The Virginia Dulcimer - The Magazine Antiques

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, July/August 2013.

Fig. 6. Scheitholt, probably Pennsylvania, late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, found in Shenandoah County, Virginia. Pine with red stain, wrought iron; overall length 40 ½ inches. Found in the Woodstock community, this instrument was probably brought into Virginia when settlers migrated from southeastern Pennsylvania. One undated mate was found in Alleghany County, Virginia, and a Pennsylvania mate, dated 1788, is in the Bucks County Historical Society in Pennsylvania. The elongated, shaped peghead shows up on other scheitholts from southeastern Pennsylvania. *Private collection; photograph by Leila Cartier.*

For generations of Virginia musicians, dulcimer (or dulcimore) has described a family of instruments with three characteristics: a long, hollow neckless wooden soundbox (with curved or straight sides); multiple wire strings (usually just three or four today) about the same length as the soundbox; and wire frets (usually fifteen) laid out to play the diatonic musical scale. In its early boxy, straight-sided, un-fretboarded form (today referred to as the “scheitholt” form by collectors and academics), the dulcimer-or at least experience with the instrument-came to North America with eighteenth-century German immigrants, primarily through the ports of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Historically a commoner’s instrument, the dulcimer (or variants) was also played in Norway, Sweden, Holland, France, Denmark, and Iceland. In the early 1600s the German composer and musicologist Michael Praetorius published an image of a straight-sided dulcimer-family instrument that he labeled a Scheidtholtt, which translates as “firewood,” and noted that it had been a part of folk culture for centuries (Fig. 2). Perhaps his choice of names was intended as a comment on the instrument’s simple construction and place in German “peasant” life. Judging from wills and inventories, however, “dulcimer” was the only common-speech name Virginians historically used for the instrument.1

Fig. 5. Scheitholt and case, late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, found in western Maryland. Case: walnut, overall length 35 inches; instrument: walnut, wrought iron; length 33 inches. A bow, quills, and a handmade tuning wrench were found with this instrument and case. The maker was clearly a skilled woodworker. *Collection of Tom Queen; Brooks photograph.*

A member of the zither family (stringed instruments without necks), the dulcimer was carried along major migration routes in this country, making its way not only into Pennsylvania and Virginia but also into New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, then further south and west to Alabama, Missouri, and Texas.

Fig. 7. Scheitholt, probably Franklin County, Virginia, nineteenth century. Walnut, wrought iron; length 33 inches. Members of the Durham family from the Brown Hill area of Franklin County took this instrument to Covington, Ohio, in 1940. The wrought-iron rosette in the lower sound hole is a unique decorative touch, and it was probably made by a local blacksmith or other metalworker. There are signs that the upper sound hole also had a rosette. *Private collection; Brooks photograph.*

Virginia’s chapter in the saga began in the first quarter of the eighteenth century as German immigrants and their American-born offspring funneled through southeastern Pennsylvania into the Valley of Virginia, the Virginia Blue Ridge, and southwestern portions of the state. Dozens of largely German communities sprang up along the Great Wagon Road, the Carolina Road, and the Wilderness Road. Not surprisingly, early evidence of dulcimer-making and ownership in the Virginia Commonwealth centers around those counties where Germans settled.

Fig. 8. Dulcimer made by Jacob Michael Neff (1834-1916), Wythe County, Virginia, 1897. Inscribed “J. M. Neff maker/Rural Retreat, Virginia/March 9, 1897/Raining” on the back. Walnut, yellow pine; length 34 ½ inches. Neff, a farmer, always included the weather when he signed the backs of his instruments. Five dulcimers by him are known (one survives with a bow), but according to family history, he made one for each of his thirteen children. *Collection of Ed and Becky Bordett; Brooks photograph.*

The first known written reference to a dulcimer in Virginia appears in the Shenandoah County will book for 1812. There, documents related to the estate of Godfrey Wilkins, a gunsmith, list one dulcimer, which was purchased by a Conrad Garrett at Wilkins’s estate sale in 1813.2 The next two Virginia references to dulcimers appear in wills and inventories of 1818, this time further south on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Bedford County and Franklin County.3 Both areas attracted a substantial number of German settlers. Curiously, however, while dulcimer-family instruments were not part of the folk tradition of the British Isles, the two 1818 instruments were owned by families with English surnames; how they acquired the dulcimers and what types of music were being played on them has yet to be determined. After 1818, at least one listing of a dulcimer appears in western Virginia court documents every year through 1850.

Fig. 10. Dulcimer made by John Scales Jr. (1808-1892), Floyd County, Virginia, 1832. Inscribed “Floyd County, Virginia, made by John Scales, Jr. August 28, 1832” on one side. Curly maple, walnut, tuning pegs replaced with metal factory-made mechanical peg tuners; length 33 ½ inches. This is the earliest documented signed-and-dated dulcimer in the United States. Its teardrop shape is known as the Virginia form. Scales was born in Patrick County, the county below Floyd County. He died in Sandy Ridge, Stokes County, North Carolina, just a mile from his Virginia birthplace. *Collection of P. Holbrook; Brooks photograph.*

The earliest documented dulcimer maker in Virginia was gunsmith Jacob Hanshew of Wythe (now Bland) County. His 1834 estate included “1 set of dulcimore tools” (the only historical reference to such items discovered so far), along with blacksmithing and coopering tools.4 Not surprisingly, his surname is German, as were those of other Wythe County dulcimer owners between 1827 and the 1850s: local potters Felix and Abraham Buck owned dulcimers; cabinet- and dower chest makers Jacob Spangler, John Huddle, Peter Huddle, and Gideon Huddle did too; and so did a number of families with ties to “Wild Turkey” fraktur and relief-carved headstones in German-affiliated burying yards.5

Fig. 9. Dulcimer made by Levi Pitman (1807-1892), Mt. Olive, Shenandoah County, Virginia, 1849. Inscribed “Made by L. Pitman, June 26, 1849 Shenandoah County, Va.” on a paper label glued inside, and in pencil “For Miss F. Copp” on the back. Pine, walnut, black paint, wrought iron; length 25 ½ inches. Levi Pitman’s seventeen-volume diary (1845-1892) covering his life as a clock repairman, instrument maker, carpenter, and inventor, is in the Library of Virginia in Richmond. Miss Copp was probably Frances Copp (1831-1921). *Collection of Ralph Lee Smith; Brooks photograph.*

The old-world dulcimer was destined to change in the vibrant English-Scots-Irish-German mix of western Virginia. Though dates and names are difficult to determine, two sparks gave the instrument an American identity. The first was the addition of American and British songs and tunes to the types of music played on dulcimers, and the second was the addition of a raised fingerboard and curved sides-forming either a teardrop or an hourglass shape-to the earlier straight-sided design.

Fig. 11. Dulcimer, Alleghany County, Virginia, nineteenth century. Poplar, red paint, with turned feet on the bottom; length 40 inches. Two dulcimers by this maker have turned up in Covington in Alleghany County. Both are painted red. On the other example the raised fingerboard is moved to one side, suggestive of the older scheitholt tradition. *Blue Ridge Institute and Museum of Ferrum College; Brooks photograph.*

Fed by local customs, family traditions, or sometimes just the influence of one or two makers, a multigenerational dulcimer-making tradition flourished in pockets of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and North Carolina. Of those areas, the western Virginia Blue Ridge can make some claim to being the birthplace of the “American” dulcimer with curved sides and a raised fretboard.

Fig. 13. Dulcimer, Knox County, Tennessee, early nineteenth century. Walnut, pine, wrought iron; length 39 ½ inches. The heart has been a popular decorative motif among dulcimer makers, and the artisan who built this instrument carried the decoration to the tuning pegs and the tailpiece. Skillfully made in the teardrop Virginia shape with a dovetailed back and a carved scroll peghead, it came from the Pilleaux family in the Knoxville area. The open tailpiece relates to those on dulcimers made in Carroll, Grayson, Wythe, and Smyth Counties, Virginia. The workmanship and wood in this instrument are of the finest quality. *Private collection; Brooks photograph.*

Estate records from 1780 to 1860 in Virginia’s Roanoke and New River valleys list more dulcimers (39) than any other instrument except the fiddle (103). Equally significant, the records point to the rapid adaptation of the instrument by non-Germans in the region.6 Nearly two-thirds of the dulcimers identified were owned by families whose surnames reflect British ancestry. It is reasonable to assume that these non-German owners were playing some, if not mostly, English-language songs and tunes with American and British origins.

Fig. 17. Dulcimer, twentieth century, found in Surry County, North Carolina. Curly maple, pine; length 39 inches. This dulcimer is of the style made in Carroll County, just across the Virginia state line from Surry County. Its “closed D” tailpiece is one of three tailpiece designs seen only on Virginia-made or Virginia-influenced dulcimers. (The other two are the “open D” and the “tongue”-a short down-curved ledge with tapered edges.) This dulcimer always had mechanical tuners, which were readily available in the late nineteenth century. Such tuners hold strings in tune much better than wooden friction pegs. *Collection of Ralph Lee Smith; Cartier photograph.*

In 1832 in Floyd County, Virginia-amid farmers of German, English, and Scots-Irish descent- John Scales, a cabinetmaker of British ancestry, built a curve-sided dulcimer with a raised fretboard (Fig. 10). The Scales instrument is the oldest signed-and-dated “American” style dulcimer currently known, and thus, also the earliest in the teardrop shape that came to be identified as the Virginia dulcimer. It is possible that Scales was the first to make such a dulcimer, but it is also possible that he copied one or more instruments he had seen and that an Americanized dulcimer form had developed earlier than 1832. Unlike the straight sides of the scheitholt, each side of the Virginia dulcimer follows a long curve from head to tailpiece. The Virginia form eventually carried over into Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia, Ohio, and perhaps further west, but it is found more often in Virginia than in any other state. A few old but undated hybrid instruments have also been found in Virginia with features somewhere between the scheitholt and the Virginia dulcimer. Regardless, in multiple designs the dulcimer was definitely spicing up the nation’s growing musical melting pot in Virginia by the 1830s.

Fig. 16. Dulcimer, nineteenth century, found in Monroe County, West Virginia. Stenciled “J. B. Shue” in red paint on the bottom. Curly maple, pine; length 41 inches. This instrument was in the Ballard family of Monroe County before 1900. Its “open O” tailpiece is similar to the “open D” tailpieces found on dulcimers from the Virginia counties bordering Monroe County (see Fig. 18). A number of early Virginia settlers went west through the Monroe County area, which, before the Civil War was part of Virginia. Shue may have been the maker, or he may have been the person for whom the dulcimer was made. No record of him has yet been found. *Private collection; Brooks photograph.*

The steady production of Virginia dulcimers centered around a few families. Four generations of the Melton family of Carroll County, for example, built larger teardrop-shape dulcimers capable of competing in volume with fiddles and banjos in string band settings (see Fig. 4). When Stephen B. Melton moved to Lee County in the 1930s, he expanded the tradition to his new home. In Marion (Smyth County), Virginia, cabinetmaker Samuel F. Russell (Figs. 3, 12) and his employees made hundreds of dulcimers in the late 1920s and into the 1930s, most of which went to New York and Florida, according to family history.7 Even the vintage scheitholt design held its place among a handful of Virginia makers; the Radford, Bowman, and Light families of Patrick and Carroll Counties used it into the 1950s (see Fig. 20).

Fig. 4. Raymond Melton (1915-1985) at a fiddlers’ convention in Carroll County, Virginia, in a photograph by Scott Odell, 1978. Raymond was a second-generation maker and a third-generation player. He performed with the Melton Brothers Band (which included his brothers Daniel and Ellis), the Blue Sky Ramblers, and the Dunevant Family. *Smithsonian Center for Folk Life and Cultural Heritage, Washington, D. C., Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections.*

Though the Virginia dulcimer was for many decades the favorite of makers in the Common¬wealth-and several traditional Southwest Virginia makers still build instruments with the teardrop design-the hourglass shape is the dulcimer form commonly made in Virginia and America today. In the late nineteenth century social and religious activists looked to the craft traditions in the mountains-especially needlework and wood-work-as a means for Appalachian people to generate income. As a result, an Appalachian crafts revival began in the early 1900s and ran until World War II. Dulcimer making-using the hourglass form-was taught in a few Kentucky mission schools and North Carolina arts and crafts centers (though not at similar institutions in Virginia). A handful of Virginia makers sold dulcimers through the crafts revival network, but extensive marketing by the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild and other agencies turned the hourglass design into the most recognized form of the instrument nationwide.8 Called the “Kentucky dulcimer” in print as early as 1917,9 the same year Vogue magazine published a photograph of musician and song collector Loraine Wyman holding one (Fig. 15), “Appalachian dulcimer” and “mountain dulcimer” became the popular names for the instrument regardless of form.

Fig. 18. Dulcimer made by Sam Russell, Marion, Virginia, 1939. Typed on a paper label inside is “Made by S. F. Russell/July 15, 1939.” Rosewood, walnut; length 36 inches. *Collection of Marc King; Brooks photograph.*

The marketing of Appalachian crafts in the name of social activism sent dulcimers across the country. Along with the Virginia makers, craftsmen such as West Virginia’s Charles N. Prichard and Kentucky’s J. Edward Thomas and Jethro Amburgey produced hundreds of instruments for a nationwide market.

Fig. 20. Scheitholt probably made by Curtis Bowman (1893-1968), Lewis Radford (1895- 1971), or William Madison Light (1884- 1957), Carroll County or Patrick County, Virginia, c. 1950-1970. Pine, red paint; length 32 ½ inches. This twentieth-century scheitholt was found in the mountaintop community of Vesta in Patrick County, an area where the tradition of building scheitholts continued long after it had faded elsewhere in Virginia. Makers Curtis Bowman of Patrick County and Lewis Radford of Carroll County both lived within ten miles of Vesta. Both learned to make scheitholts from their brother-in-law William Madison Light, who used patterns from his father Joseph T. Light (1853-1929). *Blue Ridge Institute and Museum of Ferrum College; Cartier photograph.*

Not surprisingly, Virginia dulcimer players and their instruments took part in the national folk music revival of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Commercial records, radio, movies, and electric instruments dramatically expanded American tastes between the two World Wars, and older forms of rural music suddenly found new fans. By 1928 the dulcimer popularly symbolized Appalachian music and served as a prop in promotional graphics for Appalachian festivals (see Fig. 12). At Grayson County’s White Top Folk Festival in 1933, Sam Russell performed with one of his instruments for Eleanor Roosevelt. White Top ran through most of the 1930s, and Russell was part of a lineup of musicians playing what the event’s founders felt was untainted Anglo-Saxon music. Abingdon, Virginia, lawyer Andrew Rowan Summers reportedly first heard a dulcimer at White Top. Like Jean Ritchie from Kentucky, he became one of the first to play the instrument on the urban folk revival circuit nationally, and he performed at the American Folk Music Concert at the 1940 World’s Fair in New York.

Fig. 15. Loraine Wyman (1885-1937) holding an hourglass-shape Appalachian dulcimer in Vogue, May 1, 1917, in an article she and Howard Brockway (1870-1951) wrote on folksong collecting in eastern Kentucky.

In 1935, just down the mountain from the White Top Folk Festival, the Old Fiddlers’ Convention in Galax added dulcimer playing to its slate of contest categories. For years a member of the famed dulcimer playing/making Melton family took first place in that category. The Old Fiddlers’ Convention, described as the world’s oldest fiddlers’ convention, continues to attract thirty to forty dulcimer entrants each year.

Fig. 14. James Edward “Uncle Ed” Thomas (1850–1933) of Knott County, Kentucky, in a photograph of c. 1900–1925. No one knows where Thomas learned to make dulcimers, but his hourglass shape instruments influenced many Kentucky artisans of the Appalachian crafts revival. A farmer and a carpenter, Thomas started making dulcimers in 1871. He signed, dated, and numbered his instruments and was clearly a prolific maker: Ralph Lee Smith noted in *Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions* (Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Md., and London, 2002) that a Thomas dulcimer numbered 1,465 and dated February 1931 turned up in 1995. *Berea College, Southern Appalachian Photo Archives, Berea, Kentucky.*

In a second folk music revival, dozens of young people journeyed to western Virginia in the 1950s and 1960s, where old-time fiddlers and banjo players were the main attraction, but the dulcimer drew followers as well. Massachusetts-born folk singer Paul Clayton Worthington collected and learned Virginia material while a student at the University of Virginia and played the dulcimer on some of his albums.

Fig. 12. Sam Russell with one of his dulcimers at the White Top Folk Festival, Grayson County, Virginia, in a photograph of c. 1931- 1932. The photograph was used in a promotional pamphlet for the festival in 1933. *Blue Ridge Institute and Museum of Ferrum College, Blue Ridge Heritage Archives.*

A number of dulcimer makers are active in Virginia today. Few, however, are part of a longstanding, multigenerational family or community tradition, and nearly all are dedicated to the hourglass form of the instrument. On the antique side many vintage Virginia dulcimers have gravitated, not surprisingly, toward a handful of institutional and private collectors. Still, now and then someone brings an exceptional older dulcimer, usually by an unknown hand, into our museum. Each sheds a bit more light on the dulcimer’s remarkable legacy in Virginia history.

Fig. 1. Dulcimer, Lee County, Virginia, early twentieth century. Poplar, pine; length 37 inches. This dulcimer features far more decoration than any other known in Virginia: leaf and vine patterns etched, penciled, or painted on the sides, top, tailpiece, and pegheads; and notching on the tailpiece and pegheads. It is one of eight known dulcimers from the Blackwater community of Lee County. Over the span of these instruments, the maker-or makers-combined decorative and construction elements, such as elaborate painted ornament, chip carving, incised carving, protruding tongue tailpieces, carved scroll pegheads, and nails with heads chiseled to look like screws. One of the eight dulcimers has a history of being made by Billy “Cat” Robinette while another has the initials “W.K.R.” on one side. *Private collection; photograph by Barry Brooks.*

Special thanks to researchers and collectors L. Allen Smith, Ralph Lee Smith, John Rice Irwin, Marc King, Tom Queen, and Ed Bordett.

The Virginia Dulcimer: 200 Years of Bowing, Strumming and Picking, organized by the authors, is on view at the William King Museum in Abingdon, Virginia, until August 11.

1 Alissa Ann Teresa Pesavento, “Concert Zither in America: Its History, Performance, Practice, and Repertory” (M.A. thesis, Kent State University, 1994). 2 Estate and sale of Godfrey Wilkins, Shenandoah County will books,1812 and 1813, Clerk’s Office, Shenandoah County Circuit Court Building, Woodstock, Virginia. 3 See, respectively, estate of Obediah Hogan, Bedford County will book, 1818, Clerk’s Office, Bedford County Courthouse, Bedford, Virginia; and estate of Josiah Harrison, Franklin County will book, 1818, Clerk’s Office, Franklin County Courthouse, Rocky Mount, Virginia. 4 Estate of Jacob Hanshew, Wythe County will book, 1834, Clerk’s Office, Wythe County Courthouse, Wytheville, Virginia. 5 Estate sale of Jonas Blessing, Wythe County will book, 1827; estate of Peter Huddle, ibid., 1828; estate sale of Elinor Pool (purchased by Abraham Buck), ibid., 1836; estate of John Huddle, ibid., 1839; estate sale of Christian Phillippi (purchased by Felix Buck), ibid., 1843; estate of Peter Spangler, ibid., 1848. 6 Kimberly Burnette-Dean, “The Dulcimer in Southwestern Virginia,” monograph, 2005, Explore Park, Roanoke, Virginia. 7 Woodrow Russell, interview by L. Allen Smith, Marion, Virginia, February 11, 1975, transcript, Blue Ridge Heritage Archives, Ferrum College, Ferrum, Virginia. 8 Allen H. Eaton, Handicrafts of the Southern Highland (1937; reprint Dover Publications, New York, 1973). 9 Josephine McGill, “The Kentucky Mountain Dulcimer,” The Musician, vol. 22 (January 1917).

RODDY MOORE is the director of the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum of Ferrum College in Ferrum, Virginia. VAUGHAN WEBB is the assistant director. They have worked together for thirty-two years exploring the folk culture of southwestern Virginia, including organizing The Virginia Dulcimer: 200 Years of Bowing, Strumming and Picking.

Fig. 2. Plate XXI from Michael Praetorius, *Syntagma Musicum* (1619). He labeled the dulcimer-family instrument (no. 8) a *Scheidtholtt*, which appears to be the first published use of that term to describe the instrument that evolved into the dulcimer.

Playing techniques

Just as the dulcimer has changed physically, so have the techniques musicians use to play it. Typically, today’s basic three-string instrument is played resting across the player’s lap or on a table. The open (unfretted) second and third strings add a rich drone behind the melody created by pressing the first string onto the frets with the fingers of the left hand or a wooden rod (called a noter). Using the right-hand fingers, a quill, or some other pick, the musician usually strums across all the strings at once. Skilled players may choose to fingerpick rather than strum the strings and/or to create chords by fretting more than just the first string. Nineteenth-century straight-sided dulcimer-family instruments have been found with as many as ten strings in Virginia.

Fig. 3. Detail of a photograph of the Russell Family Band c. 1935. Samuel F. Russell (1860-1946) plays the dulcimer; Worley Rolling (Sam’s son-in-law), the banjo; and Joe Russell (Sam’s son), the fiddle. Robert Russell (Joe’s son) played the guitar in the band. Sam is pressing down the string with a noter and strumming with a quill. *Blue Ridge Institute and Museum of Ferrum College, Blue Ridge Heritage Archives, Ferrum, Virginia.*

Historically, Virginia (and surrounding states) had an active tradition of bowing the dulcimer like a fiddle. J. Winton Testerman (see Fig. 19), a Grayson County, Virginia, musician, reportedly played hymns with a bow but used a quill for faster numbers. Vintage Virginia photographs show musicians bowing dulcimers in their laps, but old-timers in other states also recall the instrument being held upright from lap to shoulder for bowing. Bowing seems to have faded out of Virginia’s dulcimer tradition by the middle of the twentieth century for reasons still unknown.

Fig. 19. J. Winton Testerman (b. 1867) demonstrating to John Powell how to play the dulcimer with a bow at the White Top Folk Festival in a photograph of 1932-1939. Powell, a classical composer from Richmond, was one of the organizers of the White Top event. He believed Appalachia held America’s uncorrupted Anglo-Saxon musical traditions, and he screened the musicians and their repertoires accordingly. The dulcimer fit in with Powell’s concept of “pure” Appalachian folk music. *Library of Virginia, Richmond.*

Tuned in various ways, the dulcimer adds its sound to several styles of Virginia folk music. Its gentle tone has long made it a favorite of vocalists singing ballads, hymns, and sentimental songs. Fast-paced fiddle-and-banjo dance tunes are also popular among dulcimer players, but the instrument has had less of a place in old-time string bands. Today’s innovative musicians are taking the dulcimer well beyond traditional tunes and songs. Many examples of dulcimer music are available online. Search youtube.com for videos of Jean Ritchie or Ralph Lee Smith.