Editing Minnie Bell Sharp (section)

==Career==

She taught music in [[Woodstock, New Brunswick]] and organized local concerts in which her students performed, on one occasion joined by friends of Sharp's from [[Fredericton]] and New York.<ref name="ladymusic" /> She also organized concerts in [[Saint John, New Brunswick]] and [[Houlton, Maine | Houlton]] and [[Calais, Maine]].<ref name="Risk" /> 

In 1893 she purchased the business name and goodwill of the Victoria Conservatory of Music at [[Victoria, British Columbia]] for $1200, of which $700 was in cash and the remaining $500 in the form of a [[promissory note]]. She took possession of the conservatory in September 1893 and remained its principal until 1900. It was the largest music school in the city, with as many as 60 students and 5 staff in addition to Sharp and her assistant Beth Walker, who had studied with Sharp in New York. Sharp taught voice and piano; other subjects taught included music theory and history, sight-singing by the [[Tonic sol-fa | sol-fa]] method, violin, elocution and languages (French, Italian and German). The conservatory regularly presented student recitals and benefit concerts in which Sharp and other  teachers participated.<ref name="ladymusic" /> 

The Sharp family businesses in New Brunswick were losing money due to a combination of factors including the effect of the [[protectionism | protectionist]] [[McKinley Tariff]] introduced in the United States in 1890, the death in 1892 from tuberculosis of Francis Peabody Sharp's son Franklin, who had taken over the businesses from his father, and the devastation of the plum orchard by an unusually cold winter in the following year.<ref name="hunter" /> In order to assist her parents and unmarried sister, Minnie Bell Sharp sent money home, and went into debt to do so. She also spent the summer and fall of every year but 1894 and 1895 in New Brunswick helping with the fruit harvest and sale.<ref name="ladymusic" /> 

In 1897, while she was home for the summer, the Woodstock school district trustees presented her with a bill for back taxes owed by the Sharp orchards. She refused to pay the full amount of the bill, on the grounds that the property's value had declined. She was then arrested and spent 17 days in jail.<ref name="Helmuth" />{{rp|36}} She was released after she realized that she was not subject to arrest because she was a non-resident, a fact that she learned by reading the New Brunswick statutes while in jail. The lawyers for the school trustees said that they were unaware of this exemption. She sued the school trustees for $2,500 for [[false imprisonment]]. She won the case but was awarded only $1. She appealed the amount and a second trial took place in April 1900, in which she was awarded [[damages]] of $75.<ref name="dictcanbio" />

After her marriage to [[Tappan Adney]] in Woodstock in September 1899 she returned to Victoria late in the year. She left for New Brunswick in April 1900 after closing the conservatory. In the same year she opened the Woodstock School of Music, which she ran for the next 20 years. She also led choral groups for adults and children.<ref name="Helmuth" />{{rp|39}}

Between 1906 and 1916 Minnie Bell Sharp Adney and her husband worked together to revive the Sharp nursery and orchard businesses, but they were ultimately unsuccessful.<ref name="Helmuth" />{{rp|40}}