Abbott & Sons Piano Factory, Fort Lee, NJ

Here are some bits and pieces of information about the Abbott Family Piano Company in New Jersey sent to me by Matthew Weismantel, great great grandson of Whitfield Barrie Abbott (which makes him my 3rd cousin):

Bryants and Abbots
My (Matthew's) Grandmother was Margaret Weismantel nee' BRYANT whose mother was Rebecca Godfrey Curtis Bryant nee' Abbott (daughter of Whitfield Barry ABBOTT & Gertude CLAYTON) and whose father was William Thomas BRYANT (son of Eley BRYANT and Margaret COBB). The Abbotts started in America John C. ABBOTT (1809-1898) who manufactured pianos both in NYC and Fort Lee, NJ.

• Born in London in about 1815, John Abbott immigrated to New York with his brothers James, Nathaniel, Abiel, and William to manufacture pianos. John Abbott first apprenticed with the firm of R & W Nunns. He opened his first shop in 1835, at only twenty years of age, at 66 Walker Street in New York City. His pianos were exhibited at The American Institute Fair in both 1835 and 1836, and they were awarded medals at both exhibitions. Abbott quickly gained popularity and a stellar reputation for his instruments. It seems that John Abbott went into general business and left the piano industry before 1850. His brothers James Abbott and William Abbott continued building action parts for pianos in New Jersey under the name of Abbott & Sons.

• In Spillane’s History of the American Piano-Forte, published in 1890: “John Abbott, a graduate from the shop of R&W Nunns, began business at 66 Walker Street, NY in 1832, and became very successful immediately from the standpoint of making reputable instruments. In 1835 John Abbott took the gold medal at the Mechanic’s Institute for a piano-forte which won special mention. In 1836 he moved to 267 Bowery. Mr. Abbott exhibited a grand piano in this year which won the second premium at the Mechanic’s Institute. This clever piano make is yet living and is a member of a family whose connections with the trade has been of long standing. James Abbott of Abbott and Sons, is a brother and was connected with him in 1833 when he began business on Walker St., and is the youngest of the Abbott Family of piano makers.”

• ABBOTT. London-born makers in New York, NYand Fort Lee, NJ. John Abbott (b. London, 1815-d. after 1890) apprenticed with R&W Nunns in New York; in 1832 he opened a workshop at 66 Walker Street (Spillane). Spillane reported that John Abbott won a gold medal for one of his pianos at the American Mechanics’ Institute Fair in 1835, and the following year he won a silver medal for a horizontal, not square, grand piano. In 1836 his address was 267 Bowery. Abbott apparently opened the firm of Abbott & Sons in Fort Lee, NJ, possibly as early as 1836; although the date is uncertain, he is known to have been working in New Jersey by 1839. http://antiquepianoshop.com/online-museum/abbott/

• John had three brothers, all of whom were active as piano makers, Nathaniel B. Abbott was listed as a maker during the 1840's, but later he turned to other occupations; he became first a policeman, then a carpenter. James Abbott (b London, 1825) worked with his brother John in 1833 on Walker Street in New York and in the firm of Abbott & Sons about 1839 in Fort Lee. James lived at a hotel owned by John in Hackensack, NJ; he was active in the business until 1860, according to Kaufman. William Abbott (b. London, 1816-d 1889) also worked with John in Fort Lee in 1850. Abiel, another brother, operated during that year a piano dealership in NY; he lived in Jersey City. Spillane state that all four of the Abbott brothers were trained at R & W Nunns.

• It is my (Sylvia Abbott) impression that the Abbott family was a large one and branched out to perhaps many other states. I have no records of this. My ancestor, James, had a small piano making business in Edgewater, bought property in Fort Lee in 1850 where piano actions were made in his home. In 1872 Abbott Piano Factory opened off Lemoine Ave. In 1953 the building was sold and has since been torn down to make way for the new Port Authority Building on South Marginal Rd.

• According to Margaret Weismantel, John C. Abbott died pushing Bonnie Cowen up a flight of stairs in a baby carriage. Now that I have dates for his death in Dec 1898 and Bonnie Cowen's birth in August 1895 this certainly plausible.

Charles Bryant, a "dapper fellow"
On another note, from Matthew Weismantel: "My aunt has been asking me if I have any information about a Mariah BRYANT who she remembers owning a boarding house in Ocean Grove, NJ. The only Mariah I have come across was in your photo on-line with Charles Bryant.

l to r:  Mariah, Ida Rene Abbott, Addie Fletcher, and Charles Bryant.
Possibly taken on the occasion of Charles and Mariah's wedding? This photo had to have been taken around 1910, which is after their mother Margaret died on a train... after "the rift." 

My aunt later remembered that there was a Charles Bryant who was married to a Mariah and owned a piano store on Broad Street in Newark, NJ -- strange since it was the Abbotts who owned a piano factory.

Research Gets Harder

At first this ancestry project took off like a rocket.  Though I was only able to work on it in my spare time, the pace of progress fueled my motivation.  Every day I would discover some new link to the past.  Progress got a tremendous boost when I was able to connect online with new-found cousins who were also researching our family history.

After months of research, the project moved forward only in fits and starts.  New discoveries happened just often enough to keep me motivated.  Sometimes a closer look proved my former findings to be questionable as I checked my facts more carefully.  Progress sometimes took a few steps backwards.

It is now well into Year Two of this ancestry project.  It is becoming tedious work.  A new bit of information is a rare treasure.   Every now and then, I choose an ancestor and do an exhaustive search online.  At least once a month, I look for inspiration for a blog entry.  My main focus now is to try to make sense of all the accumulated information.

The next steps are to add more of my family's "hard copy" information and do more research outside of the online environment.  I will look for family documents, analyze them, and scan them into the records.  I will interview the few remaining folks in the generation before me to flesh out the facts with stories.  I will study historical records and read accounts of the places and events that personally affected my ancestors' lives.  Now is where the real detective work begins.

The goal of this project is to provide as complete a genealogy as possible for my children.  I want them to have all of the family stories, pictures, and documents within my reach, to be able to put names and faces to our family's history.

Ada C. Crofford

My great grandmother, Ada Clemina Hall, was born on July 18, 1856 in Chittenango, New York.

Ada C. Hall > Horace C. Crofford > Virginia M. Crofford > Teresa Zaun Austin

Ada's family (parents, Andrew and Olivia, Ada, and her siblings, Nina and Albert) traveled west and settled in the Dakota Territory sometime before 1876.  Their home was near Bear Butte Creek at the northern edge of the Black Hills (near what is now Sturgis).  Her father was a farmer and her mother kept house, perhaps with her daughter Nina's help.  A young man, Jesse, boarded with them and shared the work of farming.  Albert most certainly worked on the farm as well.  Ada became a teacher.

Ada taught school at Fort Lincoln in North Dakota, and was friends with General Custer's wife, Elizabeth, who was about ten years older than Ada.  Family legend has it that Ada was teaching school at Fort Lincoln on the day that Custer and his men left to fight the Battle of Little Big Horn in May 1876.  Ada later wrote a paper defending General Custer which is now housed in a museum in Newcastle, Wyoming.

"Mrs. Crofford was a school teacher at Ft. Abraham Lincoln and was a friend of General Custer's wife Elizabeth. She came to the Black Hills to teach in 1876." From the obituary of her daughter, Miriam Darrow printed in "Bits and Pieces" Newcastle, Weston, Wyoming, Vol. 4 No. 1, 1968

Ada married Horace C. Crofford in 1891 at age 34. They had three children born in South Dakota - Horace, age 5, Oliver, age 4, and "Abraham" (Abram), age 2.  The census indicates that she had another child that did not survive.  By 1900, they had moved across the line into Wyoming, just south of Newcastle. Daughter Miriam was born in 1902.

Ada holding Miriam, born in 1902.

In 1907, Ada's father Andrew Hall signed over to her the title to farmland in Weston County, in the Newcastle area.  Horace raised stock, and the three boys worked as laborers on the home farm.

Ada was an consummate inventor.  In 1905, she patented a design for an insect trap.  This design has been referenced by other inventors until as recently as 2012.  In 1906, she patented a signal attachment for a life preserver that would make a person in distress visible from a distance.  In 1918, she patented a method for sealing jars of preserves.   In 1923, she patented a mechanism to automatically release the thread tension in a sewing machine.

She was also a writer and historian.  Her story "Pioneer days in North Dakota" was published in the 1923 North Dakota Historical Quarterly.  I wonder if she was inspired by her friendship with "Libbie" Custer who supplemented her widow's pension by writing books about life on the plains.  http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/elizabeth-bacon-custer/12030