Historic Banjos for Sale

[Dave Houle]

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THIS IS A VERY OLD SET OF BANJO HANGOUT ADVERTISEMENTS DATING FROM 2012. PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT THE THEN SELLER.

THIS IS AN OLD POST AND ONLY A REFERENCE TO THE QUALITY AND RARE INSTRUMENTS THAT WERE FOR SALE AT THE TIME.

Anybody got any extra cash?

I noticed these for sale on Banjobuyer.com:

Van Eps Banjo-Guitar
http://www.banjobuyer.com/detail.asp?cid=18996

Bill Bowen's Banjo
http://www.banjobuyer.com/detail.asp?cid=20770

Fred Van Eps' Banjo
http://www.banjobuyer.com/detail.asp?cid=20432

Joe Morley's Banjo
http://www.banjobuyer.com/detail.asp?cid=20790

Van Eps Flush Fret
http://www.banjobuyer.com/detail.asp?cid=27034

It looks like Morley's banjo got a price reduction since the last time I saw it.

Which one would you go for if you had some extra cash lying around?

[Richard William Ineson]

Me too

Trapdoor2 said:

I'd go for the "Meal Ticket", Van Eps' personal banjo.

[Carmon Mays]

 

Very interesting information. Sorry for hijacking the original subject of this discussion. Parke Hunter used the name M. Parke Hunter on his passport application in 1896 prior to going to England. So it seems he even had trouble writing his first name out completely. His father as mentioned was named Morton Craig Hunter, so maybe there was something about his first name that he did not like. His parents were married in 1875 and were divorced prior to 1885 when Morton Craig Hunter married Fannie M Chase 1861-bef 1940. Hunter's father lived in Indiana, then later in Kansas and Missouri. In the 1920 census he was a statistician for a RR Company. Hunter's mother, Rita Collett Jones 1859-1828 moved to Washington DC and married Dr. Augustus Burt Coolidge, MD in 1904. Coolidge was a Federal employee with the title of Physician, Bureau of Pensions.

I saw the account of Caddie L Mays being kicked in the head by a horse. It was said that he was revived with cold water.  He was about 14 when it happened. That could have been a problem that came back to haunt him.  "

"11 Sep 1887 — Age: 14- Downtown Dallas, Texas Per Dallas News, " At the Courthouse Square last evening, Caddie Mays was knocked senseless by a kick from a horse. An application of cold water brought him to."

Also the Waco News reported on 22 April 1892 that he demonstrated his banjo playing at the News office prior to performing in that city for a couple of nights. This is the only mention I can find in any Texas paper about his banjo playing.

I am sending the article I found in an English newspaper about Hunter's wife Ada Z Price. Not sure about the sequence of her first and middle name. It seems to have been used  both ways. I tried to photocopy the article but never could make it work, so I just copied it in long hand. Also notice that Ada's sister named Ada's husband as William Parke Hunter? Also, the child that was born the day before she died , was likely named Wilfrid Hunter. I found that he was born on the date indicated. Not sure what happened to him or who raised him after his mother passed on.

According to the Derby Daily Telegraph , Derbyshire, England dated 3 August 1910, Ada Zillah Hunter died on Saturday, 30 July 1910. Following is an article about her death.

"An Actress's Death-Strange story revealed at the Inquest. At Paddington on Tuesday an Inquest was held on Ada Zillah Hunter, 32, an actress  of Cleveland Mansions, Maida Vale, who died suddenly on Saturday.  Gertrude Lovekin Kempton, near Tewkerburg, Worcestershire, of independent means, stated that the deceased, who was her sister, was the wife of William Parke Hunter, banjoist, now in America, from whom she had lived apart for some years. She had not seen the deceased for 12 months, but had frequently heard from her. For some months, she had complained that she was suffering from the effects of Rheumatic Fever.  The Residential Medical Officer of Queen Charlotte Hospital said the deceased was admitted to the institution at 9 AM on 8 July (1910) and at 945 PM she gave birth to a child. Chloroform was administered three times. The deceased was a restless patient. She also exhibited signs of Palpitations. She was discharged that Friday being anxious to get home. Had she chosen she could have remained in the hospital a day or two longer. Margaret Romer stated that the deceased was her guest, and she had fetched her from the hospital. She then appeared to be very ill and complained of her heart, but she declined to see a doctor. At 343 AM on Saturday, the baby cried and the witness then found the deceased dead in bed. A verdict of "death from natural causes" was returned".

[An unverified source indicates she died from Tuberculois.]

[Richard William Ineson]

I've just remembered that when I was looking for details of Hunter's name, I cam across a reference to a C.L.Mays who died in a place called Time, Pike County, Illinois. I discounted this as having any connection to Mays the banjoist, as I thought that the information that he died in St.Louis in 1903 was reliable, at the time. I cannot recall where the Time, Pike County, reference came from, but it went into detail about this place being some kind of a holiday resort and that Mays was engaged as an entertainer there, at the time of his death.

Carmon Mays said:

According to English newspaper notices during the period, Mays and Parke arrived in England in late 1896 and performed all over the country hundreds of times for the most part together until around January 1901. (They applied for their passports in 1896, Mays in Chicago, and Hunter in DC) They also did some recording in England in ca 1899 per a music catalog . After January 1901 Parke appears solo or with a couple of other partners in newspaper notices. Mays' name is not mentioned after this time in England. I believe that the partnership broke up around this date. Not sure why. Perhaps Mays got sick. I have documentation that according to a City of St Louis Mayoral annual report submitted on 23 November 1904, a group of patients from the City Insane Asylum were transferred to the State Hospital #4 in Farmington, MO. Cad L Mays' name appears on that list. So he must have returned from England and back to St Louis prior to this time.  I have been unable to find Mays mentioned in any account or document after this period, except his father died in Dallas, Texas on 8 Jan 1906 and according to a short obit in the Dallas news, he was survived by his wife, daughter and two sons. Since he only had two sons, this indicates that Cad was still living at the time of his father's death in January 1906. However,  there is the possibility that the family did not know of his death or whereabouts? I have been unable to find any death records in Missouri for Mays, and he is not listed as buried in the State Hospital cemetery. Not sure how good their records are for this period. When, Caddie's mother died in 1922, her only survivor was one of her daughters.  As for Parke he married an English actress by the name of Ada Zillah Price in 1899. According to some reports Parke and his wife came to the US ca 1903 and he continued to perform until his death on 25 Dec 1912 in Washington, DC. Some reports indicate that his wife returned to England after being in the US a few years. I can not find any documentation for his wife coming to the US, but did learn that she died in London on 30 July 1910 after giving birth to a male child in a hospital. She gave the child , born a day before her death, the name Hunter, but likely it was not Parke's child.  According to an article in an English newspaper her sister who was interviewed advised that her sister's husband was in America and that the two had not seen each other for years. Also it appears that Parke's full name was Morton Parke Hunter, but on his passport he used the form M. Parke Hunter, and it appears that he may have used the name in England of William Parke Hunter at times.