George E. Tewksbury, 1858-1900

Nickel-in-the-Slot Phonograph Pioneer

George Elliot Tewksbury was born on the 15th March, 1858, in Manchester, Hillsborough County in New Hampshire. His father was Elliott Greene Tewksbury (1823-1877) and his mother was Submit Roberts Scott Tewksbury (1832-1899), married 14th June 1857. George Elliot was the oldest of five children. Siblings: Mary Olivia (1859*-1932), Lewis Greene (1864-1910), Lippie Scott (1873-1875), and Emily Elizabeth (1876-1897). On the 26th September, 1882, George E. Tewksbury was married in Manchester to his first wife Sarah Fannie Briggs (23rd October, 1855 – 26th October, 1891), and they had a daughter Roxanna (1st October, 1891 – 6th January, 1892) named after Sarahˈs mother (Roxanna Smith, 1825-1888). In the early 1870s George E. and Sarah F. lived in Topeka, Kansas, and George E. was a land agent at the Land Department of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Co., involved in the platting of lots in small towns along the railroad. In 1883 George E. Tewksbury was responsible for the publication of an illustrated booklet to encourage settlement entitled "The Kansas Picture Book" printed in Topeka, and this was followed by a publication, a sketch, entitled "The New King of Kansas" in 1884. At the time George E. Tewksbury was already involved in real estate investments with another official of the railroad company, Simon Sylvanus Ott, and even today part of Southwest Topeka around Western Avenue is named The Ott Tewksbury Subdivision, originally known as the Ott & Tewksbury Addition.

On the 10th November, 1888, George E. Tewksbury and Simon S. Ott, partners in the real estate and investment company Ott & Tewksbury, and other investors established The Kansas Phonograph Co. on 111 West Ninth Street in Topeka, to purchase, sell and lease phonographs and graphophones covered by patents controlled by the North American Phonograph Co., in the state of Kansas and the territory of New Mexico. On the 8th September 1891 the company advertised the lease of Edison nickel-in-the-slot phonographs, and on the 30th November 1892 George E. Tewksbury filed his own patent [US 523,556] for a ˈcoin-operated mechanism for phonographsˈ. In February 1893 George E. Tewksbury and Simon S. Ott opened a branch office in Newark, New Jersey, and co-founded the United States Phonograph Co. with recording engineer Victor Hugo Emerson (1866-1926). The United States Phonograph Co. was a successor to the New Jersey Phonograph Co., a firm founded 19th February 1889 by patent attorney George Griswold Frelinghuysen (1851-1936), educator Nicholas Murray Butler* (1862-1947), and William Lewis Smith (1850-1932), who was the daily manager of the firm at 758 Broad Street until 1892, when he was replaced by Victor Hugo Emerson, and the offices were moved to 87-89 Orange Street after a disastrous fire in the winter of 1892. The company was reorganized on the 16th February 1893, and the new firm known as the U. S. Phonograph Co. or USPC was active until around 1900, and produced in the first years stable spring motors for phonographs developed by Frank L. Capps (1869-1943). In the summer 1896 Victor H. Emerson left the company to lead Columbia's recording department, and in 1899 the company was troubled, but not actually forced out of business, by a patent infringement suit brought by the American Graphophone Co., owners of the Bell & Tainter patents for recording and reproducing sound on wax cylinders. In 1897 George E. Tewksbury published an illustrated booklet entitled "A Complete Manual of the Edison Phonograph" with an introduction by Thomas Alva Edison.

On the 17th September, 1898, George E. Tewksbury was married in Newark to his second wife Charlotte Nellie Ball (2nd December, 1874 − 1962), and they had a daughter Emily Elizabeth*(Ann) (29th May, 1899 – 11th January, 1992) named after George Elliotˈs sister. Ann Tewksbury became a well-known soprano soloist in the 1920s after attending the Centenniary Collegiate Institute at Packardstown (Paterson).

George Elliot Tewksbury died of illness, paresis, on the 8th September, 1900, only 42 years of age, in Paterson, Passaic County in New Jersey, and in the following years there were court cases between the banker Simon Sylvanus Ott (1845-1923), the only surviving business partner and executor of the Topeka based real estate company, and the widow Charlotte Nellie Tewksbury*, Lewis Greene Tewksbury (1864-1910), and Mary Olivia Tewksbury Clarke (1859*-1932) of the Tewksbury family in Kansas, concerning the will and considerable assets of the deceased George Elliot Tewksbury.

The grave of George Elliot Tewksbury can be found at the Pine Grove Cemetery (Family Monument), Brown Avenue, Manchester, Hillsborough County in New Hampshire, and the grave of his business partner Simon Sylvanus Ott can be found at the Historic Topeka Cemetery (Section 71, Lot 56-12), South East 10th Avenue, Topeka, Shawnee County in Kansas. Unfortunately, the editor has not yet found a photographic portrait of the coin-op phonograph pioneer George E. Tewksbury, but portraits of the business partner Simon S. Ott and his wife Julia A. Dannenfelser Ott have been found in the book "Offerle History 1876-1976" by Julie Riisoe Ackerman.

Gert J. Almind

* Emily Elizabeth (Ann) Tewksbury was married on the 7th March 1932 in New York City to British born salesman Roderick George Heard (☼ 4th September 1901), but a divorce suit was filed in Reno, Nevada, on the 26th August 1934.

* Charlotte Nellie Tewksbury was married on the 13th March 1920 in New York City to mechanical engineer Robert Morrison Nelson (☼ 26th August 1882).

* Year 1858 on grave marker for Mary Olivia, but the correct year 1859 can be found on the birth registration and in the family ancestry records published 1902 by George Kuhn Clarke.

* Nicholas Murray Butler became a known philosopher and diplomat, and president of Columbia University for 43 years (1902-1945), and he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 with (Laura) Jane Addams (☼ 1860, † 1935).