For three years prior to Miss Lowell's departure for New York in 1880,
she was organist for Rev. Mr. Hamilton's Independent Presbyterian
Church, where she conducted a large choir of sixteen voices.
She studied for a short time in the New England Conservatory of Music
at Boston, but as New York had the greater attraction in the presence
of Mr. Samuel P. Warren, the leading organist of the country, she went
there and throughout her ten years' residence in the East studied
solely with Mr. Warren, but added two seasons of study in harmony
technique under that master, John H. Cornell. Miss Lowell's California
experience proved of great advantage to her in obtaining church
positions in the big city, and immediately upon her arrival in New
York she became assistant organist at St. George's and later St.
Bartholomew's, Grace and other churches, and for three years was
organist at the Madison Avenue Dutch Reformed Church. The desire of
her heart was attained, however, when the position was offered to her
as organist at the beautiful new Roosevelt organ at the Church of the
Incarnation (Arthur Brooks, brother of Phillips Brooks, pastor), to
succeed Frederick Archer, the great English organist. This position
she held for seven years, until her marriage in 1890. The choir of
thirty paid voices was the finest in the city, and at this organ Miss
Lowell gave over sixty recitals. While in New York, Miss Lowell played
in many public and private concerts and was conductor for seven years
of the Ladies' Vocal club at Montclair, N.J., and for three years of
the Choral club (ladies'), Mt. Vernon, N.Y.
After her marriage in Oakland in 1890 to Edwin Garthwaite, a mining
engineer of great reputation, she retired from public life and went
with him to Mexico, where much piano and ensemble work was enjoyed,
then later to South Africa for twelve years. While there was no organ
playing in the parts where she lived, she was able to gather musical
people about her always, and in her home near Johannesburg she
conducted a fine glee club of mixed voices. Up in Bulawayo, Rhodesia,
she was always identified with good music and formed a musical club,
where much fine work in ensemble and choral music was accomplished.
On her return to her native land, five years ago, after nearly twenty
years' absence practically from the organ, Mrs. Garthwaite was able
to give occasional public performances, playing as organist in the
First Church of Christ, Scientist, for a year and a half, and after
all these years is again organist of the First Baptist Church in
Oakland, the church where she began her career as a girl of nineteen
for five dollars a month.
Mrs. Garthwaite considers the most noteworthy event in her career to
be the anniversary recital given last year in the Baptist Church, when
she repeated her performance of twenty years before, substituting her
two sons and her nephew, Lowell Redfield, for Mr. Sigmund Beel and
Miss Lizzie Bogue, and giving as a great surprise to her audience a
wonderful and inspiring performance by Mrs. Blake-Alverson of "The
Last Rose of Summer." It was said afterwards that it was like a song
from heaven and would never be forgotten.