is a member of the musical Andrews family, now grown into the well-known Andrews Opera Company. It has been said of her that she could sing before she could lisp a word, as she began to sing at the early age of two years. When she was nine years of age, she started out with her brothers and sisters as one of the family concert troupe, giving sacred concerts in the churches throughout the State. After a few musical seasons she left the concert stage for the school-room, where she spent her time for several years, taking a trip with the family now and then in the summer vacations. As a child she had a remarkably strong voice, but at twelve years of age it failed completely, and for six years she did not sing a note. After that time she regained it in a measure, but not in its completeness, and she has since turned her attention more to instrumental music, being for eight or nine years the ALICE A. ANDREWS. pianist and musical director of the company. She has composed several vocal pieces, which she is now having published. She has a remarkable talent for transposition, and could transpose music as soon as she could read it. The Andrews family is of Spanish descent by the line of the father who was a man of much intellectual ability. The paternal grandfather came to this country when quite a young boy, leaving his parents upon large landed estates to which he, the only child, would one day be heir. Here he married, and his wife would never consent to his returning to look after his interests in far-away Spain. Much of the musical and dramatic talent of his grandchildren is doubtless an inheritance, brought to them by him from the land of the vine and the olive, of sunshine and song.