Unsubstantiated New Orleans Claim of 1888 Witmark-O'Hare Contract

During the summer of 1903, the New Orleans Times-Democrat published an article about O'Hare's music, thus raising questions about possible 1880s  association with Witmark and his reasons for moving from Washington, D.C. to Shreveport:

The claim that O'Hare had signed a contract with Witmark to study black music is intriguing but not readily accepted.

Would Witmark pay a 21-year-old to go on an extended hunt for tunes that might enhance the firm's reputation and profit but which might lead nowhere? Would this mean that Witmark lined up the Grand Opera House job for O'Hare as a cover for his research or that he began by wandering the South in the name of research and ended up at the right place and time to become the first music director of the newly built opera house?

Facts and Reasonable Inferences

• O'Hare had arrived in Shreveport nearly a decade before Witmark published Levee Revels, which appears to be the first O'Hare piece performed by the Marine Band. This would be a long time to wait to see any results from such a contract.
• If O'Hare had been under contract with Witmark when he arrived in Shreveport, Witmark should have published The Cotton Pickers, which preceded Levee Revels by four years and was published by Grasmuck and Schott. 
• Both Cotton Pickers and The Awakening of Venus were said to have attracted Sousa's attention, but Sousa had directed the U.S.Marine Band only from 1880-1892, several years before either was published.
• Witmark's earliest O'Hare copyrights are for The Awakening of Venus and Heliobas, which preceded Levee Revels by a few months and which would not help fulfill the firm's contract for authentic-sounding "negro" music.
• The nearly fifteen years that passed between O'Hare's arrival in Shreveport and the publication of the Times-Democrat article do not fit the article's claim that O'Hare "came to Louisiana several years ago."
• When O'Hare visited New York during the summer of 1898 to promote publication of Heliobas, The Awakening of Venus, and Levee Revels, cakewalks and rags were in vogue, and Witmark might have asked for more, thus resulting in Plantation Pastimes.  

Although Witmark did not publish the songs on which Schwing and O'Hare collaborated until after O'Hare moved to New York, the songs may have been composed, or at least begun, while both men lived in Shreveport.  Just as O'Hare had made a career move and joined the Witmark staff, Schwing had moved to New Orleans as the Times-Democrat article correctly points out.

The article appeared a few months after Witmark's March 20 copyright of the two men's I Kissed You in My Dream Last Night and Do You Remember, Dear?  Whether Carter Schwing contacted the newspaper or a reporter contacted him, Schwing was probably the paper's source.  Errors in chronology, and even in facts, could easily have occurred, especially since O'Hare had left Louisiana approximately three years before the article's publication.