About This Year's Presentation

Writeup as featured in the 1949 edition of the Official New Year’s Day Program

The Quaker City String Band was organized in the year 1921 under the direction of Mr. Charles Richner. The band quickly became one of the top notch bands in the Mummers' Parade, but was disbanded in the year 1925. About fifty members of the old band then formed a String Band consisting of themselves and about 40 men from Wildwood, N.J. This band was named the Wildwood String Band. In those days the Wildwood String Band was one of the best bands in the Mummers' Parade, but, after winning only second prize so often, they decided to change its name from the Wildwood String Band to the Philadelphia String Band. After parading for one year under this name, they disbanded, and it was then that the new Quaker City String Band was activated, with many members of the old original Quaker City in line. The new Quaker City quickly became one of Philadelphia's outstanding musical organizations, and was known in Mummers' circles as the Band Hard to Beat. The band won first prize in 1935, 1940, 1944, 1945, and narrowly missed making it three years in a row when they finished second and were barely beaten out by the Durning String Band in 1946. Since the reorganization, it has been under the vigorous and imaginative leadership of Captain Raymond Endriss, who serves notice that its reputation will be sustained this year.

The membership hails mostly from Philadelphia and Camden, with a few coming from such distant points as Runnemede, N. J., and Fortescue, N. Y. The youngest Mummer is Donald Newcomer, age 9, playing the saxophone, who began marching two years ago; and the oldest is John Lambert, 60, who has been parading for 45 years. The Quaker City String Band is noted for its civic and patriotic activity. Thirty of their members served in World War I and 40 in World War II. The band regularly gives concerts for the patients at the Coatesville Veterans' Hospital and Valley Forge General Hospital. It has paraded in New York at the Lions' Convention, in Atlantic City in the Shriners' Parade and in the Holy Name Parade and others.