Mapleton borough

The Mapleton Community Band

The Mapleton Community Band's history, written for the borough's 1966 centennial book, says it was organized in the summer of 1880 as the Mapleton Cornet Band and took its present name in 1950.

The first uniforms were steel gray trimmed in black, with a heavy gold cord epaulet on each shoulder, three rows of gold buttons down the cutaway coats, and what the book calls "Admiral" hats. The text says they were acquired in 1882. A photograph on the next page is captioned "first uniforms, about 1888," so the book gives both dates, and we cannot say which is right.

Scott Dunbar, formerly of Perry County, was the first instructor and director. Elliot Robley came next, then David H. Wallet, who served until 1922. That year a young Mapleton man, Ralph N. Corbin, took over and stayed 28 years. He was still active on July 19, 1964, when he played a concert at Allensville, one day before he died.

The band first met in Rex Hall, which burned in 1910, and then practiced at the Stubbs and Hooper undertaking parlor. In 1911 W. H. Spangler built the band hall for $1,155. When the flu epidemic of 1918 broke out, the hall was turned into an emergency hospital. At one time it had ten patients, and the book says only one person, Gilbert Wagner, died there. Women of the town cared for the sick in regular shifts, day and night, without pay.

The hall served the town in other ways. In the early 1920s local people put on home talent plays there for the benefit of the band, and from 1928 to 1931 Mapleton played basketball in it against teams from Huntingdon, Mount Union, Petersburg, Lewistown and other towns.

The uniforms the band wore in 1966, black trimmed with white, were bought in 1950. The book lists the directors from that year on, beginning with J. Richard Burkholder, who also supervised music in the Mount Union schools. It calls the band one of the oldest self-supporting community bands in Pennsylvania, one of the few to stay active. That is the book's own description, and we have not counted the others.

Checked against the record. We read the band's history on the scanned page of the 1966 centennial book, because the digital text of that page is garbled and the dates cannot be trusted without the picture. The 1880 and 1882 dates are our best reading of soft type. The early dates and names rest on this one book, written more than 80 years after the founding. A search of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive for the band's old name found nothing, and the county histories we hold did not help. The book disagrees with itself on the first uniforms, 1882 in the text and about 1888 under the photograph, so the story gives both. We tie the director J. Richard Burkholder to the band through a 1948 school journal and a 2007 obituary, which mentions the Mapleton and Mount Union community bands and records his death. The book's claim that the band is one of the oldest self-supporting community bands in Pennsylvania is its own, and we have not counted the others.

Sources

Checked 2026-11-01 · Primary sources and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive

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Photographs from Mapleton borough