Man and Machine and Music

 

It was an age of machines.
Factories across the nation
turned out everything
from watches to cornets
using the industrial power
of countless machine tools.
 

It was an age of ingenuity.
Enterprising inventors took advantage
of modern manufacturing methods
to mass-produce new improvements to domestic life
like better mouse traps or adjustable chairs.

It was also an age of folly.
Not all innovations
were solutions to real problems.
Some newfangled designs
were just crazy contraptions
designed to entertain.

 

This is a story about a creative musician

from late 19th century North America

who contrived a musical novelty

hoping that people would pay money to see it.

I present for your enjoyment,

Prof. McRae

King of all Musicians !

Richmond IN Item
29 December 1893

Prof. McRae
Michigan's Musical Wonder:
Who Represented Michigan at the
World's Fair in the Musical Line.

He Plays a Whole Orchestra Alone.
Viz: First and Second Violin, Bass Viol,
Cornet and Piano, all at once, making
a first-class string orchestra alone. The
Exhibition is for Ladies as well as gen-
tleman.(sic) At No. 19 north 8th st, E. B.
Lake Manager.   Admission 10cts.   La-
dies Free.                          

Seated on an upholstered piano chair atop a very large trunk, a man is engaged at playing simultaneously a cornet, two violins, a cello (or "bass viol"), and an upright piano. He does this by using an apparatus constructed out of wooden sticks and metal wire. His cabinet card photo has worn edges and has endured some abuse, but through the magic of digital imagery software, I have restored the contrast so we can better appreciate this remarkable performer.

 

The photographer was the studio of Kern Bros., Instantaneous Portraits, at 314 Second St. in New York City, and it's a typical entertainer's promotional photo from the 1890s. Many New York photography studios in this era did a very good business mass producing hundreds or even thousands of photos of theatrical celebrities and circus performers. For many entertainers, a good portrait was an invaluable investment easily worth more than a thousand words of newspaper reviews. Certainly this artist's picture instantaneously describes his musical act better than any written account.

 

Stamped onto the back of the photo is his name:

Prof. McRae
Musical Wonder

The Professor used a common honorific adopted by many musicians of this era, but it did not confer any academic degree. It was more a self-claimed appellation, like maestro, to denote special artistic mastery, which may or may not have attested to real skill. This was just the way show business works. Unfortunately I have not yet  discovered the professor's full name, only that on other examples of his promotional photos he left a signature, Prof. D. McRae. He also originally called himself Ontario's Musical Wonder, giving his address as Strathburn, Ontario, Canada. The earliest performances I could find were advertised in the summer of 1892. Shortly afterwards he must have moved to Detroit, Michigan, which is less than 100 miles west of Strahburn, and rebranded himself as the Michigan Musical Wonder.

Prof. McRae's invention was a kind of framework contrivance that positioned a cornet in front of his lips allowing him to hold a violin and bow in the standard way. Wires connected three levers atop the cornet let him control the instrument's valves with his feet. Attached to the sides of the wooden frame was a cello and another violin. More levers and wires moved their bows, also controlled by foot pedals. Roughly the width of an upright piano, the apparatus had even more intricate levers that were positioned above the keyboard permitting him to play the piano too. All of this assembly must have required careful adjustment and a high degree of physical coordination in order for Prof. McRae to make music on five different instruments at once. Sadly we can only imagine what he sounded like.

 

There are many photographs of Prof. McRae and his novelty machine that have survived into the 21st century, a testimony to the American public's abiding taste for anything strange and unusual. He would surely be amazed that his photos, which he probably sold for a nickle or a dime, can now command very high prices in the hundreds of dollars. Yet despite the number of different photographs, Prof. McRae surprisingly received very few newspaper reports on his performances, and most were obviously in his own of his agent's words. He presented his act mainly at fairs and vaudeville theaters from 1892 to 1894, with brief notices in 1899 and 1902. While it's possible that he joined a traveling circus or a dime museum where he was not given any billing, Prof. McRae essentially had only a very brief and unnoticed career in show business.

 

Yet McRae's musical wonder apparatus enjoyed a longer life on the stage.

 

This young clean-shaven man is not Prof. McRae, but he sits on piano chair in front of McRae's musical apparatus. He is turned toward the camera and holds a violin. A framework very like the one in the previous photo supports another violin, a cello, a cornet, and is placed in front of an upright piano. The only difference with Prof. McRae's photo is that here everything is at floor level. The position of the frame reveals a complex arrangement of wires and lever controls. It does not convey sturdiness.

This photo has no mark of the man's name, but many of this performer's photographs have also survived and are sometimes stamped or signed Prof. Wm. Chisholm. Beginning in 1893 he appeared in numerous small towns using nearly the identical words as McRae to announce his performances. This notice from East Liverpool, Ohio ran in June 1897 and describes Professor Chisholm as "the musical wonder, who represented Michigan at the World's Fair, playing a whole orchestra alone, viz: first and second violin, bass viol, cornet and piano, all at once."

East Liverpool OH Evening Review
30 June 1897

There are photos, which I do not own, which show Prof. McRae with a second man who looks very like this man. My guess is that McRae either sold his apparatus or had another one made for Prof. Chisholm  to produce a kind a franchise of his novel invention. The photographer was Wendt of Boonton, New Jersey, another studio that specialized in theatrical entertainers. In other photos of Chisholm, the apparatus is displayed very like McRae's photos, and Chisholm often has a top hat like McRae's. On a few copies of this same photo of mine there is a stamped name of Prof. W. A. Dobie, Detroit, Michigan.  However I have found no newspaper notices that have used that name. Prof. Chisholm's act appeared in just a few newspaper notices from 1893 to 1898.

 

At the top of my photo is a note written in ink, "Played all these instruments in Fair Ground." 

I rarely display photos that are not in my collection, unless they are from fair-use archives. But today I make an exception with this next image because it shows a musician posed before a very similar "musical wonder" contraption.

Source: the internet

This man sits on a piano stool in front of a mechanism very similar to those in Prof. Chisholm's and McRae's photos. Like them, he holds a violin next to a framework where a cornet, violin, and cello are attached and is next to an upright piano. The wooden struts here are more stout, and the levers are larger and fewer than McRae's device, but it is basically the same design. This photo is unmarked and the photographer is unidentified.

 

But the reason I include this image is that this fair-haired young man is a perfect match for the young man on a similar unmarked cabinet card in my collection. His photo was featured in my story from January 1914, The Multitalented Mr. Jensen and Mr. Johnson.

At the time I described him as a multi-instrumentalist and his second photo illustrates the reason why in my photo he is holding a cornet and violin with another violin, a crude cello, and upright piano arranged around him. Notice the top hat. I can't prove anything as his name is unknown, so I will call him Prof. Jensen until I learn otherwise. I think Prof. Jensen in another enterprising entertainer with sufficient skill, if not talent, to play cornet, violin, cello and piano. My suspicion is that like Chisholm, this man also bought the right to Prof. McRae's multi-instrument apparatus. He looks like another "musical wonder" too.

And yes, I did look for McRae under Google's search engine for U.S. patents and did not find his name.

Chicago Cottage Reed Organ
Source: Musical instruments
at the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893

The reference in Prof. McRae's advertisement to the "World's Fair in the Musical Line", was to the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. This extravagant event, held from May to October 1893, was promoted as a celebration of Columbus' arrival to the New World. The festival was a grand and expansive affair with numerous exhibit halls which brought hundreds of exhibitors from around the world. There was one enormous building constructed just for the display of musical instruments from major manufacturers from around the world. Besides the United States, there were musical representatives from many countries including France, Great Britain, Austria, Germany, Russia, Japan, Argentina, and even Siam. 

Every exhibitor was included in a special book made for the exhibition entitled Musical instruments at the World's Columbian Exposition: a review of musical instruments, publications and musical instrument supplies of all kinds, exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, May 1 to October 31, 1893. In this 310 page catalog it seems that every exhibitor received some kind of award for merit. The exhibitors from Bangkok, Siam were given an award for "For an interesting historical and characteristic display."

Neither Prof. McRae or Chisholm was mentioned in the book. For that matter, neither Ontario or Michigan, had any official state representative at this exhibition of musical instruments. But there were musical wonders galore. Pictured above is a reed organ, or parlor pump organ, made by the Chicago Cottage Co. just one of many organs and pianos displayed at the Columbian Exhibition. The factory was described in the exhibition book.

The Chicago Cottage Organ Co. possess the most extensive reed organ factory in the world. The plant of this department occupies a whole block at the corner of 22nd and Paulina Sts. and embraces three immense buildings, besides dry kilns, small buildings, lumber yards, etc. The factory has several acres of floorage and gives employment to more than 400 men, who turn out more than 18,000 organs per year, or at the rate of one organ every ten minutes. To dispose of these instruments requires a staff of some twenty salesman and twice that number of office employees, in addition to the regular officers of the Company. Already more than 150,000 organs have been sold and the demand is increasing each year. This record surpasses all others in the line of manufacturing reed organs. No expense is spared to make them the best in the world. To produce this enormous output requires more than 100 different kinds of machinery, many of which are of special design and construction. The instruments have proved themselves to be as near perfection as human skill, ingenuity and money can make them. The great satisfaction they have given to purchasers and the unqualified endorsements they have received from eminent musicians determine their status beyond question. While building up this enormous business in the manufacture of organs, the company interested itself in the wholesale and retail piano trade which soon assumed immense proportions

Many years ago, in return for free room and board, I restored a reed organ very like this one. Beneath the ornate casework was an intricate control system of levers and pulls that used a foot-operated bellows to send air through several banks of small brass reeds like those on a harmonica. The instrument produced a marvelous variety of different sound textures.  A reed organ very like the Chicago Cottage Co. organ cost $27.45 in the 1902 Sears & Roebuck catalog. 

So from personal experience I can say that these popular home keyboard instruments were true marvels of craftsmanship and innovative musical design. The mechanisms used to actuate the organ reeds were far more complicated and made with more precision than Prof. McRae's device. Certainly his "musical wonder" apparatus required a lot of careful thought to build a working device. And all three performers surely had good musicianship to play recognizable tunes on such a contraption. But the novelty of a multi-instrumentalist who "plays a whole orchestra alone" only went so far. Audiences preferred a real orchestra with multiple musicians to a a one-man-band playing a crazy mixed-up musical gadgetry.

The Welte Columbian Exposition Organ
Source: Musical instruments 
at the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893

One of the German musical instrument companies exhibiting at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 was Welte & Sons which made pianos, organs, and a new kind of automated musical instrument. Among the several large instruments the company brought to Chicago was one huge organ-like instrument they called an Orchestrion. This type of music machine used perforated paper rolls to activate the machine's numerous sound producing mechanisms. It was capable of playing hundreds of different kinds of prepared music and needed no musical skill to operate. Though the larger Orchestrions used electric motors power the pneumatic blower system, the smaller ones had weight-driven clockwork spring motors. These musical machines marked the pinnacle of German engineering and industrial technology.  

In 1914 the  Ludwig Hupfeld company of Leipzig, Germany produced an instrument called the Phonoliszt Violina. Here is a video of this fantastic Orchestrion machine which could play three violins and a piano at the same time, as preserved at the Museum Speelklok in Utrecht, Netherlands. I'm sure the clever designers at the Hupfeld factory could have easily added an automated pneumatic cornet and cello too.

****

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where some sew what they also rip.

The Star Ball Bearing Axle Band

It only takes an instant.
In a blink of an eye,
or more accurately
​_¹⁄125 th of a second
the camera shutter
captures an image onto the film. 

But as any photographer knows,
to take a good group photo
you need much more time.

First choose a good background

to arrange the frame.
Then decide where to place the camera.
Too close risks clipping a head,
but too far loses the details
and increases the shadows.

But the biggest challenge of photographing
a large group of people
is getting their cooperation.

Assemble into an orderly line.
Short folks in front, taller ones at the back.
Everyone look at the camera.
Smile, please.
Click.

On one November day in 1908
at the Princeton, Illinois Farmer's Carnival
an unnamed photographer
got it all to work perfectly
and recorded a beautiful photo
of the Ball Bearing Axle Band.

Thirteen bandsmen, most dressed in white military-style hats and long duster coats stand outside on the pavement in front of a barber shop. Around the doorway are starry banners with a decorative sign spelling out the shop name, Abel's Parlor, in little flowery paper disks. In the windows hang two small notices announcing CARNIVAL.

On the right is the stern bandleader holding a cornet. An older man in his 60s with grizzled beard and spectacles, he wears a dark suit with formal white tie and vest. His hat, an older kepi style, is different too, probably worn to distinguish his bandmaster position and previous musical background.

The ensemble is typical of a so-called "cornet band" with mostly brass instruments and a clarinet and piccolo to cover the descant treble parts. But what makes this band especially unique is that there are two men of color among the musicians. Standing in the center is an African-American man with a tenor horn. And on the left is a man with a piccolo in his coat pocket whose dark complexion and high cheekbones suggest, I think, a Native-American ancestry. Finding musicians like this in a music ensemble from 1908 is very rare to see.

It is one of my favorite postcard photos of a small town band. The lighting, the camera's clear focus, and the arrangement of instruments and musicians are all flawless. But it is the way the photographer  chose exactly the right moment to record the eyes, smiles, and expressions onto the film that makes this photo so appealing. I'm certain when the photographer saw the positive image revealed in his darkroom, he thought to himself, "Ooh, this is a good one!"

The postcard was never mailed but was sent in a letter, presumably in 1908,
to Miss Anna Halberg, Princeton, Illinois..

Many thanks
for lovely
birthday card
which was
such a happy
surprise and much
appreciated. Your Friend
Mrs. Scott R. Coppine

The writer was Caroline Coppin, the wife of Scott R. Coppin, one of the co-owners of the Star Ball Bearing Axle Company in Princeton, Illinois, who may even be one of the musicians in his band. It seems odd that Caroline chose to sign with her formal married name, but in 1908 she was age 36, and the recipient of her postcard photo was a much younger woman and of a different class. Anna Halberg, age 17, was one of five children in a Swedish immigrant family. In the 1910 census, she and her older sister were employed as servants in a Private Home, so I suspect Mrs. Coppin is graciously thanking Anna, her young housemaid, for her thoughtful card.

Ada OK Evening News
8 April 1908

Mr. Coppin's company manufactured an improved wheel bearing for horse-drawn carriages and wagons. Marketed around the Midwest for blacksmiths and cartwrights, their agent's advertisements asked, "Why Grease A Buggy? When this Dirty Disagreeable Duty is definitely dispensed with by using the Star Ball Bearing Axle?" These fittings could save draft, drain, drudgery, Grease, Grain, Garments, temper, time and money. Warranted for Three Years and wheels need not be removed bu once a year in ordinary use. Its One of the One-ders of the 20th Century. 

Princeton IL Bureau County Tribune
24 October 1902

When it started in about 1900, the firm was called the Star Ball Bearing Axle Co. but in  1905 it changed its name to the Evans, Coppin, & Starks Company. However its product line retained the Star brand name. I don't believe the company ever developed into a large manufacturer but more likely remained just a modest-sized machine shop.

The town Princeton, Illinois, is located about 100 miles west of Chicago, and in 1910 had just 4,131 citizens. Some of the bandsmen may have been employees at the company but several of their hat badges read: Princeton. So I suspect that the Star Ball Bearing Axle Co, were merely sponsors of the band. It's curious too that the company called its product the Star Ball Bearing Axle, but the bass drum has a 1/4 moon shape on one side labeled Crescent with a five-pointed star on the other side labeled Star. It suggests a kind of masonic connection, but maybe Star was just a reference to one of the firm's partners, Mr. Starks.

In this era rural communities often promoted a local business and vice versa. The local newspaper was a county weekly and on the occasions it referred to the Star Ball Bearing Axle Co. it was for their baseball team. The band was just called the "Princeton Band."

The occasion in 1908 was the Farmer's Carnival, an annual fair held in Princeton, which was the county seat of Bureau County, Illinois. That year it was scheduled for the first week of November and of course there would be the typical circus-type entertainments, carnival fun, agricultural competitions, and music from the local band.

_ _ _

But the amusements at the Princeton Farmer's Carnival of 1908 were marred by a freak tragedy witnessed by over a thousand people. As a lead attraction for the five day fair, the carnival committee hired a "Professor" Peter Kramer from St. Louis to demonstrate balloon ascensions. On Tuesday that week he was forced to abandon his first attempt because the wind was so strong that it threatened to blow the balloon's canvas covering into the flame heater he was using to inflate the hot-air balloon. Infuriated that he missed out on $50 promised for his first ascent, "Prof." Kramer declared he would go up the next day no matter what the wind.

The weather on Wednesday was still too brisk and the Princeton authorities enjoined him from flying at the fairgrounds because there were overhead wires that made it unsafe. They promised to cover his expenses and let him make more ascents on the remaining days of the fair. Still Kramer insisted he would take his balloon up, and that afternoon he found another open field near a church that he claimed was enough protected from wind that it would be suitable for his balloon's ascent.

Dixon IL Evening Telegraph
6 November 1908

The balloon, which included a primitive parachute, was only partly inflated when Kramer abruptly ordered his crew to let go of the tether ropes. Suddenly the wind blew the balloon across the field and over the church, where Kramer struck a tall chimney. Torn loose from the balloon, he fell onto the steep roof and tumbled thirty feet to the ground.

Nearby, a group of school children had assembled to watch the ascent. A seven-year-old boy was struck on the head by a chimney brick and seriously injured. The concussion broke the boy's skull which necessitated emergency surgery, but luckily he recovered.

Prof. Kramer however did not survive and died minutes after being taken to a doctor's office. He was only 26 years old and deemed not the expert balloonist he claimed to be. Instead his foolhardy fatal stunt revealed him as a raw amateur. Further inquiries pointed to Kramer's past work as a helper for another aeronaut, from whom he had picked up an old used balloon in an effort to set himself up as a traveling carnival showman.

_ _ _

Photos of larger groups
require more planning,
but the rules are the same.
First choose a good place
for the people and the camera.
Steps are always useful
to insure that everyone,
and every drum, 
is in the shot.

The good photographer pays attention
to the time of day and the position of the sun.
You don't want squinty eyes or turned faces.

Hats are okay,
but need to be pushed back on the head.,
Eyes front toward the camera.
Everyone ready?
Okay?
Now.

It's another year and another carnival, and the Star Ball Bearing Axle Band of Princeton is back for another photo. This time they are joined by another band from LaSalle, Illinois, a town on the Illinois river about 27 miles east of Princeton, for the Red Men Carnival of 1909. There are 27 bandsmen altogether posed on the steps of the Princeton Apollo Theater. The LaSalle bandsmen are dressed in dark uniforms with kepi style hats, while the Princeton bandsmen wear light color wool suits or coats with white hats. In the front center is the distinctive bass drum of the Star Ball Bearing Axle Band. The photographer left a logo, Dunham Photo, which may be the same that took the photo in 1908. This postcard has a slight imperfection in the print which left a shadow outline distortion.

The Princeton band still number 13 but some faces are new, replacing musicians in the earlier photo. The band leader is the cornet player to the right of the the bass drum and he looks different from the leader in 1908. His LaSalle counterpart is the cornetist on the front right. he 1908 band. I leave it to the readers to see how many players are the same. The obvious one is the black tenorhorn player standing top right.

Princeton IL Bureau County Tribune
15 October 1909

The occasion was not the theatrical production advertised on the posters behind the bands. That show was As You Like It by Shakespeare. It was appearing on Saturday night, 16 October, 1909 with the eminent actor Mr. William Owen as the lead actor. His company was in the middle of a six month national tour playing two tragedies, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice, with the comedy, As You Like It.

That weekend there was a big crowd in Princeton, but few people had come to see a high class Shakespeare farce. Instead most of the county turned out for a convention of The Improved Order of Red Men. The Princeton chapter of this a fraternal organization was hosting a benefit carnival, as several hundred members of the society gathered to conduct official business. One of the quirks of this society was that its members, all white men, put on parades and events dressed as American Indians in imitation of the Sons of Liberty, the group credited with instigating the Boston Tea Party.

_ _ _

Two images from a book of historic photos of Princeton, Illinois record this same Red Men Carnival of 1909. In this picture we can see Princeton's main street set up for the fair with a throng of people. In the background is a temporary bandstand, and if you look carefully you can spot the bass drum of the Star Ball Bearing Axle Band.

The second photo of that carnival day shows a circus aerialist demonstrating a daring stunt. No doubt many in the crowd watching it, remembering the tragic accident of the previous fall, became very anxious as the string of pennants shows that the wind is blowing pretty hard too. Once again the Ball Bearing Axle Band's bass drum is there.

As far as I can tell the Star Ball Bearing Axle Band stopped performing shortly after 1909. Members may have moved away or changed bands. The Red Men Band was supposedly one of the best fraternal order bands in the region, so maybe some bandsmen joined that group. For the next century Princeton continued to be fond of its fairs which continue today. But by the decade of 1910, the days when greasing your squeaky buggy axle was a worry had passed, and the Evans, Coppin & Starks Co. ceased making ball bearing axles. I wonder if the bass drum survived for a bit longer.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where delivery is always free.

The P&O Band of Canton, Illinois

The 34 musicians of the P & O Band have shiny golden instruments, including the band leader's gold baton. But these bandsmen probably handled cast iron more often than brass. They are factory workers from Canton, Illinois, members of a company whose trademark two letters separated by ampersand were once familiar to every farmer. This was the band of the Parlin & Orendorff Plow Company, once considered the largest and oldest plow and farm implement manufacturer in the world. 

Source: Farm Implement News 1904 Buyer's Guide

 
The factory was established in 1842 and proudly stated that it had the most complete and comprehensive series of Riding and Walking Plows, Cultivators, Harrows, Drills, Stalk Cutters, Corn and Cotton Planters, Potato Diggers, etc. made by any one factory in the country. There were between 1,500 and 2,000 workers at the Parlin & Orendorff Co. which made it Canton's largest employer. The factory's products were used on every size farm and with every type of agriculture.

Source: Farm Implements, Vol 26, Jan. 31, 1912

The P & O Band was the pride of the city as well as the company. According to this article from the January 31, 1912 edition of Farm Implements, Vol. 2, published in Minneapolis - St. Paul, the P & O workers established their first band in February 1851 as the Canton Brass Band. With the outbreak of war in 1861, it served as the regimental band for the 55th Illinois Volunteers. In the years later it became the musical representative for both the company and the town at many county, state, and even world fairs. In Canton it played concerts on every Saturday  throughout the summer. This 1912 article used the same photo of the band as the colorized postcard and identifies the band director with the gold baton as Frederick D. Walker, who it says received his musical training at the Boston Conservatory of Music.


The postcard was sent on July 30, 1914 to Master James Siffle of Pekin, IL from Claude.

Source: The Harvester World, Vol. 11
November 1920

In May 1919, the International Harvester Company, a kind of General Motors of agricultural equipment, bought out the Parlin & Orendorff factory and product line. The P&O brand name continued for a time on International Harvester machines and its factory workers still enjoyed a regular lunch time concert by their band as described in this article from a 1920 edition of The Harvester World. The company band was admired as a symbol of the plow workers pride and solidarity with their community and their farm equipment products.  The band continued under the IHC name until 1985 according to this webpage on the Canton Band history. 




My interest in this postcard of the P & O Band was due to a cast iron seat made by the Parlin & Orendorff Co. that I have in my workshop. The plywood stand is my own design and I have made several stools like this using other iron implement seats, often erroneously called "tractor seats". My choice of color is perhaps not the correct P & O hue, but it is a very stable and solid stool.

In this advertisement for the latest 1908 P&O Riding Cultivator, the seat is shown hanging precariously on the left side. The name Jewel Hammock implies a embellished level of precision and comfort that only a non-farm worker might believe. According to my dad who knew far more about farming than I ever will, on a full day in the field these seats are best experienced with a gunny sack of hay to pad the tailbone.

* * *

I very occasionally collect interesting non-musical photos and this one seemed appropriate for a story about farm implements. It shows a monstrous harvester machine being drawn through a wheat field by 33 horses, all carefully arranged according to color. The photo is actually a pair of images from a circa 1902 stereo view card produced by Underwood & Underwood Publishers of Arlington, NJ. The card has the must wonderful title:

(54)-6226 Evolution of the sickle and flail —
33 horse harvester
at Walla Walla, Washington.

The back of the card has a very detailed summary  of the geography and 1902 agriculture of the mellifluously named Walla Walla, Washington, and includes this description of the multitasking machine in the photo:

A "combined harvester" like this here at work includes in one machine a header, thresher, separator, fanning-mill, and sacker; it will cut from 60 to 125 acres and thresh from 1700 to 3000 bushels in a day. Sometimes a traction engine is used in place of horse-power.


The stereo view card's title is repeated in 6 languages including Swedish and Russian.

* * *

I do not think any book on physics could explain the term horsepower any better than this photo.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
click the link for more stories of farm machinery.

.

The Wheeler & Wilson Factory Band

One hundred years ago, village bands, town bands, city bands, army bands, navy bands, boys bands, ladies bands, circus bands, theater bands, and even prison bands posed for a camera. But another type of community band shows up less often in photographs - the company band. This postcard shows an rare example of such a factory ensemble, the Famous Wheeler and Wilson Band of Bridgeport, Connecticut. When not playing music, these men  made the machines that kept America in stitches, they worked for the  Wheeler & Wilson Sewing Machine Company.

Wheeler & Wilson number 9 machine

Wheeler & Wilson manufactured some of the most successful sewing machine designs of the 19th century. Allen B. Wilson started in 1850 with several inventions that could make a lockstitch in cloth. In 1853 he attracted the interest of Nathaniel Wheeler who had the capital to  start a manufacturing plant. Together they made machines for all kinds of sewing operations and at one time had factories in Bridgeport employing thousands of workers. In 1907 the company was taken over by the Singer Corporation but the factories continued to make machines until after WWI. The band seems to have continued too, but it is possible that this postcard is a copy of an earlier photo.

This 26 piece wind band has mostly brass instruments with one flute, 4 clarinets, and 3 drummers. It includes 3 horn players in the back row and a second tuba player on the right who holds a German style instrument which has a more conical bell. Their uniforms are more conservative than the embroidered style of some regimental or town bands of this period. 


Many factories, railroad companies, and trade unions maintained bands. Company bands like this played not only for the factory employees but were also part of the local musical culture performing for many civic events. The musicians were usually ordinary employees, but some were professional musicians brought in as soloists. Band leaders especially might be music teachers or noted players engaged to improve the quality of an ensemble.  All work and no play was not always a company rule. Last year I wrote about a similar band from another great center of American industry, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Kempsmith Band.


In a 1919 edition of The Music Trades. a journal for workers in the music industry offered this report: 

The sixtieth anniversary of the Wheeler & Wilson band Bridgeport Conn was celebrated recently George Sanger a member of the band for fifty five years related the history of the band as he recalled it Mr Sanger is the oldest living member of the band.

The cornet player seated second from right has a G.A.R. medal on his coat, a union army veteran's badge of the Grand Army of the Republic. I think he may be George Sanger.   

The back is postmarked Bridgeport, Conn August 23, 1910 and addressed to A Usinger Middle-field Ohio.

             Dear Brother,
I re-ceived the receipt  for the back and round of chairs thanking you for same. do you remember any of the faces on other side of card. best of love to each and every one
                    Sister Rickie

Brother Usinger is Andrew Usinger born in Connecticut in 1853. His father was a cabinet maker from Prussia who worked in Bridgeport. In 1870 at age 17, Andrew was the oldest of 5 children and worked in a brass factory.  One of his younger sisters was Frederica, undoubtedly the Sister Rickie writing here.

In the 1880 census, Andrew was in Ohio with occupation: Regular Army. The great black hole of genealogy - the 1890 census records that were destroyed by fire, leaves the usual 20 year gap until 1900. Now Andrew is living in Middlefield, Ohio, married with 2 children and working as an Undertaker and Merchant Hardware. At the next census, the year of this postcard, he is still in Middlefield but is a Merchant of Furniture.  I bet he got his sister a great deal on those chairs for a wholesale price. 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where you can find more skilled labor by following the link.