Henry Mercer
To Dr. H.C. Mercer
A Tribute to his Kindly Cooperation
From the Editor + Publisher
Francis O'Neill
Nov. 6 - '22
Biography:
Henry Chapman Mercer was born to a wealthy Philadelphia family in 1856, and educated at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Though trained in law, he turned his attention to the collection and study of pre-industrial culture. He was named as the Curator of American and Prehistoric Archeology at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, but left that position after less than a decade to pursue collecting and study on his own. Mercer amassed a vast collection of miscellaneous pre-industrial objects—a stagecoach, a whaleboat, cigar store Indian figures, toll gates, cider presses, button hooks, toys, musical instruments, corn shellers, well sweeps—virtually any aspect of earlier ways of life that, in the 1890s had largely vanished. He housed the collection in a huge and rambling castle he designed as he went along, one of the first reinforced concrete structures in the US. He also apprenticed with a Pennsylvania German potter and designed and manufactured his own line of ceramic Moravian tiles. The tiles were very successful examples of the Arts and Crafts style.
Mercer loved Irish music. He remembered hearing pipers John Egan and Patsy Touhey as they came through his hometown of Doylestown, PA as part of a touring show. “I was astonished and immensely delighted not only at the amazing skill of the performer[s] but at the perfectly delightful and then to me new and unique field of folk music which [they] introduced to me.” He especially loved a “thoroughly exhilarating and remarkable reel called ‘the Boyne Hunt’ which has been running through my head as a sort of refreshing and curative elixir ever since.”
Learning that John Egan’s pipes had come from the workshop of the Taylor brothers, in Philadelphia, Mercer visited them multiple times, to hear the music and watch the process of pipe making. He eventually acquired a set of Taylor pipes and tools for his museum.
When he discovered O’Neill’s books in 1920 he told O’Neill “I feel impelled, as an old lover of Irish Reels and Jigs to try to thank you however inadequately, for the great pleasure which the books are giving me and for the very valuable and remarkable contribution which it seems you have made, not the musical history of Ireland but to folklore in general.”
The two men engaged in an extensive correspondence about Irish and American music, and particularly about tunes, like “the Arkansas Traveler,” that seemed to have both an Irish and an American flavor. Mercer encouraged O’Neill to see Irish music not just as Irish, but as part of a larger field of pre-industrial folk music and culture.
Mercer died in 1930 at Fonthill, the home he had built for himself out of reinforced concrete about a mile from his museum. The museum, Fonthill and the Mercer tileworks are today run by the Bucks County Historical Society and open to the public. Mercer tiles are still being made and available for sale.
[Biography by Michael O'Malley]
[Dedication page scan from Richard Piggott and also courtesy of the Mercer Museum]
Bibliography:
Mercer Museum
Mercer's Moravian Pottery Tileworks
Cleota Reed, Henry Chapman Mercer and the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works (Philadelphia 1996)
Provenance: Henry Mercer Library
From Richie Piggott, "My research into Chicago Musicians brought me to Fonthill Castle, Doylestown, PA, the home of Henry Mercer. This book is in the library of his home."
Thanks to Melissa Jay, Mercer Museum/Bucks County Historical Society, 84 South Pine Street, Doylestown, PA 18901
The book was sent to Henry Mercer as thanks for collaboration on Waifs and Strays. Mercer was an eccentric and remarkable historian, anthropologist and collector of American preindustrial culture. His museum in Bucks County, Pennsylvania houses his vast collection including a set of Uilleann pipes made by the Taylor brothers. Mercer was a great lover of Irish dance music and was delighted to discover O'Neill's work. They corresponded extensively about the origins of Irish and American tunes. O'Neill addressed him as 'Dear Kindred Soul.' The letters between Mercer and O'Neill, also housed at the Mercer Museum, are the only surviving example of letters to and from O'Neill.
[Mike O'Malley]
