Augusta Cottlow

As an adult performer, Cottlow toured in the United States, while based in Bronxville, New York.^[4] "If one would characterize Miss Cottlow in a single phrase," proposed one critic, "he would say that she is positively an ascetic in her devotion to the beautiful piano tone."^[5] She played at Carnegie Hall in 1901, at a hospital benefit.^[6] In 1912, she gave a recital at the White House for President William Howard Taft. Augusta Cottlow rarely gave public performances after 1925, but continued performing privately, and taught piano.^[7]

Augusta Cottlow married a fellow musician, Edgar Anspacher Gerst of California,^[8] in 1912, in New York City.^[9] They had a daughter, Selina Adelaide (1915–1916), while living in Germany.^[10][11] Late in life, Augusta Cottlow corresponded with Harry S Truman, who had heard her perform three times in Kansas City as a young man.^[7] She died in 1954, in White Plains, New York, aged 76 years. A trunk marked with Cottlow's name is in the collection of the Ogle County Historical Society in Oregon, Illinois.^[12]