Henry Sibley, Boston Machinist and Keyed Bugle Maker

Henry Sibley, a machinist in Boston, designed and built the earliest soprano keyed bugles in Eb in the US in about 1835. As with other New England brass instrument makers, almost nothing can be found about where he learned the trade. There had been Eb keyed bugles made in Europe or Britain earlier and specified in Halary’s 1817 French patent of ophicleides and clavitubes, the latter being his name for keyed bugles in Bb and Eb soprano. Examples by Halary are known in Bb, but none in Eb. Ralph Dudgeon has examined an Eb keyed bugle signed by George Astor, London woodwind instrument maker and dealer, that is of similar general design to Sibley’s and predates them by at least six and possibly many more years. Astor and his more famous brother, John Jacob were flute makers in London, born in Germany. George’s newspaper advertisements in 1800 or before are the earliest appearance of keyed bugles. However, these precedents may have been unknown in Boston and Sibley’s bugles were unique in context and uniquely successful. His design was copied by Graves & Co., E.G. Wright, Isaac Fiske, J.L. Allen and S.W. Richardson in the US as well as by German makers for export to the US, for at least two decades. The earliest known keyed bugle in Eb that was sold by Graves & Co. was made by James Keat no earlier than 1837 and more likely 1839, is of a very different design. The owner of this unique instrument, Henry Meredith, speculates that it was designed to play crooks in various pitches. He has made thorough trials of its playing qualities in all possible keys and finds none ideal.

The only extant instruments signed by Sibley are four Eb keyed bugles, with between nine and eleven keys. The earliest record we have of these was a report in the “Boston Traveler” on February 19, 1836, stating “The Boston Brass Band, in testament of respect for their talented leader, Mr. Edward (Ned) Kendall, presented him with an elegant Eb keyed bugle, manufactured expressly for them by Mr. Henry Sibley, one of their members.” On June 10th, 1836, the New York Evening Post published a concert announcement for the Boston Brass Band that evening, including “Cavatina—Eb Flat Bugle Obligado—E. Kendall, Meyerbeer” In earlier concert announcements that mention Kendall playing bugle solos, the pitch is not specified and was likely to have been on Bb keyed bugles. When Ned Kendall travelled to England and France on a solo tour in 1841, he was accompanied by Henry Sibley.

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Henry Sibley was born in Readsborough, Vermont in about 1805. Little is known of his early life or family, but they appear to have been farmers. On November 25th, 1843, he married Mehitable F Webster. In April, 1846 they had a child, Henry W., who died three months later of tuberculosis and Mehitable had died in April of the same disease. In 1848, he married Lucy Jane Waldock (nee Dudley) a widow with three children, Lucy Jane, William Dudley and James F. Waldock, in Boston. They had three more children, Henry W., Charlotte E. and George W. by 1853. Lucy also died of tuberculosis in April of 1855, after loosing both her daughter Lucy and son James and William died just a year later.

He was first listed in the Boston city directories in 1828 as a housewright, in 1830 as a wooden leg maker, in 1832 as a musician and in 1835 as a musical instrument maker. Sibley moved into the shop of woodwind instrument maker Walter Crosby in 1831 or 1832. Crosby had been listed in the directories as “musical instrument maker” starting in 1830 and the previous year as umbrella maker at the address of Henry Prentiss. Prentiss had a successful music store where he published music starting in about 1827 and sold musical instruments that he imported from Europe. He may have also sold woodwind instruments made in Boston by Crosby and/or others. Most extant instruments made by Crosby are fifes, but he also made flutes and clarinets, just a few existing in collections today. In June of 1835, the Boston Daily Evening Transcript reported that two clarinets made by Walter Crosby were presented to James Kendall by gentlemen of the city.

No advertising has been found for the businesses of either Sibley or Crosby and based on the sparsity of extant instruments, it is easy to assume that they busy providing other products and/or services. They must have been skilled and adaptable mechanics.

Sibley was an active trombone player in the Boston Brass Band and elsewhere, so it isn’t surprising that he used his mechanical skills in that industry. I have to thank Steve Dillon of Dillon Music for informing me of the many years that Sibley and Crosby shared a shop address, that Crosby was executor of Sibley’s will and other facts from his research that are presented here. Their businesses were at the same addresses, four in total, from 1831 until the time of Sibley’s death in 1859. Crosby was listed as both musical instrument maker and machinist in 1857 and 1858. The first shop, at 190 Tremont Street, that they shared from 1831 until 1844, did not have steam power. In 1838, there were only 31 stationary steam engines in all of New England and almost all were for pumping water from mines. Lacking water power, lathes and drilling machines were powered by the operator with a foot treadle or by a second man, leaving the operator free to work on the machine.

The second address they occupied only in 1845 and 1846 was 19 Water Street, also did not have had steam power. After the introduction of the more efficient Corliss steam engine in 1849, they were being installed in larger numbers than the earlier, less efficient engines. The next shops that they shared from 1847 until the time of Sibley’s death in 1859, was 15 Hawley Street and then 19 Hawley Street in 1854. The advertisement below, published in the Boston Daily Bee, May 18th, 1849, for rooms with steam power at 15 Hawley Street. There is no record indicating if this already existed when they moved in, but they certainly would have benefitted greatly when it was available. 15 Hawley was a four story building with two rooms per floor of 1000 square feet each. The 1867 Sanborn Fire Map shows both rooms taken by a machine shop, but doesn’t specify each floor. 19 Hawley Street was adjoining with five floors, about 1500 square feet each. This is a good indication that Sibley and Crosby were expanding, whether they added 1500 square feet to the 2000 square feet that they already occupied or increased their footprint from 1000 to 1500 square feet. Even if they only occupied one room, the move shows an increase in floor space.

Even less is known about Sumner Whitney, another brass instrument maker that was listed in the city directories at the address of Sibley and Crosby, 190 Tremont, in 1831 and 1832. Only the address and the field of endeavor connect these men in the sparse data. In 1831, newspaper reports of concert programs mention James Kendall, brother of Ned, playing solos on “a newly invented instrument called the Tenor Valve Trombone, made by Mr. Whitney, of this city”. Beyond that, nothing is known of this instrument, including if its design was anything like later valve trombones, but the connection to Sibley seems relevant. We can’t know if Sibley’s mechanical skills enabled Whitney to build valve trombones or if Whitney taught Sibley skills that he later used for making keyed bugles. Of course, a third scenario is the two (or three) mechanics “reverse engineered” imported brass instruments, adding their own inventiveness, to make such a surprisingly advanced trombone.

Such an early date for a valve instrument made in the US is very surprising. Valve instruments were not yet widely available in the German states where they were invented and developed and the very first French maker to import the German invention was in 1827. There is no way of knowing if this valve trombone was a copy of those mechanisms or something newly invented in Boston. The newspaper announcement pictured below is for a performance in New York that states “solo, patent tenor valve trombone, J. Kendall.” No US patent for a valve trombone is known from that time and it is assumed to have been license taken by the reporter or promoter. Subsequent listings of James Kendall on concert programs, when listed as playing the trombone, have no mention of valves or any other mechanism. Trombones with valves became much more commonly used in the US than those with slides starting in the 1860s. Other listings found for Sumner Whitney are for him graduating from Lawrence Academy in 1827 and as a grocer and “commission merchant” in the 1840s. It can’t be certain that these listings described the same person.

In 1847, Sibley was in a partnership with another musician and machinist, Benjamin F. Richardson. No keyed bugles are known by him, but within five years, Richardson was manufacturing rotary valve cornets in his own shop. There is no additional data on what work was being done on musical instruments in the Sibley/Crosby shop during the 1840s. No evidence has been found that Sibley continued making keyed bugles after 1841, but we know that Sibley was a very talented machinist. He was later described as a manufacturer of experimental and special machinery and elevators. Others came to him from surrounding states to learn the trade and get work done that was not available elsewhere. In 1854, he was able to make new lead screws (the threaded shaft that drives a lathe carriage to cut threads precisely) for a manufacturer of precision measuring devices which within a few years became Brown & Sharpe, a leader in that field. He was listed as an “eminent practical engineer” when listed as a reference for a new steam gauge patented by E.C. Starkweather & Co. in 1857. His career path from farmer, housewright, wooden leg maker, musician and musical instrument maker to such a highly talented and specialized machinist is remarkable.

The 1850 US census listed Henry Sibley with real estate valued $3500. The Sibley family was sharing a house at 1 Osborne in the 11th ward with another machinist, three years his junior, Homer Foster and his family. In 1841, Homer had married Mary Joanna Dudley, sister of Henry’s future (married 1848) wife, Lucy Jane, and in January of 1849, they named their second son “Henry Sibley Foster”. This house belonged to Joanna Dudley, the mother of Lucy and Mary and Lucy had lived there with her first husband, William Waldock, before his death. Joanna Dudley worked as a nurse while raising her children during the previous decades and no husband or father of her children has been found in the records so far and probably died before 1840.

Walter Crosby and his family lived about 4 blocks away, also in the 11th Ward. The shop on Hawley Street was in the 7th Ward and four miles from their homes. There was no trolley system in Boston at that time, but a horse drawn omnibus on Washington Street made this a short commute. Another census was taken by the federal government in 1850 of “Products of Industry”. It showed Sibley’s total business capital, both real and personal property as $21,000, materials on hand, “iron, steel, brass & others” with a value of $500 and three employees which he paid a total of $100 per month. It confirms that he had steam power for his machinery and produced “Small Machinery &C” with a value of $25,000 annually, the equivalent of $950,000 in 2023.

After the death of industrialist John Wright Boott in 1845, his last will and testament specified: “I give, devise and bequeath to Mr. Henry Sibley all my tools and machines and materials for mechanical purposes, and books relating hereto.” This is the only connection between the two that is known, but must reflect a business and personal relationship. In 1817, Wright Boott had inherited the estate of his father that included a successful fine goods importing business and mansion in Boston. His younger brother, Kirk Boott, Jr. had success in the textile industry in Lowell as Wright’s business declined in spite of investments in the Lowell mills and partnership with John Amory Lowell. It seems likely that Sibley was involved in tooling and machinery in these mills.

After Henry Sibley’s death, his shop was purchased by Martin Luther Wyman and Charles E. Moore, who continued manufacturing specialized machinery and elevators. During the war, most of their production was machinery for manufacturing weaponry. Moore & Wyman Machine Works became a corporation in 1885 and continued in into the next generation. In 1861, Walter Crosby moved to 59 Court Street, where James H. White had been repairing violins and woodwind instruments and making violin strings since 1845. This shop, once again, did not have steam power, indicating that Crosby did not continue the heavy machine work done in Sibley’s shop. Crosby continued making fifes, many needed by military units during the Civil War.

His son, Henry Webster Sibley, was only eight at the time of his death and Charlotte was five or six. He did not follow in his father’s business, rather became a surveyor by the time he was 19 as indicated in the 1870 Federal census. That census also records that he and Charlotte continued to live with their grandmother, Joanna Dudley and her sister, Sarah Woods, who may have lived with them since the 1840s or before. Dudley owned real estate with a value of $900 and the Sibley’s with personal estate valued at $4000 each, presumably inherited from their father after his estate was settled in the early 1860s. The younger Henry then became a conveyancer for the rest of his career. The relationship with Walter Crosby didn’t end with the death of the senior Sibley as indicated by Henry W. Sibley’s signature as witness on Walter Crosby’s last will.

These clues don’t solve all the mysteries, but gives us a bit to think about and spurs us on to look for more. Henry Sibley was well above average as a machinist, based on newspaper accounts and histories that were written in later years. He built experimental and special machinery including elevators. He and E.G. Wright knew each other well and played in some of the same bands and orchestras. We may never know, but the author’s suspicion is that the other New England brass instrument makers relied on Sibley to produce, modify and repair the specialized tooling and machinery that they needed. They certainly found his model for the Eb keyed bugle to be the best to emulate and continued to produce them two decades after his last known bugle.