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Echo cornet, E-flat, D, C, high pitch

Alternate name(s)

Valved bugle

Maker Graves & Co.

Date1851

Place MadeBoston, Massachusetts, United States, North America

Serial No.none

SignedEngraved on plaque attached to bell: PRESENTED / TO / R. M. Hobbs / by the / Citizens of Saco / JUNE 18, 1851 / Made by / Graves & Co. / Boston
Markingsnone
DescriptionSingle-coiled cornet with an echo attachment made of brass with nickel-silver trim. It has four top-action, string-operated rotary valves. The cone-shaped echo attachment can be put into the tubing of the fourth valve. At the leadpipe, there is a telescopic tuning slide with a fine-tuning gear. The instrument has one coupler shank for D and one “pig-tail” coupler crook for C, which can only be used with the fine-tuning device.

According to Robert E. Eliason, this instrument is "the earliest surviving American instrument with an echo attachment (...) by Graves & Co. (...). It is thought, however, that its fourth valve and echo attachment were added sometime later. Without the echo attachment, the added valve functions as a normal fourth valve, lowering the pitch of the instrument two and a half steps, the same as the combination of valves 1 and 3. The tube for this valve is shaped like a long U bent double and has a tuning slide on the lower bend of each leg. This configuration allows insertion of the echo attachment into one of the inner legs of the valve tube while retaining the use of the tuning slide on the outer legs. The echo attachment has a dummy slide or lug fitting into the other inner slide tube as well, evidently for more support. With this arrangement the echo attachment can be shorter because it uses nearly all of the fourth valve tube, and it can be tuned easily in relation to the normal instrument using the outer fourth valve slide."

Eliason observed that the fourth valve slide on this Graves cornet is identical to the fourth valve slides on at least two instruments made in D. C. Hall's Boston shop in the early 1860s. Thus, he has speculated that the Graves cornet's "fourth valve and echo could well have been added by D. C. Hall's shop in the 1860s."
DimensionsHeight (without mouthpiece): 364 mm
Bell diameter: 120 mm
ProvenanceAccording to the donor, William H. Worcester, Bay Village, Ohio, this cornet was presented to his great grandfather, Reuben Merrill Hobbs, by the citizens of Saco, Maine, on June 18, 1851.

Reuben Merrill Hobbs (b. Falmouth, Maine, 1821-d. 1890) was the eldest of eleven children of Josiah Hobbs, Jr. (b. Falmouth, 20 July 1794-d. Selma, Alabama, 29 June 1876) and Miranda Merrill Hobbs (b. Maine, 26 July 1801-d. Yorkville, Illinois, 28 September 1871). His grandfather, Josiah Hobbs, Sr. (b. ca. 1759), of English ancestry, is said to have enlisted in the Continental Army in 1775, as a sixteen-year-old drummer boy. According to a Hobbs' family history, "The love of music dominated the family, and [Josiah Jr.'s] home, with each of the nine boys playing on a favorite instrument, was a gathering place for music lovers." Josiah Hobbs, Jr. and several of his sons farmed the family homestead in Falmouth until 1835, when he moved his family to New Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he ran a hotel. In 1849, the Hobbs family moved, with the younger siblings, to Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Like his younger brother, Franklin Moody Hobbs (b. Falmouth, 20 January 1829), Reuben probably received a "district-school education only, being more or less self-taught, and acquiring a good business education." The earliest known reference to Reuben is this E-flat cornet, presented to him in 1851 by the citizens of Saco, Maine, which suggests that the 30-year-old was already highly esteemed as the lead cornetist/conductor of Hobbs' Band. The ensemble was still in existence five years later, according to the March 7, 1856 issue of Saco's newspaper, "The Union," which mentions in passing that Hobbs' Band played at the March 3 dedication of Saco's new City Hall. Reuben's younger brother, Franklin, probably played in the Hobbs' Band and has been documented as working in one of Saco's thriving cotton mills from about 1848 to 1857. It is likely that Reuben earned his living in the same manner, gaining the hands-on experience that would ultimately prepare him to return as a cotton mill superintendent after the Civil War.

Within a year after the City Hall dedication, Reuben left the Saco area and moved to Lawrence, where his parents and the rest of his younger siblings were living. According to the 1860 U.S. census, the thirty-nine-year-old's occupation was listed as "jeweler." However, the 1857 Lawrence City Directory records his ownership and operation of a music store at 144 Essex Street.

According to family history, both Reuben and his brother Samuel F. Hobbs (b. Falmouth, 25 November 1823) were said to have been "pioneers in the Y.M.C.A. movement in New England [which had its U.S. roots in Boston], serving on boards and lending their talents to musical benefits for that cause." The brothers are also said to have "directed concerts and choirs" in Lawrence, where they were said to be affiliated with the Congregational Church. Samuel eventually moved to Boston, where he studied voice at the Conservatory and is said to have opened a jewelry business there in connection with a music store of his own. One could speculate that Reuben and/or Samuel were acquainted with the Boston instrument makers Graves and/or D. C. Hall, which might have lead Reuben to commission the manufacture of a fourth valve and the innovative echo attachment for his 1851 presentation cornet sometime in the early 1860s.

By 1864, Reuben had relocated his business as a "jeweler" in Lawrence to 119 Essex, and had moved his family to 33 Haverhill Street. Six years later, the 1870 U.S. census places Reuben and his family in Biddeford, Maine. Reuben's occupation is listed in the census as "Superintendent, Cotton Mill," which his descendants have identified as the famous Pepperrell Mills (the combined mill district of sister cities Saco and Biddeford was one of the largest cotton milling complexes in the U.S. at this time). Although little is known about Reuben's life after 1870, his great-grandson, William H. Worcester, says that "Reuben later owned a cotton mill in Aurora, Illinois, in about 1890," where he was apparently located at the time of his death.
Published ReferencesEliason, Robert. _Graves & Company: Musical Instrument Makers_. Dearborn, Michigan: The Edison Institute, 1975.

Eliason, Robert E. “Rhodolph Hall: Nineteenth-Century Keyed Bugle, Cornet, and Clarinet Soloist,” _Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society_ 29 (2003): 5-71.

Eliason, Robert E. “D. C. Hall and the Quinby Brothers, Boston Music Industry Leaders: Makers of Brass Instruments with Flat, Round, Square, and Piston Valves,” _Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society_ 33 (2007): 92.

Klaus, Sabine K. “Metallblasinstrumente im Zeitalter des Erfindergeistes” in _Valve Brass Music: 200 Jahre Ventilblasinstrumente_, ed. by Conny Restle und Christian Breternitz (Berlin: Nicolai, 2014): 36.

Sabine Katharina Klaus, Trumpets and Other High Brass: A History Inspired by the Joe R. and Joella F. Utley Collection. Volume 4: The Heydey of the Cornet (Vermillion, SD: National Music Museum, 2022), pp. 191-92, 203.

Credit LineGift of William H. Worcester, 1991

Object number05257

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