I added our family heirloom - a c.1906 Edison Home Model B, in custom cabinet with H&S red Morning Glory horn - to the "Featured Phonographs - The Edison Co." forum section in December 2016. Please be sure to check out the section if you haven't; here is a link to mine in particular:
http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... 63&start=0
My wife Sharon's great uncle Ralph's apparently jackknife carved-in initials, can be seen on the underside of the motor board from the home-made cabinet he apparently made from a small bureau (the remains of which had been used to store the records with the Phonograph atop). The bureau, sadly is no more. The initials are "RA", for Ralph Alouisius. This Phonograph and its records, survived Sharon's great grandparents two farms - the first one was in Warsaw, NY, but was auctioned off in 1929; the second was located in Honeoye Falls, NY.
Ralph died on July 22, 1943 at the age of 43, after a tragic accidental poisoning while applying cyanide gas during his fumigation of the Central Hotel in Lackawanna, NY.
Sharon's great grandmother Sophie passed away in 1961 (predeceased by her husband August, in 1938) at which point many of the home's furnishings were divided among her 3 remaining children; Leon, Mildred (Sharon's grandmother), Harvey, their spouses, their children and grandchildren. Harvey had never married, and was the only child to have remained working on the farm after their father August's death.
The Phonograph and records may have actually been given to Sharon's grandparents well before Sophie's death in 1961, we just don't know.
In the 1970's, the farmhouse burned down, and Harvey sold the farm to a neighboring, much larger dairy farm family. Sadly the remaining barn burned down in the mid-80's (IIRC), and there's nothing left of the farm for us to see any longer.
Sharon's grandparents had gotten married and eventually moved off the farm in the early 30's, to live in Rochester, NY in an apartment. After the birth of Sharon's mother in 1932, they bought the home right next door to the apartment they had been renting. Sharon's grandfather Albert passed away in 1959, one year before Sharon's birth.
The home still remains in the neighborhood which had become very violent and rundown, but grandmother Mildred defiantly stayed in her beautiful island-like haven of a home, despite the rapid degeneration of the area she had loved so much. In the 1970's there were a series of rapes perpetrated against older women, one involving a friend of hers who lived catty corner behind her home. These rapes initiated the "Take Back The Night" movement in the City of Rochester, still recalled by some few of us "older" folks. The culprit was eventually determined to have been a longtime next-door neighbor's teen son. She had known him his entire life.
We would take our 2 youngs boys to visit her every Sunday in the years before her death, so that I could do any home repairs she needed, maintain her 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne, and have lunch with her. She knew I was fascinated with the cylinder phonograph down in her basement rec-room, and would on occasion ask me to bring it up to her kitchen so that I could oil it, and play a record for us all. On these occasions she would be sure to tell me "
...if anything should ever happen to me..." I should have have it - with a broad smile on her face, and a sly wink.
We loved her very dearly. This was a time in our lives when it seemed as if everyone, and everything, was working against my young wife and I. She was always there with encouragement, and gave us the love and support we never recieved from our "closer" family members. But that's another long, boring story - not to be shared here...
Grandma Mildred passed away in the summer of 1986, and her family Phonograph found its way to us, not long after her death. It will never leave this family - I Pray.
Best to all,
Fran
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