New Historical Items Of Great Interest

[Ken_Coles]

Today we just received and linked to more news from Bob Gaskins about two notable figures in concertina history:

• The first known picture of Charles Jeffries, the genius of Anglo concertina making, has been made available by one of his granddaughters.There is also the first connected account of his life and family in a very long article for the Concertina Library, built up using information from Jeffries descendants over the last couple of years by half a dozen well-known members of Concertina.net: Chris Algar, Stephen Chambers, Bob Gaskins, Dave Lee, Randy Merris, and Wes Williams. Many birth, marriage, and death certificates are reproduced to establish for the first time the basic chronology of the Jeffries family, with maps of the Praed Street area, White Lion Passage, and the Kilburn area where they lived and made concertinas.

• New pictures of Marie Lachenal, who was the eldest daughter of Louis Lachenal and one of the earliest female concertinists that we know much about, with an account of her life and career, are in a new article by Faye Debenham (wife of Marie's grandson, Albert Debenham) and Concertina.net member Randy Merris. This article first appeared as the lead article in the second volume of the ICA's PICA magazine, and the web version now online atthe Concertina Library adds large color photographs plus some additional information discovered since the text went to print. There is a scan of an announcement card issued by Marie Lachenal offering to give concertina lessons, and the sheet music for Blagrove's Fantasia on English Airs which she was known to play with her sisters.

 

See it all at www.concertina.com, the Concertina Library

[martyn]

I've just read "Charles Jeffries the Man and His Family" and found it absolutely fascinating. I would like to thank all those involved for their time and hard work on this project. Wonderful stuff.

 

Martyn

[rmerris]

Martyn,

 

Thanks for the positive feedback. The Jeffries work truly is a joint effort of our "concertina consortium."

 

We write and post the stuff and get surprisingly little feedback.

 

We hope you will enjoy the sequel: Part II about the Jeffries businesses and the Jeffries concertinas themselves.

 

Randy Merris

[Dan Worrall]

We write and post the stuff and get surprisingly little feedback.

 

I think everyone had little or nothing to add except "wow!" and "thanks", because none of us knew diddly squat about who Jeffries was until this article came along. And I doubt that many of us know how much work that was to track down the Jeffries heirs to find that information.

 

 

THANK YOU ....and keep up the good work. I'm looking forward very much to part two!

[Daniel Hersh]

Agreed on all counts. That whole web site is an amazing resource.

 

Daniel

 

We write and post the stuff and get surprisingly little feedback.

 

I think everyone had little or nothing to add except "wow!" and "thanks", because none of us knew diddly squat about who Jeffries was until this article came along. And I doubt that many of us know how much work that was to track down the Jeffries heirs to find that information.

 

 

THANK YOU ....and keep up the good work. I'm looking forward very much to part two!

[martyn]

Martyn,

 

Thanks for the positive feedback. The Jeffries work truly is a joint effort of our "concertina consortium."

 

We write and post the stuff and get surprisingly little feedback.

 

We hope you will enjoy the sequel: Part II about the Jeffries businesses and the Jeffries concertinas themselves.

 

Randy Merris

 

Hi Randy,

 

Any idea when we can look forward to seeing Part II - I can't wait!

 

It was so nice to see a photo of Charles Jeffries, not how I pictured him but somehow, to me he looks strangely familiar.

 

Martyn

[rmerris]

Martyn,

 

Regarding Part II of the Jeffries article (which deals with the businesses and the instruments): The ball was in my court for a while, but it has been passed on to other members of the research consortium by now.

 

I do not expect it to be a lot longer (but I do not know exactly how to quantify "a lot").

 

Randy