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what to look for, what’s important and what’s not unknown places and things I had no clue about. For
important, the condition of music and how it affects example, last week I was searching for information on
the paper… She gave me a great foundation. an 1846 band leader from Richmond, Virginia. He
A week before she died she took me up to her joined the Confederate Army and fought at Vicksburg
bedroom and pulled out this box and told me I had to with the Cowan Battery, but I still wanted to know
take it to my house and take care of it. It’s all a more about him. A Google search brought me to a
tremendous sense of responsibility. magazine called The Confederate Veteran, which is all
online and digitized (and still in existence but under a
What did she want to happen to her collection? different name). Soldiers would write in with their
She left the collection to my sister, brother, first-hand accounts of battles, which they would
and me. She wanted us to sell it—this was our publish. It blew me away! And it’s turned out to be a
inheritance—but she wanted us to be judicious about great resource for me because she had quite a bit of
selling it and not just dump it. She wanted us to find Confederate music. That’s what happens – you get
the right people to buy it. So we try to honor that. But into it but you never know where it will lead. It’s like
she also helped us. On all the sheet music of going on a journey back in time. It has taken me to so
importance, she wrote all the reference books and many different places and I’ve met so many interesting
pages on each piece… she gave us clues, she gave us a people that I could write a book.

roadmap. She also left journals documenting what The Bereaved Slave Mother.
she bought and where she bought it. But her intent Four pages, self-wrappers; engraved What surprises have you found so far in
was always that we sell it, although she did donate a cover, and 1-1/2 pages of engraved the collection?
number of things. music; half page of additional verses; She had this African American piece of sheet

a fine, fresh copy. Boston: music which went for $4,600 at Swann. It was called
Tell me about the collection. Henry Prentiss, 1844 The Bereaved Slave Mother. It had a very disturbing
The sheet music is compiled into 454 bound volumes with anywhere lithograph of a little girl on the auction block with a mother on her knees
from 25-50 pieces in each, plus about 3,000 loose pieces – about 16,000 on the ground, sobbing. It’s very rare. I had no idea. My mom had a
items in total. In addition to all this music she also had a personal large collection of African American music which we have been putting
collection in two red binders: the cream-of-the-crop. Then there are together to sell as a lot.
paintings, ephemera, photographs, stamps – I just sold a lot of stamps I also came across an early 19th century lithograph on sheet music by
through the Kelleher auction but I still have boxes left, orations back to Pendleton (brothers in Boston, lithographers, 1825-1836). It has an
1750 – I sold some of them at Eldridge Auctions, Civil War letters, island that this couple is leaving, like England, and the couple is going
colonial currency, letters from the Daniel Huntington family, and, of away. What shocked me about this was that a repair was made before
course, books. tape was invented and someone hand-stitched the repairs. I was very
My mother also collected American history books. She had a couple taken by that because the song must have meant a lot to them to repair
of copies of the first proceedings of the Continental Congress from it that way—to preserve it—with linen thread.

September 1774, a lot of really early printings: Mathew Carey, Thomas
Paine... The orations were really interesting, especially the early ones – a What have you learned about the market for American sheet music?
lot of Founders of the country, a lot of Generals during the Revolution... I’ve learned that the value of sheet music has plummeted for all but
She was into abolition, temperance, women’s suffrage… She was very the rarest of pieces. But when I sell something on eBay I try to include a
much a woman’s rights person from the story that I’ve researched about the item and buyers like that. I’m building
very beginning. They also collected quite a collection of research. As I come
newspapers and essentially anything that across something I capture it so I don’t
was paper. have to go back to find it when the time
After her death, I took the reins and comes to put the item up for sale.
started going through everything and
doing the research to organize the What is challenging for you?
collection. It was densely packed up to Bound volumes are difficult because
the ceiling in the study of my parents’ you have to go through every single sheet
house, and in the basement on shelf after in the book – not all had been researched.
shelf after shelf—racks and racks—it was A lot she didn’t have the time to get to,
massive! So I extricated the room and and that’s where we are finding some of
started putting everything in boxes and the really rare pieces that we’ve been
then had to move them into storage in Isle of Beauty, Fare Thee Well selling. Unless we go through everything,
order to clear the house for sale. Slowly cover image (right) and stitched we won’t know what’s in there. My sister
but surely my sister and I have moved repair to a torn page (above) has 250 volumes at her house, alone.
the collection into our homes.
Where do we start?!

What has the journey and process been like, in general, and for you What’s your end-game?
personally, going through and selling off the collection?
I would like to write a book someday about the joy of collecting
My sister and I have both been working on selling the sheet music
and books on eBay and Amazon, and I started seriously selling on eBay early American sheet music. I have learned so much about American
this year. We also did auctions early on. We took some of the really good history and culture during this process. I think sheet music has a place
pieces to Swann Auctions, with very good results, and we’ve worked with in education, not just higher education, but in high schools where
Eldridge Auctions and some other auction houses, as well. We also did history and social culture are taught. It is another vehicle that carries our
a Gettysburg show on the 150th anniversary and sold a lot of Civil War American past. My parents thought education was the most important
material there, but I haven’t really started to get serious about selling the thing, so it does not matter how much time I spend on this because I’m
collection. The fact is my husband and I are starting to slow down, and learning something new every day. It keeps my brain going.
I can now spend more time really going through and researching what
she amassed. Jane Porter can be reached through the Journal of Antiques &
What happens is that I get hooked. I can go through all hours of the Collectibles if you would like to know more about items for sale from
night researching something I’ve found, which then takes me to the collection.

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