Fwd: more on civil war harps

["Winslow Yerxa" <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

- --- In harp-l-archives@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, rainbowjimmy@xxxx wrote:



>There's a good article on Hohner's business located here:
>http://es.oupjournals.org/cgi/reprint/2/2/338

>According to the article, Hohner made 700 harmonicas in 1857, by 
>1867 they were were making 22,000 harmonicas. Apparently Hohner gave 
>emigrants boxes full of harmonicas. When they landed in America, 
>they sold them to their compatriots and mailed Hohner the money. 

That would make Hohner about the most trusting businessman in 
history. Would you entrust your product, without compensation, to 
someone unknown to you and not in your control in any way, who was 
about to travel far beyond your reach? Possible but seems unlikely.

>The article states there were no American harmonica manufactures then

Typical Hohner propoganda, and not true. The Æolina type of chord 
harmonica was apparently being manufactured by Lewis Zwahlen in New 
York City, ca. 1831. See a picture at pat Missin's website:

http://www.usd.edu/smm/Aeolian.html

I have seen this type of reedplate in photos of Civil War dig 
artifacts more than once. Again, who can tell with any certainty the 
dates of caried artifacts recovered from an amateur dig, especially 
when the seller has a financial interest in claiming that the items 
are "civil war"? That being said, the Zwalen instrument is known to 
have been marketed in the U.S. for a considerable period before the 
war, making it more likely that items whose presence in the U.S. 
either before or during the war cannot be ascertained.

>-the reeds had to be hand cut and hand tuned, it was specialized 
>labor and there were only so many people that knew how to do this.

Apparently there were people in New York who knew how.

>So chances are, there weren't a lot of Civil War harmonicas, they 
>were mostly played by German immigrants, and they were most likely 
>Hohner harmonicas.

It's all conjecture. We simply don't know. There is a theory that the 
places in the south where black folks took up the harmonica in the 
late 19th century were places where German immigrants settled, and 
some evidence has been presented to support this contention.

Winslow