Harmonium

Name: Harmonium of early settler to Clarence (AL.84.16)
Theme: Demographic Migration and Settlement
Time Period: 1829-1870

The harmonium belonged to Adam Armstrong who was born in Scotland in 1788. His wife was Margaret Gow, whose father and grandfather were celebrated Scottish musicians. Margaret died in the 1820s before the family came to the colony.

Adam Armstrong arrived with his six children on the Gilmore, one of Thomas Peel's ships, in December 1829. Armstrong had worked as a clerk for Thomas Peel in London and was offered a place for himself and his children on the Gilmore, contracted to work for Peel as his accountant and surveyor after arrival at the Swan River.

Arriving too late to receive fertile land on the Swan and Canning Rivers, Peel was allocated land from south of Woodman Point to the Murray River.
 
The Gilmore, and later the Hoogley anchored in Cockburn Sound, and the group began to establish a settlement at Clarence near Lake Coogee. This was the earliest European settlement in the Cockburn region. However, the settlement at Clarence failed and was deserted within two years.

After the failure of Peel's settlement scheme at Clarence, and then again at Ravenswood, Armstrong took up land on the Swan River, building a house that he named Dalkeith, and which eventually gave its name to the Perth suburb. Adam Armstrong died in 1853.

Music was a large part of the Armstrong family’s life, and among their treasured possessions to arrive in the Gilmore was the family harmonium, still today in its original condition.

The harmonium represents the optimism of early settlers who brought fine furniture to the colony, not realising that they would be struggling for shelter and food and would often have to abandon or burn the furniture.

In 1869, when the Davilak property in Hamilton Hill was to be sold following the death of Charles Manning, a newspaper advertisement noted that it was currently occupied by Adam Armstrong jnr., who was paying £35 per annum rental. The property was advertised as containing a large dwelling house, outbuildings and a vineyard. It is not known whether Armstrong had the harmonium on the property or whether it had been inherited by another of his siblings. Armstrong left the property by the early 1870s when Lucius Alexander Manning and his family moved there.

Today, a descendant remembers playing the harmonium as a child when she visited her grandmother Alexandria Mary Ingram (nee Armstrong). Both the Ingrams and the Armstrongs lived in Cockburn for many years. Mrs Ingram donated the harmonium to the museum in 1984.

Significance
Assessment and Comparative Criteria High Low
Aesthetic Significance 1 2  3 4 5
Historic Significance 1  2 3 4 5
Social/ Spiritual Significance 1 2  3 4 5
Science/Research 1 2 3 4  5
Rarity value 1 2  3 4 5
Condition 1  2 3 4 5
Interpretative Potential 1 2  3 4 5
National Significance X State Significance  Local Significance 