Ethel Elizabeth Knight Casey

1887 - 1978

Ethel Knight Casey, a pianist and pioneer Seventh-day Adventist music teacher, taught in two colleges and one academy. She was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, on September 28, 1887, one of five children of Henry C. and Elizabeth A. Knight. She attended South Lancaster Academy, later Atlantic Union College, where she earned a diploma in 1912. While at SLA, she also worked as a reporter and editor for the Atlantic Union Conference magazine, the Atlantic Union Gleaner.

Knight started her teaching career at Keene Industrial Academy, now Southwestern Adventist University, serving as chair of the music department from 1912 to 1916. She and Ira L. Casey married in June 1916 and then moved to Loma Linda, California.

Eleven years later the Caseys and their five children relocated to the Washington, D.C., area, where she taught piano and accompanied in the music department at Washington Missionary College, now Washington Adventist University, until 1945. While at WMC, she taught students at all levels but specialized in teaching young children. Class instruction for these students included motivational progress charts and instruction in sight singing, music theory, and conducting.

She ended her career teaching at Loma Linda Academy and was living in Loma Linda, California, when she died on June 6, 1978, at age ninety.

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Sources: Massachusetts Town and Vital records, 1620-1988, James Boone, Jr. Family Tree, Ancestry.com; Atlantic Union Gleaner, 1910-12 issues; Southwestern Union Record, 1912-16 issues, 6 June 16; The Sligonian, WMC school paper, 1930s and 1940s issues, 15 January 1931; 1930s and 1940s Golden Memories, WMC yearbooks; Obituary, Adventist Review, 28 September 1978, 23; Accent on AUC, June 1982.