Since currency was scarce in the country districts through which he passed, he took his payment in kind-cheese, butter, farm produce, cattle, and, in Canada especially, horses.
With him went a boy who could play the hymn- tunes whose simple harmonies sold his wares. Jacob Estey hawked his instruments in person, driving his pedler’s wagon loaded with melodeons across the country to New York, as well as through the New England states and over the boundary into Canada. Thenceforward his story is one of the gradual development of a great American industry through Yankee grit and intelligence. He invested his savings in a small melodeon-manufacturing shop in Brattleboro. As a result, at the age of four, Jacob was adopted by a neighbor farmer named Shattuck. He had accumulated money, but soon lost it all as a contractor for public roads. His father, offspring of an English family which had settled in Sutton, Massachusetts, early in the nineteenth century removed to Hinsdale, New Hampshire, United States, where Jacob was born.įrequent beatings and chores so surfeited him that, deaf to the call of the soil, he ran off at the age of thirteen, made his way to Worcester, Massachusetts, and managed to secure a common-school education and two years of study at an academy while learning the plumbing trade.
Jacob Estey was the son of Isaac Estey and Patty Forbes. Jacob Estey was an American pioneer and organ manufacturer. More plausible is the contention that he was one of the first to employ the “easy payment” plan to further the sale of his organs. In his own special field he is credited With the invention of the Vox hmnana tremolo stop on the reed-organ, though it seems probable this was an adaptation rather than an invention. In 1852 the shop employed six workmen and its total value was estimated at $2, 700 before the end of the century the firm’s output was 1, 800 organs a month, and Estey “Cottage Organs” were exported to every part of the globe. Undaunted by the burning of his little shop in 1857, he secured capital, took in Levi Knight Fuller as a partner, and resumed melodcon building the following year. He had accumulated money, but soon lost it all as a contractor for public roads.Īs a result, at the age of four, Jacob was adopted by a neighbor farmer named Shattuck.
(age 75) Hinsdale, New Hampshire, United States
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