Author’s Note: Thank you to cousin and Cumbo family historian Charlotte Baskerville Brown for inspiring this blog post and for all of the extraordinary family research you have generously shared with me.
On Friday, November 17, 1925, world renowned tenor Roland Hayes walked onto the stage at Carnegie Hall to perform opera. The year prior he made history as the first African American artist to give a full-length recital at Carnegie Hall. This 1925 performance was his first of the New York opera season. His program of classical music and Negro spirituals brought down the house. By the end, Hayes enjoyed the adulation of nine standing ovations.
The next day New York Times music critic Olin Downes described Hayes’s performance as one of “consummate taste and modesty.” Downes’ review revealed that Hayes had been joined on stage that night by at least four other black men. Hayes had invited the Negro String Quartet to accompany him.
The performance offers a glimpse into the remarkable life of Marion Cumbo (1899–1990), cellist for the Negro String Quartet. Cumbo’s Carnegie Hall performance with Hayes marked his meteoric rise from humble beginnings.
Cumbo, one of the great cellists of the Harlem Renaissance, was born in 1899 and grew up in an orphanage with his brother Earle. He was educated in New York City public schools where his musical talent was first discovered, then the Martin-Smith School of Music where he became a protégée to Minnie Brown, and the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School) which he paid for by performing.
Since Cumbo grew up an orphan, little is known about his ancestry. Kermit Moore (1929–2013), a master cellist mentored by Cumbo, speculated Marion’s family was from the West Indies. What I have uncovered is that Cumbo’s wife Clarissa Burton was from Dominica in the West Indies, but that Cumbo’s ancestry traces back to North Carolina.
His grandparents Hilliard Cumbo and Sarah Meacham were free people of color born in the early 1800s and were from Halifax County, North Carolina. They had six children including a son William who is Marion Cumbo’s father. A daughter, Mary Cumbo, married a man named Isom Ampey, who served in the Massachusetts 54th made famous in the movie Glory.
The Cumbo family migrated from Halifax County to Michigan prior to the Civil War in search for opportunity. They were part of a wave of free people of color families migrating from the Carolinas and Virginia to the Midwest — Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.
Hilliard and Sarah’s son William left Michigan as a young adult for New York. In 1898 he married Maggie Hurst. By 1900 they appear to be a happy family with a one-year old son Marion. Sadly, by the 1910 census, the Cumbo home is broken and Marion and his brother Earle are living in a Bronx orphanage.
Despite his early life challenges, Marion Cumbo would go on to enjoy a fulfilling career, regularly performing as a soloist in addition to his work with the Negro String Quartet. Cumbo also crossed over, recording albums with blues legends Clara Smith and Eva Taylor. In 1970 with his wife Clarissa he founded Triad Presentations, dedicated to promoting black concert artists and composers.
I have connected with a direct paternal descendant of Marion Cumbo, he is a town councilman in Maryland. I hope he will join our Cumbo US South Y-DNA project so I can learn more about Marion Cumbo’s ancestry and how it might connect to the other Cumbo branches I’ve uncovered.
One of the things I enjoy most about genealogy is uncovering inspiration in the stories of ancestors and relatives. I feel both inspired by Marion Cumbo’s story and honored to have uncovered it.
Discography for Marion Cumbo: https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/talent/detail/89461/Cumbo_Marion_instrumentalist_cello?fbclid=IwAR1y7NJFILzhojvGVq2jrvT93J9ERSPfIHXjx_u2lJ-ek5jbxehaR_lDQog
Hi family,
My name is Robyn Cumbo Mitchell. I am the granddaughter of Marion Cumbo. Marion and Clarissa Cumbo had one son, William Cumbo. Marion’s brother Earle, had one son, Richard Cumbo. Richard recently passed due to COVID-19. It is true that Marion’s wife, Clarissa had the roots from Dominica. William Cumbo (Marion and Clarissa’s son) married Anita Griffin and had 2 children, Robyn and Stewart Cumbo. After his divorce from Anita, he married Trula ???. William and Trula had 3 children. Hope this information helps. Please feel free to reach out any time.