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Dan Woolpert emailed mentioning that he has had an instrument
display together for the past few weeks and had some visitors in. It
will be back up after the early July performances. He is currently
working on a display of 20 fifes. Eighteen have been donated by Fred
Benkovic. Several have documented history.

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I had a wonderful time yesterday with Jayson Dobney, now
associate curator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York City, formerly curator of percussion at the
National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota. Jayson has seen
many excellent examples of Civil War and other period drums and is a
valuable resource of knowledge and information.

After inspecting a number of my drums displayed (which
include an 1850 John Lowell -- Maine; a pre-1900 Eisele -- NYC; and a
number of other 19th century charmers; plus an 1862 Wm. S. Tompkins --
Yonkers, all of which are pictured in our RopeDrums yahoo group
photo album), we retired to my office building's basement where I
have a "vault" filling with boxes of "projects". I had forgotten
that one of the drums stored there is a ca. 1860 restored Wm. Paine
(Portland, Maine) which I brought out for display.

Another find was an old brown 2-ply drum which Jayson
casually inspected and found some handwriting on the inside of the
shell: "Werner Soistmann Proffesional Drum Maker" [misspelled] and
then more information about repairs and trimmings and what appears to
be an address in Philadelphia. I'll post a photo so I can get some
help from our RopeDrums yahoo group in reading the handwriting. That
made our day, for sure.

Also interesting was a wood drum with a dark blue panel and a
nice, but not regulation, Eagle with banner titled "Williamsport
Rifles". This really tweaked Jayson's interest. Research tells us
much about the Williamsport Rifles, but not much about the drum. I
suspect that the drum may be late 19th century, not CW, perhaps from
a veterans band, and perhaps related to the famous Repasz Band of
Williamsport, Pennsylvania. I think that the Rifles and the Band
were closely linked.

Best regards.

Ellis Mirsky