Musician: Nancy McCann Martens (1877-1940)

Left an orphan early in her life, Martens grew up in a convent school in Ohio. Talented in music, she attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before being offered a position on the staff of the Indianapolis College of Music. This school would later become the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music, now at Butler University.

When her husband died in 1918, Nancy found work promoting concerts for the Ona B. Talbot Fine Arts Enterprises (Ona is buried at Crown Hill Cemetery). When Talbot left the city in 1930, Martens formed her own promotion company, Martens Concerts, and during the depression decade of the 1930s, she managed to bring classical music and dance artists to town. Called “Lady Barnum,” there are over 400 notices of the performances to be found in the Indianapolis newspapers of the time. She brought full orchestras to town and solo performers such as Fritz Kreisler, Sergi Rachmaninoff, Jan Paderewski, and Marian Anderson. Most of the concerts were held in the English Hotel’s theater. Martens also helped young musicians by giving them jobs as ushers and discounted tickets to the performances. The Martens Concert Series, under the guidance of Gladys Alwes, continued to promote classical concerts until the 1951-1952 season.