Charles Henry Galloway (1871-1931) was one of the most prolific performers and teachers of organ in the St. Louis area throughout the late-19^th and early-20^th centuries. Unfortunately, in spite of his many contributions to the music of St. Louis, however, Galloway has been all but forgotten. Thankfully, a body of historical documents related to Galloway still exists, and although the preservation of these documents is not an issue (as nearly all of them have been placed in various libraries and archives) accessibility is, as they are located at numerous institutions across Missouri, and, in most cases, almost entirely uncatalogued. The primary purpose of the Galloway Archive Project has been to shed light on Galloway’s contributions by assembling a corpus of primary source materials and compiling them in an online database devoted to Galloway and his work in order to make these documents easily accessible and usable by other researchers or anyone with a general interest.

A large part of this accessibility stems from the simple, yet intuitive, navigation system that has been designed for this website, making it incredibly easy for users to locate documents. At the top of the page, you will notice that the menu is broken down into the Home page and About section—which contains general information about both Galloway and the archive, images of the organist, personal documents, and periodicals. Then it is organized according to the various aspects of Galloway’s career: Performer, Conductor, Educator, and Writer (which includes both Galloway’s compositions and his published articles. If you hover your cursor over one of the menu items, a dropdown menu will appear, showing the further divisions of each section. Or, if you click on one of the menu items, you will be taken to a page that shows the main highlights of the section. And if none of that is sufficient, the archive is also equipped with a search function that will allow you to search keywords related to any of the items on the site.

Say, for example, you were interested in Galloway’s time at St. Peter’s Episcopal and wanted to know if there were any financial records. You could go to Performer, select St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Church Documents, and right there are a number of vestry reports.

Or say you wanted to play one of Galloway’s compositions, you would just go to Writer, Compositions, and you’re all set.

Nearly all of the materials cataloged in this archive follow the same general format. The title of each item is the date of creation, which allows for easy sorting. In addition, each is equipped with an image, brief description, reference number, and a download link to access them.

If you have any questions about the archive or materials in it, feel free to send us a message on the Contact Us page. Until then, good luck and happy exploring!