Coral’s family history · Chapter 15

The Wescott Fiddle

Historical text · public reading edition

Historical text with images and scan links omitted. Later research is labeled separately. Editorial and privacy policy →

Editor’s correction

The fiddle story

Here Coral reprinted an article by Betty W. Acker, historian of the Society of Stukely Westcott Descendants (2004). It is summarized here rather than reproduced. In 1996 a Seattle musician, Lew Holt, bought the violin at a folk-festival auction. Inside it is inscribed "made by Eugene M. Wescott, Sumner, Iowa, 1876, age 19 years, born in Crawford Co., Pa., 1857." Eugene's daughter Gail Wescott Roberts had played it on the Chautauqua circuit and sold it to a Chicago dealer during the Depression. Family say he carved it with a jackknife and a piece of glass, inlaid with wood from ships lost on the Great Lakes. Lew Holt traced Eugene's grandson, Eugene Michael Wescott of Fairbanks, Alaska, and after a year of playing it, sent the violin home to the family.

Added from the records

Eugene Merritt Westcott, the fiddle maker

Eugene Merritt Westcott was born February 15, 1857, in Pennsylvania, and died December 31, 1913, at Hampton, Iowa. Family notes call him "Genius Gene" for his inventions and his music. He married Ada May Wellman on New Year's Day 1879 in Union, Fayette County, Iowa. Their daughter Erma was born November 8, 1880, and died at two.

Sources: Laplante, Descendants of Stukely Westcott (Eugene Merritt)

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