Mr. Mayer, organist and tenor, arrived in San Francisco, May 13, 1866, from New York City where he was organist of Calvary and other churches and solo tenor of Trinity Episcopal Church. The Sunday following his arrival he commenced his duties as tenor of Trinity Episcopal Church in San Francisco where his brother, James C. Mayer, was at that time the organist. Continuing in that position until May 1, 1868, he resigned to accept the position of organist in St. John's Episcopal Church, Oakland, remaining there until May 1, 1872, when he was appointed organist and tenor of the First Congregational Church of San Francisco, serving in this dual capacity for forty years. He relinquished the position of tenor but continued to act as organist and musical director and on May 1, 1912, he will have completed forty years of consecutive service in this church.
Mrs. Pierce has been identified with the history of music in San Francisco since the early days. Born in Philadelphia, and losing her mother when she was but five years of age, her father, Mr. Samuel Cameron, brought her to California across the Isthmus, to place her in the loving and motherly care of his sister, Mrs. Eugene Doyle, who had one daughter of almost the same age. These cousins afterward became very well known in the public school and church histories by their duet singing, Ida Doyle and Maggie Cameron being in demand on all important public festivals. On the night of the arrival of the steamer when the father and little daughter reached the home on Rincon Point, then the best residential part of San Francisco, where a hearty welcome awaited them, the little five-year-old child was told to "sing for her new-found relatives" and with pale face and dressed in deep mourning even to a little black silk bonnet, for the lost mother, she sang Lily Dale and Old Dog Tray while all listened with tears and astonishment to the sympathetic voice, and an uncle, Mr. James Cameron, exclaimed, "It's not a child, it's a witch." In the old Rincon school, so famous for its splendid teachers and also many scholars who afterwards became famous in California history, Maggie Cameron was called Hail Columbia because her voice could lead the singing of the entire school so strongly. In the old high school, corner of Bush and Stockton streets, under the leadership of Mr. Ellis Holmes, who was a devotee of music and himself possessed of a rich bass voice, Miss Cameron developed into a public singer, doing her first solo work on the "musical days" of the Girls' High School.