Re: [Harp-L] Theory, etc. - history of positions

[Frank Evers <frank@xxxxxxxxx>]

Am Freitag, 23. Februar 2007 19:42 schrieb Winslow Yerxa:

> Again, *if* all 22,000 harps had come to the U.S. between 1860 and
> 1864, and *if* they had all ended up in the hands of Civil War
> soldiers, that would have brought the ratio down to one for every
> 160 or so soldiers.

By now i forgot to mention the "fourty-eigthers". There was an 
enormous rise of emigration between 1845 and 1855 from Germany 
towards United States, especially after the failed revolution of 
1848. Many of these german immigrants fought for the union in united 
states civil war.

In 1845 there were already lots of harmonica manufacturers in germany 
and it´s possible that many of those searching freedom in America 
carried harmonicas with them.

Given the fact, that these german volunteers were quite numerous 
(found a number of 58,600 from PA, NY, OH and MO here 
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~tandnmca/civilwar/schleiter.html ) 
and formed whole regiments it might be possible that within these 
regiments harmonicas were much more known than in other parts of the 
troops.

Of course there´s no indication for this beyond the presence of 
soldiers who could have brought harmonicas to America before 1865 ;)

-- 
Gruß,Frank