Winters Brass Band

Focus of social life during Winters' early years, the band played throughout the area for box suppers, old settlers reunions, and political campaigns. Charles Grant organized the group in 1901 (seven years after the town was incorporated) and conducted when it played for the coming of Winters' first railroad in 1909. Grant served as bandmaster for fifteen years. Sunday afternoon concerts were presented in the bandstand (then located in Tinkle Park), and members traveled in a bandwagon drawn by four white horses to play in small towns nearby. Favorite tunes were "The Anvil Chorus", "Stars and Stripes Forever," and "Poet and Peasant." New uniforms, blue with gold stripes, cost $14 in 1905. After 1920, the retired members helped the city school organize a band by lending some of their instruments to the students. About 200 brass bands once flourished in Texas, and music was a cultural activity in the state's first colony in the 1820s. Many towns had started to build bandstands by 1850, using them for political rallies, church socials, fund-raising drives, as well as concerts. Once the largest brass band west of Fort Worth, the Winters group and others like it contributed much to the cultural growth of Texas.

Winters Brass Band is a historical marker in Winters, Runnels County, dedicated in 1967. It is one of 49 historical markers documented in Runnels County in the Texas Historical Commission Atlas, among 60 historic sites cataloged across the county.

The site sits at 31.9670, -99.9632 near Winters. The nearest cataloged historic site is Cooke, Robert, M.D. (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include Cotton Oil Mill, Old, Winters FFA Chapter, and First Methodist Church of Winters.

This record corresponds to Texas Historical Commission Atlas #5399005870. Use the map below for its exact position and turn-by-turn directions.