b. June 14, 1876 Denver, CO / d. August 19, 1952 Orange Co., CA
Aubrey Stauffer married Betty’s grandmother, “Maggie” Perkins, after the death of her first husband William John Foy. Aubrey was a famous composer who prolifically wrote all sorts of songs in a variety of mediums – even the movies! His piece C-H-I-C-A-G-O was beloved by the Midwest.
Before moving to California, Aubrey headed Aubrey Stauffer & Co., a music publishing business in the Grand Opera House Building in Chicago. Among the titles they published were, THE WRECK OF THE TITANIC, A DESCRIPTIVE COMPOSITION FOR PIANO SOLO by William Baltzell.
Aubrey was also mandolin virtuoso. Paul Sparks writes in book THE CLASSICAL MANDOLIN:
Aubrey Stauffer, from Denver, Colorado, left some 300 solo compositions and transcriptions that testify to a truly astonishing technique.
In the January 1943 issue of ETUDE, George C. Krick notes:
Aubrey Stauffer confined his playing mostly to the duo style for unaccompanied mandolin and his ‘Book of Thirty Progressive Studies’ contains some excellent material to develop this phase of mandolin technique. For concert purposes he compiled a Book of “Forty Grand Mandolin Solos” and another of “Forty-two Mandolin Solos,” all in the duo style.
Aubrey also enjoyed golfing. As detailed in a 1912 issue of THE AMERICAN GOLFER, “Mr. Aubrey Stauffer defeated Mr. C.A. Brooks, 6 and 5, in the final match for the Emmerich cup at Park Ridge.”
Pictured below are covers from some of Aubrey’s compositions:
Filed under: Stauffer |
Buchheit - Myers Genealogy 
Aubrey was my Great Grand-Uncle.
I never knew that he had married. Do you have more information as to when and where? Did Betty move to CA with him?
I am not sure where or when Maggie Perkins married Aubrey. He was her second husband, though, and they didn’t have any children together.
Betty Buchheit says:
“After William John Foy died, my grandmother Maggie Perkins married again. She married a very nice guy named Aubrey Stauffer. He was a musician. He wrote a lot of music and he went to Hollywood. He wrote for the movies. You see his name in the credits sometimes. My grandmother and Aubrey knew all these old time people like Adolphe Menjou, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.
When the Great Depression hit and there were no jobs, my grandmother and Aubrey came back to [Park Ridge] Illinois and lived with us. My grandmother died of cancer in our house and Aubrey lived with us for a couple of years until the Depression was better.
For my birthday, he fixed up all the chairs and made little tickets and did a first running of a film. He showed Lindbergh and all of these things. It was very interesting and really neat. Everybody loved that. It was pretty novel.
Then when things picked up, he went back to Hollywood and he returned to Illinois just a couple times. He used to come up to the lake [Blue Lake, in Minocqua, Wisconsin] a lot where my parents had a summer cabin.”
[…] John Foy died, my grandmother Maggie Perkins married again. She married a very nice guy named AUBREY STAUFFER. He was a musician. He wrote a lot of music and he went to Hollywood. He wrote for the movies. You […]
[…] remember that after my grandmother died, AUBREY stayed with us for two years until things picked up in Hollywood. For my birthday, he fixed up all […]