Civil War Harmonicas? Here's a whole pile

[Bill Morris]

Here's  a supreme challenge to the harp mechanic!


http://cgi.ebay.com/Civil-War-Pile-Of-Dug-HARMONICAS-From-SAYLORS-CREEK-Va_W0QQitemZ270441119407QQihZ017QQcategoryZ136QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp3286.m7QQ_trkparmsZalgo%3DLVI%26itu%3DUCI%26otn%3D3%26ps%3D5

Anything to keep you guys entertained.


Bill

[John Broecker]

Hello, harmonica collectors and American Civil War fanatics.

Thanks, Bill Morris, for reporting on the e-bay harmonica listing.

The advertisement makes no claims that these are harmonicas, or that they are of the Civil War era (1861-'65). They are reed plates only, no harmonicas.

It just states that they were "dug" from Saylor's Creek, in Virginia, a Civil War battlefield, with permission.

Looking at the e-bay photo, some of the diatonic reed plates look like the Hohner Marine Band harmonica reed plates, judging by the cover screw holes and nail hole positions on the reed plates (Richter system harps). 

The Marine Band was introduced in 1896, with it's patent.

Other reed plates look like Hohner Auto-Valve-type Knittlinger octave harps, first made in approx. 1825, by the Hotz harmonica company of Knittlingen, Germany, and copied by other companies since then.

Information source: Harmonica Makers of Germany and Austria, by Lars Lindenmuller and Martin Haffner, published by the Deutsches Harmonika Museum, Trossingen, Germany.

John Broecker

 

[Renault]

I was in the Gettysburg and western Pennsylvania area quite a few years ago and was very disappointed by their "antiques." They will take a modern reproduction of an antique toy and either bury it or just leave it lay out in the yard for awhile, and then pass it off as an antique. The number of "civil war" bullets "dug from the battlefield" has to exceed the number actually fired by at least a factor of 10. I'm not saying that this particular seller is unscrupulous, but it's possible that the reedplates that he found haven't been there all that long - maybe they were buried and forgotten by some other "antique dealer."

[smojoe]

Talk about entertaining.
1... That's a BODACIOUS pile of plates.
2... The entire army of virginia would not have had enough troopers to account for that many harps.
3... The battle in question would not have involved enough troopers to account for that many harps.
4... There weren't as many harps floating around then as there are now.
5... The population of the U.S. wasn't that numerous. ( I think this pile represents ALL of Md.)
6... Old harps only have 1 hole at each end. (several of these have 3).
7... The ad DEFINITELY says civil war...as G. Gordon Liddey says of the Yen, Euro, Dollar....UNreliable. 
8... Even an Egyptologist can't usually guarantee where artifacts originated.
Being from Pa. I am aware of and HUGELY suspicious of the Gettysburg relic perveyors.

smo-joe   

[ElkRiverHarmonicas]

yes, it's bullcrap. There were very few harmonicas in the Civil War anyway. Unless your in a Harry Turtledove book. One of my favorite books as a kid was one of his books, where these dudes go back in time and give Robert E. Lee a bunch of AK-47s. IT wasn't as easy as it sounds, cause the dudes couldn't go back in time any further than 1864, so even with AKs, it wasn't easy for Lee to capture D.C. Those being Civil War Harmonicas sounds equally as plausible as the aforementioned Turtledove book.

[Gwythion]

You often hear tales of soldiers who were protected from a bullet by a harmonica in their pocket.

Perhaps it was customary in these cases for soldiers to just keep the the cover plates as souvenirs and toss away the broken plates and comb. Of course, the combs just rotted away, leaving the plates alone to be found in the future.

You see, it could be all true...

You lot are very skeptical

[Grizzly]

Pewter? Since when were reedplates made of pewter? If they're all stuck together, it might make a nice paperweight.

Not to criticize anyone's command of English, but the text is a little suspect, too. Makes me wonder what the real source is.

Tom

[John Broecker]

Hello again, Civil War and Harmonica collectors.

Please accept my apology.

I wrote that the e-bay seller of the mangled reed plates presumably dug from Saylors Creek, a U.S. Civil War battlefield, never claimed that they were civil war harmonicas.

After reading Smojoe's reply, I re-checked the ebay listing. Smojoe was correct.

In the seller's headline description, he lists them as "civil war harmonicas."

But, in the product description, it only states that they were dug from the battlefield.

They are certainly not harmonicas, but reed plates.

If they are the correct vintage or not (for the civil war) is open for debate, but I suspect that they were planted at Saylors Creek long after the civil war.

Winslow Yerxa dismissed the topic of Civil War harmonicas with plenty of convincing arguments on Harp-L a year or two ago.

Another myth was also shot down. The Hohner harmonica company claimed that Abraham Lincoln played the harmonica. There is no proof that Lincoln played the harmonica, and one of Lincoln's sons said that he never heard or saw Honest Abe with a harmonica.

Another myth reported by Hohner was that Frank James, brother of American train robber Jesse James, was saved when a bullet hit his vest pocket, and was stopped in his harmonica. That has not been proven.

John Broecker

[smojoe]

Dear John, just to let you know, I wasn't correcting you. I hadn't seen your post when I wrote mine. I picked up the wording off e-bay. You is still my hero. 

Joey

[chromaddict]

I am impressed by everyone's knowledge on the subject.  I was about to make a huge bid! (not really...)

[John Broecker]

Hello, Smojoe.

Thanks for your compliment, saying that I'm your hero.

You're just saying that because it's true. (Just kidding, Maestro Leone).


You are an exceptional talent on the harmonica, and a wealth of harmonica experience and information.

I'm a harmonica player of limited proficiency, and the information that I post on harp forums is other people's information.

Best Regards

John Broecker

[ElkRiverHarmonicas]

On that documentary Tin Sandwich anyone, they show these harmonicas from the German Harmonica Museum, that supposedly saved German soldier's lives in World War I. These harmonica they showed, they showed EXIT holes... that means the bullet went through the harmonica and INTO the soldier, taking I'm sure some harmonica shrapnel in with it.

Some may have seen this already, but I think it's appropriate for this bullet-stopping myth, here's a test, my dad shooting a .45/90 black powder cartridge rifle at a Hohner Bluesband at 100 yards (without telescopic sights by the way, it was so far, you couldn't see the harmonica at all, we had to put the bluesband in the center of a black circle and dad shot at where the harmonica should be.


[youtube=425,350]<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/UbNpxFH8GVA&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/UbNpxFH8GVA&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
[/youtube]

Also the "test" Jason Ricci and I did. This was with a British .303, the most likely rifle that shot the German soldier's harmonicas in the documentary.
Warning, Jason says a bad word.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A6UjT1o3N4

[A.J.Fedor]

40 cents a pound! 

[Gwythion]

They sold for $26!!....

"Dug Harmonicas! Dug Harmonicas!
Get your Dug Harmonicas from the Battle of Llwchwr here!
Rare 1136 Dug Harmonicas!"

 

[smojoe]

I'm still waiting for someone to advertise harmonicas from the battle of New Orleans.  lolol
smo joe king

[Scotty]

I'm still waiting for someone to advertise harmonicas from the battle of New Orleans.  lolol
smo joe king

hey smooj...I wonder just how many folks have cottoned on to your jo/king sign off?  I know no one on harp-l has (as yet), lol.

Elizabeth (a/k/a Scotty) and yes, I'm Baaaaaack!

[smojoe]

I got the idea off of Josh King ('Josh-ing'). How about my 'Punjab of Java-pour'? No one gets that either?
got my smo-joe working (courtesy of Gnarley Gary). 

Smo-joe, the 'they that say'

[ElkRiverHarmonicas]

Joe is right about Andrew Jackson's harmonicas being as valid as Civil War harmonicas. There were virtually no Civil War harmonicas. The ones you MIGHT find would be in the hands of German-immigrant soldiers in the Union Army, or some Confederate who traded tobacco for it.
 
That doesn't mean there weren't instruments in the harmonica family:
http://jodykruskal.com/concertina_gallery_files/page17-1010-full.html

The harmonica doesn't really arrive in the U.S. until the 1870s, but you today could probably find more Bulgarian Army surplus wrist compasses in the U.S. than you could harmonicas then.
The deal is while Hohner and a few other companies were thinking about exporting to the U.S., sales in Germany kept up with what the makers could produce, as harmonicas were not mass produced at that time.
By 1880, the Germans had figured out how to mass produce reeds with form tools, horizontal milling as opposed to shaping them with hand files as they had done. Also in the 1880s, there's this marketing revolution in the United States with mail order catalogs. America quickly surpasses Germany in harmonica consumption, thanks to these catalogs.

So the harmonica doesn't actually show up in the U.S. in any numbers until the late 1880s. Thus, the assumption all these guys had harmonicas in the Civil War is largely bogus, as is the Hollywood stereotype of cowboys on the big cattle drives calming herds with their harmonicas. By the time the harmonica was popular in the U.S., the age of the big drive was already over.

[Gnarly He Man]

That's bad news for me, as my new gig is supposed to be music from before 1880--and I am planning on playing harmonica (in the rack).
So don't tell my employers 
G

[Grizzly]

I've done some renaissance festivals as an independent act, playing fretted dulcimer (1790s). (Mine was made in the 1990s.) No one seemed to mind. Go for it, Gary. Even if your employers knew the facts, they wouldn't care, as long as the music was period. Most of my music wasn't even period, and nobody even blinked an eye.

Tom

[Obie]

Speaking of Civil War harmonicas, I've got a facsimile copy of a Sears Roebuck catalogue from 1902 (a bit later in time but anyway) and it's got all these cool looking old fashioned harmonicas in it.

Most have double holes, a horizontal divider between top and bottom like on a tremolo, or a chromatic with the mouthpiece taken off, and are described as double reed (eg. 10 hole, 40 reed), Richter tuned. But they are mostly not tremolo harmonicas. There must have been a market in those days for slightly louder models with double, unison tuned reeds. Perhaps because amplification had not yet appeared.

There are also a few Marine Band style 10 hole single reed harmonicas but, from the look of the etchings, without the flare at the back of the covers. It'd be fun if Hohner or somebody did a re-release of some of these ancient models. If ever I get the chance I wouldn't mind checking out the harmonica museum in Trossingen one day.

There is also a harmonica rack pictured, so they were in use at least by 1902.

Regarding the big cattle drives, perhaps you can take solace in the knowledge that Australia was still doing the big open range cattle thing throughout the 20th century, and harmonicas would have been in the pockets of some of the ringers and drovers. Apparently the harmonica was the most popular instrument 'out west' here.

[iantonionni]

Gwythion said

Get your Dug Harmonicas from the Battle of Llwchwr here!

You could play 'Way Down Upon that Swansea River' on them!

[m.marino]

I've done some renaissance festivals as an independent act, playing fretted dulcimer (1790s). (Mine was made in the 1990s.) No one seemed to mind. Go for it, Gary. Even if your employers knew the facts, they wouldn't care, as long as the music was period. Most of my music wasn't even period, and nobody even blinked an eye.

Tom

Tom I know of folks at diverse festival and recreation groups that use English concertina at a renaissance fair (along side a Yamaha Guitar, based on the Spanish large body style). Mountain dulcimer at a French and Indian War re-enactment site. Piano accordion at a Civil War re enactment group (they admitted it was not period but did not have a concertina). The list goes on and on. Than you have the other side of the argument from English speakers who believe their prof's and will argue to the death that cotton was extremely rare in pre-renaissance to early renaissance time period (those of of us who read and speak more than one language know the prof's is smoking some really low grade stuff).

Than you have the Folks who try to state that the Bandoneon was added on to Tango music and not part of it's origins, even with the huge amount of evidence to the contrary. Hey, I am lucky in that many years ago I learned it is okay to not know things and to honestly plead ignorance of the fact(s).

Michael

[Gnarly He Man]

This morning (at 6:15) we had a TV crew shoot live stuff, and the owner of the hotel had me come down and donate my performance for the cause--
One of the fellows who is playing piano came down as well, but brought his (modern) {MIDI!} accordion.
We instructed the cameraman not to shoot any close ups of his instrument--and performed as a duo.
Gary