California 1852

[Les Smith]

On Thu, 22 Jan 1998, Anne Beetem wrote:

> Greetings all!
> 
>      I have a historical question for us.  I've already given the inquirer,
> Laurette Goldberg from MusicSources in Berkeley,  what I have from my
> sources, which I'm do not feel is sufficient.   They are organizing a Gold
> Rush musical event to celebrate the sequiscentennial.
> 
>       Here's the question:
> 
>        What evidence do we have of what type of pianos in California in
> 1852?   I have direct knowledge of an 1859 cast iron frame Steinway square
> which was shipped around South America by boat and still resides in the San
> Francisco Bay area.   I know what types of pianos were being produced in
> the U.S. then.   A lot happened in those 7 years though in California and
> it was still quite rough in 1852.   Information anybody?

Gee, Ann, you ask a really tough question. In 1852 the US piano industry
was still in its infancy--Steinway hadn't even be founded yet--and was all
still concentrated in the East: New York, Boston, Baltimore--places like
that. What opened the West as a market for pianos was the completion of
the Transcontinental- Railway, but that didn't occur until 1869. And even
then pianos didn't make many journeys out to the west coast until pianos
started being produced in the Chicage area later in the century. In 1852
any piano going to California would have had to come from the East and
would have had to make the journey either around South America, like that
Steinway square, or go across the entire continent by a horse-drawn cover-
ed wagon, through thousands of miles desolate, unsettled, lawless country.
Those few that might have arrived in California by 1852 were probably fil-
led with bullet holes and indian arrows, and _really-badly_ out-of-tune!
Since anyone contemplating sending a piano on such an arduous and expen-
sive journey would have had to have had deep-pockets in the first place,
it seems reasonable that they would have sent the best piano available at
the time--most likely a Chickering, at least by reputation. Just a "best-
guess" scenaio, however.

Les Smith