HAZEL CARROLL (1893-1983) was an extremely talented harpist who played
in the early 1920s with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. One of three daughters
fathered by Seattle’s Charles Albert Bergstrom (1867?-1935), she eventually
married Robert Ellsworth Carroll Jr. and while living in the University
District (4205 Fifteenth Avenue NE), they bore a son, Gerald J. Carroll (who
much later was captured as a POW in Germany during WWII). This image of the musician
was taken at Fred Hartsook’s (1878-1930) photography studio in Seattle in 1925.
In November of that same year she left Seattle to take up advanced studies with the
famed harpist Anna Louise David in New York City. While there she joined the
New York Symphony – performing under Maestro Bruno Walters (1876-1962) – and at gigs including
the esteemed Carnegie Hall and on nationwide tours. In the 1930s she became a member/officer of a
social club, the Order of the Amaranth, which held their meetings at the
Ballard Masonic Temple. In 1940 the Carrolls (715 Harrison Street) had a
daughter, Paula, and in 1953 the family resettled in California, raised
purebred Dalmatian dogs at their O’Carroll Kennels for a quarter century, and
Carroll also got involved with the Petaluma Folk Dancers organization.