A couple years back I wrote a blog about our wonderful music box model of the steamboat Commonwealth; read that HERE. Just a quick background on it, the model was made ca 1864 by John Dean Benton, who worked for Tiffany & Co. The model was presented as a retirement gift from the Norwich and New London Steamboat Company to the Captain, Jerome Wheeler Williams, who had never had any major mishaps in his career. Ironically, Commonwealth caught fire and sank the year after Captain Williams retired.

One thing I had mentioned is that we had a recording of the music on an old Echo-Matic tape that we hoped to have digitized sometime in the future as we can no longer play the music box itself. Earlier this year Cindi looked into companies that could do this for us and she found George Blood Audio. This morning they sent us the digital file and it is awesome! We know that two of the songs are “Nellie Bly” and “By Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon”. We are currently unsure what the other songs are, so if anyone has an idea, please let us know. Enjoy!