ECHOES OUT OF THE PAST
BY CAROLINE M. ZIMMERMAN
The museum of the Clark County (Ohio)
Historical Society
houses many objects worthy of song or
story, many objects around
which cluster a wealth of romantic lore
fit to inspire a modern saga
of great worth and beauty. Of all these objets
d'art there is
doubtless none that carries a greater
feminine appeal than a quaint
little piano more than a century old,
the first, in fact, to have been
brought into the county. There it
stands, encased in ebony and
rosewood inlaid with tiny ebony lines.
The ivory keys are yellow
with age, but the memories that cling to
them are fresh as the
vigor of youth.
Purchased in Philadelphia in 1832 by
Pierson Spining for his
little daughter, Mary Catherine, it
began there its long trek over
the mountains of Pennsylvania to
Pittsburgh where it was trans-
ferred to a flat-boat and floated down
the Ohio River to Cincinnati
and was again loaded into a covered
wagon to be transported to
its final home in what was then the
frontier village of Springfield.
Mary Catherine was twelve years old at
this time. Harriet Beecher
and her sister had just opened a school
for young ladies in Cin-
cinnati where her father had assumed the
presidency of Lane
Theological Seminary. Thither Mary
Catherine was sent to acquire
further erudition and the graces of
refined society, of which skill
in playing the piano was one.
Even though it required many hours to
journey to Cincinnati
at that time, the trip there must have
seemed very much like a
holiday to our little lady, for the
first night could be spent at
Grandfather Spining's big house near
Dayton where were still to
be found numerous aunts, uncles and
cousins. Grandfather Isaac
Spining was judge of the circuit court,
and has since been de-
scribed as "the most influential
and prominent of the earliest
settlers" at that place. So Mary's
vision of life expanded as she
listened to the table talk there.
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