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Into the Trenchers: Seven Strange Facts About Dinner in Colonial New England

The colonists who first began settling in New England in the 1620s brought what furnishing they could from Europe, but they were largely on their own when it came to setting up housekeeping. As colonists sat down to dinner in colonial New England, they had functional, but primitive, surroundings.

A look around their dining room would bear little resemblance to what we see today – or even what colonists had just a few decades later.

A dinner in colonial New England: “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe

1. Napkins Aplenty

If you looked around an early colonial home, the large supply of napkins would probably surprise you. Given the meager belongings of a typical colonist, it might seem they put on quite a show in accumulating an exorbitant supply of napkins. Not so. They had plenty of napkins because they ate much of their food with their hands. Napkins were vital.

2. Spoons Featured in Dinner in Colonial New England

When not eating with their hands, colonists dined with spoons and knives. Indeed, many recipes produced stewed and soggy meat – called spoon meat – ladled up and eaten by spoon. The New England boiled dinner still occasionally appears on a restaurant menu.

new-england-living-standards-john-winthrop

Portrait of John Winthrop, American Antiquarian Society.

The colonists barely even heard of forks. Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop had the first recorded fork in America, which he obtained in 1633. Doubtless he was the envy of many.

Most families had at least one silver spoon, but generally accepted wooden spoons as tableware along with knives of varying quality.

3. Salt

One essential element at every table during dinner in colonial New England was a salt cellar or “standing salt.” A container that held salt, it indicated where you stood in the pecking order of the house based on where you ate relative to the salt.

The salt cellar could be quite large and decorative or plain and simple. The colonists placed the standing salt near one end of the table where the heads of the household sat. Important guests sat “above the salt,” meaning near the table’s head. Children and less-revered guests sat at the other end of the table, “below the salt.”

4. Into the Trenchers

The colonists consumed most of their food from a trencher – a wooden dish carved out like a trench. A larger plate – pewter or wood – would hold the main meal, and individual portions could be distributed into trenchers.

An English trencher from some time between 1500 and 1700.

Trenchers were generally oblong or square, and people ate directly from them. But you wanted to be wary of who you sat next to during dinner in colonial New England. Diners generally shared a trencher with at least one neighbor. An early Connecticut church deacon received the cold shoulder from his neighbors when he carved enough trenchers so that each of his children could have one. It was deemed excessive and showy.

5. Dinner on the Board

Dining tables were often covered with cloths similar to table cloths today. But they were called board cloths, because tables were little more than a board laid across two sets of legs.

Creating smooth lumber was a difficult task for early colonists, so boards were often rough. In some cases, boards were created from crates received from Europe. In at least one case, a colonial family constructed a thick board with trenchers carved into the top.

6. Tankards, Cups and Porringers

Glass was a rare commodity among early colonists. A bottle might be considered such a valuable item that it was mentioned in someone’s will. Many people owned silver cups, though they were a luxury and not every-day ware. Southerners generally had more silver than New Englanders.

Fancy pewter tankard

Though the wealthier New Englanders had pewter in New England, they drank from wooden vessels. The normal beverage containers included tankards constructed like small barrels, hollowed-out wooden cups and leather cups fashioned to hold liquids during dinner in colonial New England.

For other uses, many homes had porringers, small bowls, to hold soups and stews. They often had handles so they could be easily drunk from. As for how people drank their beverages, they often had a single large tankard, a small bowl really, which they passed around the table at a meal and shared, refilling as necessary.

7. Have a Seat

Seating at the earliest colonial dinners was a luxury – and not a very luxurious one at that. People squeezed in together on benches placed alongside the board. When the benches filled, guests, and usually children, had to stand during dinner in colonial New England.

Colonists did enjoy one advantage to having so few implements: It made cleanup rather quick.

Thanks to Home Life in Colonial Days, by Alice Morse Earle.

This story about colonial New England dinner was updated in 2022. Images: Pewter tankard By geni – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3790239. Trencher By David Jackson, CC BY-SA 2.0 uk, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9977639.

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The Bates Bedspread of Maine, America’s Favorite Counterpane

The Bates Bedspread, once found in nearly every household, has links to presidents, First Ladies, a famous midwife and countless women who wove white candlewick counterpanes in their own homes.

1950 Bates Bedspread ad.

Though the first Bates Bedspread first sold in 1940, its American ancestors date to the 18^th century. George Washington gave Martha Custis the prototype for the bedspread as a wedding gift. Little did he know the precedent he was setting — or that the giant textile mills that made the bedspread named after him would employ more people than any other company in Maine.

A Bates Bedspread advertisement wasn’t far off the mark when it claimed,

Garlands and stylized flowers with a richly looped hand-woven look make this aristocratic bedspread truly an heirloom.

Candlewicking

Whitework embroidered bedspreads were fashionable when George and Martha tied the knot in 1759, but they became even more popular from about 1800 to 1840. In those days, having a fine white candlewick counterpane helped maintain one’s social standing.

In many places, the way to have an early American version of the Bates Bedspread was to make one yourself.

Candlewicking

Cloth was hard to get, especially on the frontier. The women had to pick, spin, comb, dye and card flax, wool and cotton. Cotton was bought by the pound in early America, according to historian Alice Morse Earle. Women picked out the one by one, carded it on wool cards, then spun into thread.

In Hallowell, Maine (then part of Massachusetts), Martha Ballard wrote in her diary that she had carded cotton on July 27, 1786. Ballard, made posthumously famous by Laurel Thacher Ulrich in A Midwife’s Tale, didn’t weave the cotton cloth herself; she took her spun cotton to her neighbor, Mr. Edson, to be woven.

Carding and Spinning

Most women back then spent endless hours carding and spinning. In 1790, 15-year-old Elizabeth Fuller started a diary from her home on a farm in Princeton, Mass. Entry after entry describes making cloth. “I spun two skeins today” and “I wove five yards today” were typical. In the spring of 1792, she wove for two months solid and estimated she produced 140 yards of cloth.

Some women were expert enough to make candlewicking bedspreads on home looms.

In candlewicking, large running stitches are sewn into a pattern on unbleached white muslin and passed over a small twig. The twig is later removed and the fabric shrunk in hot water, which holds the stitches in place. It gets its name from the soft cotton thread that’s also used as a candle wick.

Elizabeth Perkins Wildes Bourne made one (and probably more) on her loom in Kennebunk, Maine. Her daughter, Abigail Wildes, wove a poem into a coverlet she sent to First Lady Dolley Madison in 1809.

Benjamin Bates

Benjamin Bates, born July 12, 1808, grew up on a farm in Mansfield, Mass. He was the son of a Yankee farmer, merchant and maker of cotton cloth – probably on a home loom.

The Bates Mill complex, home of the Bates Bedspread

He moved to Boston, went into the dry goods business and made a public profession of his Congregationalist faith. He prospered and became the president of the First National Bank of Commerce in Boston, the Union Pacific Railroad and the Lewiston Water Power Company, which built the first canal in Lewiston.

The canal allowed water power to run the machinery in the textile mills that Bates’ money would soon build. Until then, weaving cloth had been a home-based profession. In 1810, for example, 88 percent of the households in Topsham, Maine, told census takers they made cloth. More than half had looms, and some loom owners, like Martha Ballard’s Mr. Edson, wove cloth for their neighbors.

Bates was the biggest investor in the Bates Mill, which opened in 1854. The company eventually built 11 buildings between 1852 and 1923.

Before the Civil War broke out, Bates bought cotton and produced uniforms for the Union Army. He contributed $100,000 to the Maine State Seminary, which renamed itself Bates College without his knowledge. The first girls to graduate from Bates College paid for their own education by working at the mills.

The Bates Bedspread

Bates Manufacturing Company wove its first basic Bates bedspread in 1858. Almost 60 years later, in 1915, Bates expanded and bought new kinds of looms to make Jacquards, crochets, satins, brocades, damasks and Ripplette.

The company grew and grew, and for many years the enormous Bates Mill complex employed more people than any other employer in Maine.

First Yankee farm girls worked at the mills. Then came Francophile Canadians and Irish fleeing the potato famine. No wonder then, why one mill building has a shamrock on one wall, a fleur-de-lis on the other.

Sometime in the 1930s, a Bates representative touring Mount Vernon was impressed with the bedspread George Washington gave Martha. The rep realized such an item could sell, as the colonial revival was at its peak.

The Bates rep also thought the Lewiston mills could make Martha Washington’s counterpane. So Bates designers went to work collecting samples of the antique spreads, visiting Mount Vernon and scouring museums and libraries for information about candlewicking.

Washington’s Choice

After experimenting for two years, Bates produced the first of the legendary Bates Bedspreads and called it George Washington’s Choice. It was made on a specially designed loom in January 1939. The company put the first Bates Bedspread on sale in March 1940.

It didn’t sell. But Bates added a double-knot fringe and made a few adjustments, and the Bates Bedspread caught on. It became a favorite wedding and anniversary gift in the 1940s and 1950s. Like the whitework embroidered counterpanes of the early 19^th century, it was a status symbol – and more. “Loomed to be Heirloomed” was the apt slogan.

Each Bates Bedspread had a ‘pedigree’ at one end of each bedspread that tells its size, style, year of production and loom number. New Bates Bedspreads were later introduced, such as the Abigail Adams and Queen Elizabeth.

Weavers worked seven days a week making Bates Bedspreads, but they couldn’t keep up with demand. It its heyday, 200,000 Bates Bedspreads were sold each year.

Poppy Shills for Bates

In 1948, a future president of the United States made his appearance in a Bates ad. George Bush and his new bride Barbara posed with Joan Walls of Bennington to show that Bates’ fine fabrics were perfect for the discriminating college student. The caption above the photo reads,

Victoria. Chosen by Barbara and George ‘Poppy’ Bush of Yale, and admired by Joan Walls of Bennington. Joan and Barbara wear easy-to-sew campus fashions in Bates cotton. Young marrieds on campus make Bates the beautiful basis of a long-range decorating plan. Indispensable at college, these bedspreads and matching draperies stay fresh and bright through four years of wear and washing. After graduation, they are ready to grace a future bedroom or living room.

(You can see the ad here.)

Decline

As New England’s textile industry moved South, and then overseas, the Bates Bedspread kept the Lewiston mills humming.

By 1990, the 50^th anniversary of the first Bates Bedspread, demand dropped off and only about 35,000 a year were sold. Fred Lebel, Bates’ executive vice president, told the Lewiston Sun-Journal the reason was that so many people had them and didn’t need new ones.

But then he conceded competitors were producing cheaper quality versions of the Bates Bedspread and hurting sales.

In 1992, the City of Lewiston took possession of the Bates Mill Complex after years of unpaid taxes.

Dalton, Georgia

When Bates came up with the first George Washington’s Choice, the company claimed candlewicking was a lost art. Actually it had been thriving in northwest Georgia in a small city called Dalton.

Dalton, which called itself “The Bedspread Capital of the World,” was home to a flourishing cottage industry of tufted cotton products. From the 18^th century, women made tufted cotton bedspreads for their own use.

After World War I, Dalton entrepreneurs set up roadside stands selling chenille robes and bedspreads for tourists driving south along Highway 41, known as Bedspread Boulevard. Later, thousands of men, women and children in Dalton would work on bedspreads at home for national distributors.

In 1942, the Dalton News reported that an early version of a Bates Bedspread from Dalton, Ga., had made a splash when displayed at ‘one of the national bedspread marts.

According to the Dalton News, J.T. Bates of Bates Bedspread Company owned an antique candlewick spread made by his great-grandmother, Eva Deck, in 1789. Deck was 16 when she picked the cotton, spun the thread and tufted the bedspread. The newspaper considered it less beautiful than the Bates Bedspreads her great-grandson’s company sold. J.T. Bates said he would sell

…any other spread for much less than he would this old heirloom, in fact this one is not for sale.

With thanks to Ashley Callahan in Southern Tufts: The Regional Origins and National Craze for Chenille Fashion. This story was updated in 2023.

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How To Use a Bayonet in Five Easy Motions

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A bayonet charge. Photo courtesy the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum.

Baron Friedrich von Steuben is credited with professionalizing the Continental Army, teaching the troops, among other things, how to use the bayonet. Bayonets would help win the war, but the troops had little use for them until they were trained by von Steuben.

Von Steuben wrote the first manual for the U.S. Army during the American Revolution. Congress approved publication of the manual, nicknamed the Blue Book, in March 1779. For the rest of the war, Continental Army soldiers used that edition, which was in use until the War of 1812, 18 years after von Steuben’s death.

Here are the instructions for fixing and charging a bayonet according to Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, Part I,

Bayonets were to be fixed with three motions:

Fix – Bayonets! Three motions:

1st and 2d motions the same as the two first motions of the secure. (Those are:

1st. Bring up the right hand briskly, and place it under the cock.

2d. Quit the but with the left hand, and seize the firelock at the swell, bringing the arm close down upon the lock, the right hand being kept fast in this motion, and the piece upright.)

3d. Quitting the piece with your right hand, sink it with your left down the left side, as far as may be without constraint, at the same time seize the baonet with the right hand, draw and fix it, immediately flipping the hand down to the stock, and pressing in the piece to the hollow of the shoulder.

They were to be charged with two:

Charge – Bayonets! Two motions:

1st. The same as the first motion of the secure.

2d. Bring the but of the firelock under the right ar, letting the piece fall down strong on the palm of the left hand, which receives it at the swell, the muzzle pointing directly to the front, the but pressed with the arm against the side; the front rank holding their pieces horizontally, and the rear rank the muzzles of their so high as to clear the heads of the front ranking, both ranks keeping their feet fast.

Here’s how to charge the enemy with bayonets:

Of the Charge with Bayonets.

The line marching, the commanding officer, on approaching the enemy, commands,

March! March!

On which the whole advance by the quick step.

Charge — Bayonet!

The line charge their bayonets, and quicken their step; the drums beat the long roll; and the officers and man must take care to dress to the centre, and not crowd or open their files.

On Saturday, May 23, the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum in Wethersfield, Conn., will host a Revolutionary War encapment that will include a demonstration of the proper use of the bayonet at 10:30 am. Sal Carmosino, Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum guide and organizer of the 5th Connecticut Regiment, will lead the demonstration. The Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum Revolutionary War Encampment is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 211 Main St., Wethersfield, Conn. Admission to the event is free; regular admission is charged for optional tours of the museum. The encampment is underwritten, in part, by a grant from the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Connecticut.

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Colonial Outhouses, or George Washington (Probably) Sat Here

Colonial potty humor has pretty much disappeared, and so have colonial outhouses – but a Connecticut museum has brought them back.

The outhouse behind the Silas Deane house. All photos courtesy the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum.

One of the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum’s colonial outhouses.

The Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum restored to their former glory three once-ritzy outhouses believed to date to the late 18^th century.

Colonial Outhouses

One stands behind the Joseph Webb house, where George Washington stayed in 1781 when he met with the Comte de Rochambeau to map out the Yorktown campaign. Visitors to the museum can not only see where George Washington slept, they’ll be able to see where he probably did something else.

Historians know little about early American outhouse etiquette. How, for example, did one excuse oneself from company when nature called? Washington says nothing on the matter in the Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior he copied for himself. he did, however, weigh in on eating in the street, sneezing at the table or killing vermin in front of others (don’t do any of those things).

The Webb-Deane-Stevens’ outhouses include a five-holer and a six-holer, raising the question of whether families that ate together also – well, finished the process together. Charles Lyle, executive director of the museum, doesn’t think so.

“The family members outnumbered the holes, so it’s hard to figure out,” Lyle said in a recent interview.

Some of the holes are for adults, the smaller ones for children – to prevent them from falling in, no doubt.

Grand Illusions

Archaeologists have unearthed little in the way of knowledge about the use of colonial privies or much else abaout them. According to Musings of a Privy Digger,

In the early privies, those dating before 1840, we find very little in the way of artifacts, usually only organic waste (kitchen scrapes, bones and seeds), window glass, and shards of pottery or porcelain. Containers were valuable. Glass was reused or sent back to factory for cullet (broken glass used by the glass factories to start a new batch).

What is known about the Webb-Deane-Stevens outhouses is that they were quite grand for their time. One has a finial on it. They have armrests and a shelf where a candle could be set, as well as architectural features such as crown molding, raised paneled doors and wainscoting. One was later prettied up with wallpaper and curtains.

Square holes in the foundations were used to clean out the contents once or twice a year, Lyle said. Servants or slaves, presumably, spread wood ashes to mask the odor, and they’d rake and shovel out the contents and move it to a compost pile to make rich fertilizer.

Potty Mouths

Lyle said children are fascinated by the outhouses and love to make potty jokes about them.

A trove of bawdy humor does exist about chamber pots, which people used at night rather than stumble outside in the dark. One that survives, The Old She Crab, tells the story of a man who put a lobster in his chamber pot because his wife was asleep:

The old woman got up for to do her due
Shallow-who, shallow-who
The old woman got up for to do her due
And the damned old she crab
Grabbed her… (read the rest here.)

A Boston Globe story about the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum’s privies elicited some modern bathroom humor in the Comments section.

Hear about Santa and his reindeer landing on top of an outhouse? Santa looked around for a moment, then hollered “No no, Rudolph! I said the SCHMIDT house!”

For information about visiting the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum click here. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Legend of Faneuil Hall’s Golden Grasshopper Weathervane

The truth is more interesting than the legend about the golden grasshopper perched above Faneuil Hall since 1742.

The real story links the golden grasshopper to tracts of land in Maine, includes a secret within its belly and a tale of theft and recovery.

The golden grasshopper

According to the legend, the golden grasshopper weathervane was a gift from coppersmith Shem Drowne to Peter Faneuil. Faneuil, a wealthy merchant and slave trader, donated Faneuil Hall to Boston.

Legend further has it that Shem Drowne got discouraged by his many failures in colonial New England. He lay down in an open field, and upon waking saw a boy chasing a grasshopper. Shem watched and talked with the boy, who took him home to his wealthy parents. They gave him dinner and later adopted him. The golden grasshopper weathervane commemorated that turning point in his life.

The Real Story

The real story? Above London’s Royal Exchange a grasshopper weathervane perched, recognized around the world as a symbol of commerce. (It’s still there.) Peter Faneuil Hall built his hall on Boston’s then-shoreline, and he no doubt intended it as a symbol of commerce, a beacon to ships that put into Boston Harbor.

Peter Faneuil

Faneuil Hall became a hub of commercial activity, a launching pad for independence from Britain and a center of abolitionism. As one historian put it,

In old Faneuil, that guild temple of traders and aldermen, butchers and clerks, hucksters and civic magistrates, the spirit of the people conceived an embryonic nation.

Shem Drowne

Shem Drowne was born Dec. 4, 1683 in Eliot, Maine. His father, Leonard Drowne, was a shipbuilder from England. The family left Maine for Boston in 1699 to escape violence following King William’s War.

Cover of souvenir album of historic sites of Boston, shaped as beanpot, with illus. of Faneuil Hall. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Shem Drowne married Katherine Clark on Sept. 18, 1712 in Boston. She inherited tracts of land in Maine known as the Pemaquid Patents. Shem gained power of attorney from the other heirs. He then went to court to eventually control what became known as the Drowne Claim, which encompassed Bristol, Bremen, Damariscotta, and parts of Newcastle and Nobleboro. In 1746, he bought Monhegan Island in Maine for 10 pounds, 13 shillings.

He was also a coppersmith and Boston’s first tinplate worker, with a shop in the North End.

In 1716, Shem Drowne made America’s first documented weathervane, a gilded archer on top of the royal governor’s house. He created a rooster weathervane for the New Brick Church on Hanover Street. (It now sits on top of First Church in Cambridge.) He also made the copper swallowtail banner vane atop Old North Church in Boston.

In 1742, he made the copper grasshopper weathervane with glass eyes for Faneuil Hall. It was later gilded.

‘I shall vary as the wind’

In 1755, an earthquake threw the golden grasshopper to the ground, severing a leg. Boston selectmen voted to pay Shem Drowne’s son Thomas to repair it. Thomas made a time capsule with the words ‘food for the grasshopper’ on it. He placed it in the grasshopper’s belly with a note:

To my brethren and fellow grasshoppers, Fell in ye year 1753 (1755) Nov. 13, early in ye morning by a great earthquake by my old Master above. Again, like to have met with Utter Ruin by Fire, by hopping Timely from my Public Station, came of the broken bones and much Bruised. Cured and Fixed. Old Master’s son Thomas Drowne June 28, 1768, and Though I will promise to Discharge my office, yet I shall vary as ye wind.

Messages From Mayors

Since then, the golden grasshopper has been periodically refurbished, and new items placed in the time capsule, including historical newspapers, coins, and messages from mayors.

Faneuil Hall 1789

The golden grasshopper became a symbol of Boston. According to another legend, three men who said they came from Boston asked for aid from Samuel Cooper, American consul in Glasgow. Cooper, a Bostonian, asked them what was on top of Faneuil Hall. One said a fish, one said a horse, the third said a grasshopper. He is alleged to have said to the third, “I will give you all the assistance you need, but the other men will have to walk to Boston.”

Shem Drowne died January 13, 1774.

The Golden Grasshopper Heist

Almost exactly 200 years later, someone stole the golden grasshopper. Paul Revere Carroll, a direct descendant of Paul Revere, was the police detective in charge of the case. He got a phone call from Plymouth County’s district attorney saying he had part of the grasshopper.

They met in Boston’s Park Square and the DA handed him a paper bag with the spire in it. He led police to the Faneuil Hall tower, where rags covered the rest of the golden grasshopper.

It turned out a steeplejeack who’d been arrested on drug charges had stolen it, but confessed to the crime in hopes of getting a plea bargain in his drug case. The grasshopper was regilded and replaced, but with a locking device so it couldn’t be stolen again.

With thanks to Faneuil Hall and Faneuil Hall Market: Or, Peter Faneuil and His Gift by Abram English Brown. Color image of Faneuil Hall: By Tony Fischer. This story was updated in 2020.

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John McTammany, Aggrieved Pioneer of the Player Piano

John McTammany loved music and he loved machines, and those two loves led to the creation of a perforated paper player for a piano. Upon it, ‘a country clodhopper could play a Beethoven Sonata.’ (His own words.)

John McTammany

His long quest to invent the musical machine aroused ‘ridicule and contempt’ among the music fraternity. His efforts to take credit for it landed him in a series of legal battles.

The player piano based in part on McTammany’s invention would develop into a wildly popular form of home entertainment. By the 1920s, half of all pianos sold in the United States were player pianos. They made many piano manufacturers rich.

John McTammany wasn’t one of them.

War and Convalescence

John McTammany was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on June 26, 1845, and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. He first lived in Ohio and worked for a reaper company.

1903 advertisement

In 1864, he enlisted in the 115th Ohio Volunteer Infantry of the Union Army. Wounded while guarding the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, he had a long convalescence in a Nashville hospital. McTammany could eventually leave his hospital bed. He started to visit a nearby pawnshop where he picked up broken musical instruments to repair.

While fixing a broken music box, he realized the mechanism could be operated by using a perforated sheet of paper. That inspired his idea for the ‘player’ in the player piano.

His Civil War injuries didn’t allow McTammany to return to the reaper business, so he took up music. He taught and played the organ in Akron, Ohio. He also began tinkering with a device that would automatically play the piano and organ.

All the while, McTammany tried to keep his invention secret, fearing the music community would mock and vilify him.

When his health broke down from his war wounds he moved to rural Kansas with his wife’s family. There he continued his experiments and his music teaching. In 1876, he took $500 to a St. Louis jobber and machinist and ordered three players built that could automatically play an organ. The ‘player’ (he never used the word ‘player piano’) could also be attached to a piano, and that’s why McTammany claimed to be the inventor of the player piano.

John McTammany, Traveling Salesman

Tremont Street in the 19th century

McTammany traveled to New York and Boston to interest piano manufacturers in his device. He failed. In the fall of 1876, flat broke, he moved to a garret above the Russell Bros. music store on Tremont Street in Boston. There he began making a small, keyboardless automatic organ, or ‘organette.’

Meanwhile others filed patents for player pianos. McTammany claimed they stole his ideas while he peddled them in New York and Boston. He filed a broad patent, and ultimately the Patent Office declared him the ‘original and prior’ inventor of the player. That allowed him to continue making automatic organs out of three buildings in Cambridgeport, Mass.

Trouble

By 1881, Worcester, Mass., was a center of manufacturing for musical instrument supplies, and McTammany moved his business there. He discovered another company, Munroe Organ Reed Company, infringed on his patents. Typically, he sued. With more money than McTammany, Munroe had the advantage. The company agreed to pay him royalties and hired him as head of the experimental department.

Steinway Welte-Mignonreproducing piano (1919)

There, McTammany focused on inventing a mechanical banjo.

By then, other musical instrument makers recognized the market potential for the player piano. More patents and more lawsuits ensued. McTammany, of course, was among them, and he lost out. He never received his due, he wrote, as he was overwhelmed by competing claimants who had more money than he did.

After a series of patent fights, he had to take a job as a salesman for Munroe. In 1897, he obtained a patent for a mechanical voting machine, based on perforated paper.

Heyday of the Player Piano

By the turn of the century, several large companies were churning out player pianos, including Wilcox & White and Aeolian Organ and Music Company. Both were located in Meriden, Conn. In England, Queen Victoria bought a player piano just before her death in 1901.

Meriden, Conn., 1914

By 1910, player pianos were sold to a mass market as home entertainment. Also selling well were accessories and rolls of music, first mostly classical and then ragtime music.

Igor Stravinsky recognized the possibilities of composing music for player pianos. (You can watch his 1917 Etude pour Pianola on youtube here.) As many as 100 composers followed his example, including Paul Hindemith, Darius Milhaud, Percy Grainger and Herbert Howells.

At one point during the 1920s, half of all pianos sold had players in them. Their sales peaked in 1924, after which radio, phonographs and movies began to take their place. Player pianos then moved into nickelodeons to play along with silent movies.

The stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out the player piano business.

In 1913 and 1915, John McTammany published two disputed books of his firsthand recollections as a key inventor of the ‘player.’

McTammany’s health broke down in 1915. He died alone and penniless in a military hospital at Stamford, Conn., on March 26, 1915.

Stamford gave him a public funeral during which the music was played on a grand player piano.

This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Steinway piano CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=729892.

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