Dear friends and family,
This week Tuesday the Walter Piano Transport truck arrived in Bel Air, Maryland, to pick up my Henry Brinsmead piano, graciously donated by the Maryland Conservatory of Music.
What's really amazing and bittersweet is that the truck is scheduled to be in New York today. That is significant because my piano-making family in London was split up in 1880 by the tragic death of Mary Ann Brinsmead, my great-great-grandmother. By the spring of 1881 my great-great-grandfather William (who worked on this piano) left three children behind with his father Henry Brinsmead, and took two sons (William and Arthur) across the Atlantic to New York.
It was in New York that the father was not longer able or willing to provide for his sons, and by November surrendered them to an orphanage.
Later, little William returned to New York as an adult, a US Army band leader stationed at West Point Military Academy. While there, he composed the "Khaki and Blue March" for officers in training such as Douglas MacArthur (Class of 1903). He also met and married my great-grandmother there.
So New York is both the past setting of tragedy and success for my family. How appropriate that the Brinsmead piano is rolling through the state today, as other pianos are picked up.
Here is my Facebook page telling of my fundraising effort to help me raise the $1300 it is costing me to move it all the way back to Spokane, Washington. You don't have to join Facebook to give. All that's required is a Paypal account (which I have used safely for several years).
But don't feel pressured to give... if nothing else, you can be excited with me for recovering a historical peek into my family's past. It's the musical equivalent of finding out that the uniform of your Civil War ancestor has been found in a museum that wants to donate it to you.
More details to come soon...
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