The Wesleyan College of Music was for many years under the direction of Mrs. John W. Gray, or as she was known to her closest friends, Lavinia Gray.
What some people may not realize is that the College of Music was open to anyone. Enrollment as a college student was not required. There was instruction for children as well as adults. The rooms of the College looked like a genteel parlor:
In 1899 the College taught piano, organ, violin, guitar and mandolin as well as voice and music theory. I tend to think of the guitar as an instrument of the 1960s or 1970s, during the folk music period, but guitars and mandolins were very popular with the young ladies and gentlemen of the late 1800s. I can picture them in Miller Park, enjoying a picnic and impromptu singing, strumming on their stringed instruments. On May 22, 1897 the Pantagraph recorded a party in the parlors of the Baptist Church. Clark's Mandolin Club was there playing selections and there were readings by Miss Nellie Van Hook and Miss Rodgers. In April of that year the Eolia Mandolin Club entertained at the McLean County Teachers' Convention. A failure in musical ability could doom one's social life I fear.
Mrs. Gray lived at 1017 E Jefferson Street and her husband was a grocer in business with his brother. Their store was Gray Bros. at 113 W. Front in 1889 and at 314 N. Main in 1914.
Lavinia Price was from Atlanta, Illinois and married John Whitten Gray in 1876. They had one daughter, Mabel, who went to school in Forest Glen, Maryland in the late 1890s. She returned home and was married in 1910 to Henry Spencer Merrick of Ottumwa, Iowa. As a young woman in Bloomington Mabel was active in clubs and genteel events such as a shadow play event in which she and two other young women posed behind curtains in "Grecian attire" taking "illustrative poses" at the Woman's Club room. Such were the activities of the highly educated young women of Bloomington.