Music Passed Down Through The Generations

All of our grandchildren are musically inclined.  We have wondered where they get all the talent as Tom and I have none.

I have been reading letters written by my Moore family from 1854 through 1910.  Many mention great great grandfather Horatio Moore.  I have come to realize that his family had the music talent.  His daughters took vocal lessons, many times from their father.  Horatio and at least one daughter played the piano.  Horatio tuned pianos and work for the Bradbury Piano Manufactory in of all places Brooklyn, New York in the 1870's.  I hadn't realize he came up to New York after living in Alabama during the civil war.  Here is an excerpt from a letter written April 28, 1879.

"Jessie expects to go directly on to New York and make the first of her visits at Uncle Horatio's ....".   "Your uncle is still overseer of the Bradbury's Piano Manufactory,  he visits every department of workmen every day before dinner, and the different branches of piano making from the cases to the keyboard, and tunes all of them, keeping one in his office all the time.  The sales rooms are in New York City.  His salary was two thousand dollars per year.  It may be raised for they did not want him to return to Mobile, and since the yellow fever last summer I hear nothing about their return, and another thing, they are getting used to New York life.  It must be very different from where they were for so many years."

The pull of the south was strong though.  By 1885 they are in Savannah, Georgia, where Horatio and his son work for the Southern Music Company which is affiliated with the Ludden and Bates Piano Company.  In the directory for 1885 Horatio is listed as a piano tuner.