Stella Stocker

Stella Prince Stocker was an American composer, choral conductor, and pioneering ethnomusicologist whose career spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, leaving a lasting imprint on both American music and the study of Ojibwe cultural traditions. Born on 3 April 1858 in Jacksonville, Illinois, she was the daughter of Dr. David and Lucy Manning Chandler Prince, and received a rigorous education that included a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1880, further study at the Sorbonne, and private instruction with noted teachers such as Xaver Scharwenka and Bruno Oscar Klein. After completing her studies she embarked on a dual career as a performer, composer, and lecturer, working in Europe and the United States, and in 1885 married Dr. Samuel Marston Stocker, a physician from Duluth, Minnesota, with whom she raised two children, Arthur and Clara. In Duluth she founded the Cecilian Society music school and directed the Duluth Cecilian Chorale Society, later renamed the Matinee Musicale, which attracted celebrated artists like Edward MacDowell and became a cultural hub for the region. Stocker’s ethnographic fieldwork among the Ojibwe at reservations such as Mille Lacs, Leech Lake, and Red Lake produced detailed photographs, diaries, and musical transcriptions that remain vital primary sources; she was given the Ojibwe name O‑mes‑qua wi‑gi shi‑go‑que (Red sky lady). Her publications and lectures, presented in North America and Europe, emphasized the richness of Indigenous music, and she incorporated these themes into stage works such as the pageant Sieur du Lhut (1916) and the light opera Ganymede (1902). Throughout her life she balanced scholarly pursuits with community service, lecturing for the New York City Board of Education and supporting charitable causes through benefit performances. Stocker died on 29 March 1925 in Jacksonville, Florida, but her legacy endures through the archives at the University of Minnesota Library and the continued influence of the musical societies she established.