We’re tackling some major projects here at WIMA during 2010, the biggest being a couple relating to the Dunn Family Collection.
The Dunn Family Collection was donated to the Ward Irish Music Archives (WIMA) in January 2007. The collection contains many artifacts from the life and times of Michael J. Dunn who immigrated to Milwaukee from Ireland in the 1880s. The items include musical manuscripts, instruments, photos, books, a Victrola and his Ancient Order of Hibernians uniform.
Micheal "Joe" Dunn and Michael J. Dunn, August 1911
The cornerstone of this collection is the Francis O’Neill cylinders. Dunn was friends with O’Neill, and towards the end of O’Neill’s life he gave his friends many items from his vast musical collection. Whether the cylinders came to Dunn directly or through a mutual friend, Sgt. James Early, is unknown, but the cylinders were likely in the Dunn home on south 26th street in Milwaukee for over 80 years.
O’Neill was known for collecting Irish tunes from the musicians in Chicago. He published over 3,500 tunes through several publications, including the mammoth O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (1903). It was known that O’Neill had recorded some of these musicians sometime circa 1904, and that they had been given to Dunn. But many thought these cylinders were destroyed after Dunn’s death in 1935.
In 2003 Dr. David Dunn, Michael Dunn’s grandson, took one last look in the attic of his grandfather’s home before selling it and found the suitcase of these 32 cylinder recordings along with most of the artifacts in the Dunn Family Collection at WIMA.
So what’s in store for the Dunn Family Collection? We’re currently developing a website to give the public online access to the majority of the collection, including the ability to listen to the cylinder recordings. The recordings themselves are being mastered, and the pitch and speed of the transfers are being compared to one of the original sets of uilleann pipes used by Patrick Touhey on the recordings. We’ll also be releasing a CD of the cylinders, along with more information about the collection and musicians involved.
Stay tuned to the blog for more updates as WIMA works on these projects!
-Jeff Ksiazek, archivist
