Re: civil war harp

[Pat Missin <pat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Smokey Joe wrote:

>> The lowest reedplate is from a Richter harmonica, but how do they know
>> it dates from the Civil War and was not simply dropped at the site by
>> a wandering musician fifty years later?
>
>ahaaaa, I see Pat is getting as cynical as I.

Well, maybe not quite that cynical!

However, I have seen an awful lot of "Civil War harmonicas" that were
clearly NOT harmonicas and in many cases could not have come from the
Civil War era. 

For example, I once saw a harmonica that had been excavated from a
Civil War site and was proudly presented as something that was played
by one of the soldiers the evening before the battle. Unfortunately,
the harmonica clearly had "Marine Band" engraved on the covers and the
MB was not made until several years after the war had ended. There
are, of course, exceptions, but it seems that the image of the
harmonica-playing Civil War soldier is such a strong one that people
seem overly ready to make any evidence they find conform to that
image.

I have to confess that the organ reeds shown in that picture have left
me with a mental image of a Civil War foot soldier carrying a 500lb
reed organ with him into battle. Maybe the organ was left at the site
simply because he was too tired to carry it back home with him after
the battle ended, otherwise Johnny would have come marching home
extremely slowly indeed.

Anyway, to get back to the original question about what types of
harmonica were played during this period, the short answer is that no
harps are currently being made that are exactly the same as they would
have been during this period, but a wood combed Richter diatonic is
probably about as close as you are going to get. Certainly they don't
want to be using any chromatics in their reenactments. 

As for his comment about how the popularity of the harmonica during
this period is always mentioned, but no real details are ever given -
sadly, that is all too true. Joe Filisko once used the term "the dark
ages of the harmonica" to cover the period from 1830ish to 1880ish.
Very little hard information about the harmonica seems to exist from
this time.

 -- Pat.