Books › The History of the Violin: And Other Instruments Played on with the Bow from the Remotest Times to the Present, Also, an Account of the Principal Makers, English and Foreign, with Numerous Illustrations, 1864 › scan 315
Scan 315
The History of the Violin: And Other Instruments Played on with the Bow from the Remotest Times to the Present, Also, an Account of the Principal Makers, English and Foreign, with Numerous Illustrations, 1864
4 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 293. See the scan on archive.org.
1church of that town he married in 1736; his first wife, who died in the prime of life, being only forty-four years of age; but she had borne him a son who added lustre to the name in after years. This William Forster (1) was a spinning-wheel maker by trade; also repaired and made violins. In the former vocation he gained some celebrity, as the following extract from a letter of Joseph Rook, written in Nov. 1850, when he was in his seventy-seventh year, shows:—"I can give no more of the history of your ancestors at Brampton than I have already given you, only your great grandfather William was a noted maker of spinning-wheels as well as violin maker, and his son Joseph, my old acquaintance, practised making wheels so long as they were in use in the country, but it is many years since they were put out of use by the invention of machinery."
3Whether in or about 1775-7 he was pressed in pecuniary circumstances; or whether the love of the drama tempted him to accept, as inmates or lodgers, a family connected with the theatrical company then performing at Brampton, yet it was in his house that Miss Harriot Mellon was born! This information is obtained, or rather, it should be stated, corroborated by one that became employed in the sequel of events (the fact being known to the family); therefore it had better be given in his own language, written December 1850, although there are some trifling inaccuracies which, at his age, may be overlooked:—"* * * * I must endeavour to exert myself and will give an account of a remarkable circumstance that happened in your G. Grandfather's House at Brampton. Upon a time a Company of Itinerant Comedians were at Brampton, and one of them of the name of Melon and his Wife had an apartment in your G. Grandfather's House during their stay at Brampton.
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