The Lutheran Heritage Center & Museum recently received a wonderful donation. We now have a magnificent square grand piano which is on display. I am going to call it the Loebs/Schmidt piano.

I will attempt to describe this piano’s provenance today. For museum’s, it is especially important to know history of an artifact. At our museum, we have a lot of artifacts for which we have no idea of their provenance (or history). In the case of the Loebs/Schmidt piano, the family that donated it has provided some valuable information about where this instrument has spent its life.

The first owners of this piano were George and Maria Magdalena (Schmidt) Loebs. These two are pictured below.

Magdalena was a descendant of some original immigrants who arrived her in 1839. She was the daughter of Georg Joachim and Maria Charlotte (Saalfeld) Schmidt, who just so happen to be my great great grandparents. Magdalena was born in Altenburg in 1843. Her future husband, George Loebs, arrived in America in 1861 and made his way to St. Louis. He became a partner with Ferdinand Herold, and the two established the Cherokee Brewing Company in St. Louis. This brewery became quite a large operation as illustrated in the drawing of the brewery shown below.

In 1868, George married Magdalena in St. Louis. This couple lived in St. Louis until 1884 George and Magdalena Loebs had 2 children, Henry and Bertha, who were each baptized at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in St. Louis. Then, in 1884, George sold his part of the Cherokee Brewery and moved to Wittenberg, where he bought the Brenner Brewery located in that river town. That is when the piano made its way by steamboat down the Mississippi River to Perry County.

George did not live long in Wittenberg because he died in 1885. His widow had a house built in Wittenberg which is one of the few remaining structures to be found there. It is the white house on the right in the photo below.

The descendants of this family say that Magdalena Loebs bought the square grand piano in 1886 and had it brought to Wittenberg by steamboat. It must have spent some time in the home shown above. The piano was manufactured by the Louis Merkel Piano Company in St. Louis, as is shown by this marking on the piano in our museum.

I located an article that was written when Louis Merkel died that gives some details about his life. After Louis’s arrival in America, he spent some time in New York City working for the famous Steinway Piano Company. He then made his way to St. Louis to establish his own piano company. That company existed for many generations in that city, and there quite possibly could be some Merkel descendants still tuning and repairing pianos.

Here is a photo of Louis Merkel.

I found a few photos of other Merkel square grand pianos. I think they were both located in mansions in St. Louis.

Magdalena’s daughter, Bertha Loebs married Carl Wilhelm Boehme in 1901. We see them in the photo shown here.

That couple bought a farm in Jackson, Missouri, and Bertha’s mother moved in with them. So did the piano. I found some photos taken of Magdalena Loebs which were taken later in her life..

After Magdalena died in 1936, the piano was in the possession of Bertha Boehme. Bertha and Carl had 6 children, and later on, the piano entered the home of her youngest daughter, Lillian. Lillian would marry Vyron Harmon in 1942, and that couple resided in Scott City, Missouri, not far south of Cape Girardeau. Here are a few photos of Lillian, a high school photo and one with her husband.

The next person to have the piano was a niece of Lillian, Jacqueline Guth. Jacqueline was the daughter of Frieda Boehme, who had married August Schaefer.

Now, the piano has made its way to our museum, and we are so grateful to have it. A short history of this piano helps our visitors know some of its story.

I feel the need to also mention that another person who owned a square grand piano was Dr. C.F.W. Walther, who was quite the musician himself. Below is a photo of Walther’s piano which is now on display at the museum located at the International Center of the LCMS in St. Louis. I do not think it is a Merkel piano.

Here’s another tidbit about the Loebs/Schmidt piano. Inside there is this marking with what is likely a date of 5-11-58. Since it looks as if Louis Merkel did not establish his piano business in St. Louis until 1860, I am thinking this date might indicate that this instrument was tuned in 1958.

I understand that the board of directors of the museum are hoping to get this piano into playing condition in the future. I, for one, would love to hear it played once it is restored and tuned. Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a Merkel descendant to work on it?