Douglass - HA - organ maker - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

by HA Douglass – Some people in Crawfordsville are not aware that within a half hour’s walk from the center of the city is an establishment that manufactures automatic organ players. Anthony Vant Leven who lives about one mile and a half west on the Waynetown road is the owner, the workman and the inventor. The first instrument which is the only one yet completed has been in a state of construction for two years although the first piece of music was played upon it just a year ago. An old organ furnished the basis of the mechanism.  Contrivances were added to this to hold the records and to bring pressure on the keys.  The records are constructed of cylindrica pieces of wood, the notes being represented by wire staples. At present the records include 22 selections.  With all the different makes of piano players of today, none is able to produce more than one piece of music from one record while with this machine as many as four different selections can be played from one record.

Vant Leven when asked concerning his invention told the following story: “I have been fond of music all my life, but never could learn to play any kind of a musical instrument so I decided to make an automatic player. I had in my possession an old organ so I started to work to make some kind of an apparatus to play it.  After about a year’s work, the parts were completed. Then I started to construct the records. The first one was designed by a company in Chicago.  It was the hym “In the Cross of Christ I Glory.”  With this as a model I made others until now I have an assortment of 220 pieces. During the winter months when my outside work is very light I spend all my time adding other new ideas which I have in mind.”  In relating the story of his life he said: “I was born in a small village on the coast of Holland March 23, 1827. Most of the first 20 years of my life I spent near home going to school.  Then I went away and prepared myself to be a civil engineer. When my course was completed I accepted a position with a company that was building a railroad in England. Shortly after I started work on this job the company failed and I was compelled to look for another position.  At this time the first thoughts of the United States came to my mind.  I returned home and then sailed reaching New York City in the spring of ’53.  I went directly to Wisconsin establishing myself as a carpenter in Milwaukee.  I remained there for one year and returned to New York.  In the mean time I had written to my parents in Holland about America and they had decided to come over. They met me in New York and we went west into Illinois. I remained there only a short time, coming to Montgomery County just 32 years ago.  Since that time I have been living on this farm making my living by growing produce and selling it in the city.  As near as I live to town, I never go there more than three or four times each year.”