Timothy Gilbert
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Timothy Gilbert (1797 - July 19, 1865) was an American piano manufacturer, abolitionist and religious organizer in Boston, Massachusetts.
Gilbert was born in Enfield, and worked on his father's farm until the age of 21. He arrived in Boston December, 1818, and apprenticed with cabinet maker Levi Ruggles, and worked for piano maker John Osborn. In 1829 he dissolved an early partnership with Ebenezer Currier, and established his own factory in Osborn's former workshops, in partnership first with Daniel Safford, and later William H. Jameson. Gilbert patented improvements in repetition actions and iron frames, and licensed Coleman's Aeolian attachment combining the piano with a small reed organ. Gilbert & Co. received honorable mention at the 1851 London Exhibition, by which time they had manufactured more than four thousand instruments, a quarter of them with the aeolian attachment. Gilbert served as president of the Boylston Bank from 1855 to 1860.
Gilbert was one of the founders of the Newton Theological Institution, and was active in the free-seat First Baptist Free church. In 1842 he used his firm's capital to purchase the failed Tremont Theater on School Street for the Tremont Temple, and used the firm's credit to pay for its reconstruction when it burned March 31, 1852. He helped organize a provisional committee withholding funds from the American Board of Foreign Missions as treasurer of the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Society, though he was accused of inconsistency for preferring to work with the board rather join with the newly formed American and Foreign Missionary Society (the committee dissolved 1845 following the satisfactory resolution of their differences). In 1850, on the passage of the Fugitive slave laws, Gilbert announced in the Evening Traveller his door would remain open, (prompting an introduction from Theodore Parker) and maintained it as a station of the Underground Railroad.
Gilbert married Mary Wetherbee December 1823 (Ashburnham, Mass., July 7, 1796 - December, 1843), their only child, Mary Eunice, was born June 8, 1827 (m. William Jameson). Gilbert married Alice Davis November 28, 1844, and adopted Alice (April 23, 1846 -); Martha Fear Gilbert was born April 27, 1847.
- ↑ His biographer asserts his pianos were much favored in the Southern states, and Gilbert had to defend his moral position in selling them to slaveholders.
[edit] References
- Forbes, Abner and J. W. Green (1851) The Rich Men of Massachusetts. W. V. Spencer, Boston.
- Fulton, Justin D. (1866) Memoir of Timothy Gilbert. Lee & Shepard, Boston.
- Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 1795-1892. Rockwell & Churchill, Boston.
