

Then, a keyword search turned up a reference to MicroPatent, a patent and trademark research company. The Patent and Trademark Office offers patents online dating only to the 1970's.
LYON HEALY SERIAL NUMBERS HARP SERIAL NUMBER
Harold checked with the patent office and I tried looking on the Internet under 'patents.' The serial number is on the harp, so I contacted Lyon & Healy and they told me the style number.''īut they found no trace of the patents. ''I'm not sure whose idea it was first to check the patents, but we both went after it with vim and vigor - to find the patents, the history of the harp, who made it and where it was made. ''I have a good friend, Harold Dayton, who I have never met face to face,'' she said of a Web pen pal. 203 Manufactured Under Five Patents.'' So Mrs.

The harp bore a brass plate that read ''Lyon and Healy Makers Chicago No. Intent on playing it, she went back to the Internet, where she participates in two harp mailing lists: and no one on either list knew anything about Mrs. Clogston found that at some point it had been clumsily repaired and incorrectly reassembled. The Florida dealer who sold the gilded concert harp on eBay had bought it at an estate sale and knew nothing about its background. Clogston said, ''so I think he considers risk a part of the family history.'' ''He's taken some chances and come out ahead,'' Mrs. She devoted her life to keeping a home and raising her child, and when she told her son she was spending $15,000 on a harp, he didn't chide her. Her son is a doctor, lawyer, pilot and real estate agent. Her mother enrolled at the University of Texas at age 75 to study music. With that, she may have been following her family's example.

I bought another one and thought, gee, I'll learn to play.'' ''I was hooked, and I started to find out about different types of harps. The members advised her to return the harp. Clogston got on the Internet and discovered harp chat groups. That first harp turned out to be badly made, so Mrs. Durkee's work at Lyon & Healy (and to four of his harp patents from the 1890's. That mistake eventually led her to discover Mr. ''By accident I went beyond the reserve price and I got the harp,'' she said, with a low laugh. ''I saw the reserve price and knew it was out of my range, so I thought I'd just have the fun of bidding and let someone else have the harp.'' Clogston said from her home in Boerne, Tex., outside San Antonio. ''I was aware of the reputation of Lyon & Healy's gold harp,'' Mrs. Clogston, a 78-year-old widow with a passion for folk harps, had not planned to buy it. It was a beautiful harp, to be sure, one of the few covered in 24-karat gold leaf. Marijo Clogston made a mistake while browsing on eBay, the Internet auction site, and found herself the shocked owner of a $15,000 antique Lyon & Healy harp. Over the next few decades, and especially after the fire, his name disappeared from company documents and his contribution to harp design was forgotten. Durkee's own designs, and he won several patents just as the 19th century came to a close. Some elegant concert harps were built from Mr. Not much is known about him - at one point, a fire destroyed company records - except that he supervised workers who assembled harps.

IN the 1890's, a man named George Durkee lived in Chicago and worked as a shop foreman at Lyon & Healy Harps Inc.
