Lewis Babcock

Biography

Lewis Babcock is named as one of the pupils of Benjamin Crehore in Boston, alongside his brother Alpheus and John Osborn. Together with Alpheus, he began making pianos in Boston in 1810, a business that was later ruined by the panic of 1819. The text treats Lewis chiefly as part of the Babcock brothers' joint venture and gives no individual biographical detail, dates, or later career information beyond his inclusion among Crehore's pupils and his partnership with his brother. From Spillane (1890): Lewis Babcock was one of the Babcock brothers who opened a small pianoforte workshop on Newbury Street, Boston, in 1810, later expanding into partnership with Thomas Appleton and, in 1815, with the Hoyts brothers as Hoyts, Babcock & Appleton. He died in Milton in 1817, shortly before the commercial panic of 1819 forced the remaining partners to separate. Lewis Babcock was one of two Babcock brothers (with Alpheus Babcock) who trained in Benjamin Crehore's piano workshop in Milton, near Boston. Spillane groups him among the notable figures who emerged from Crehore's training.

Highlights

• Pupil of Benjamin Crehore; with his brother Alpheus began making pianos in Boston in 1810
• One of the two Babcock brothers trained in Benjamin Crehore's Milton workshop.
• One of the Babcock brothers who opened a small pianoforte workshop on Newbury Street, Boston, in 1810.
• Died in Milton in 1817, shortly before the 1819 panic forced dissolution of the family firm.

Sources

Alfred Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers, Vol. I (1911), p. 270.

Daniel Spillane, History of the American Pianoforte (1890), pp. 54, 56.

Public domain.