Anna's Book
Despite all the information I have on this family, there are still huge gaping holes that will likely never be filled. As I have written many times over the years, my third great grandfather John Kuck had 7 living children by his first wife, the oldest being named Anna, likely after John's mother also named Anna. I found her name first etched into the marble of the family tombstone along with most of his other children, and have since found a small scattering of newspaper clippings of her and her siblings. But a diphtheria pandemic would kill five of them and their mother in the space of about six months. Anna was 17 years old at that time. I don't have a single picture of Anna or any of her four other siblings that died of diphtheria. I have only one picture of their mother, or at least the writing on the back says it is their mother. Where are all those photos?
Without proof, I will guess they were inherited by the two surviving sons including my great great grandfather George and eventually lost. However, the above item definitely falls within this gap of information and was among Clara's Things.
I'm not sure of the economics or general history part of it other than it is a book full of piano music and about every fifth song or so is a couple pages of advertisements presumably to help pay for printing costs. The cover has John Kuck's eldest child Anna Kuck's name printed on it in gold letters. There is no copyright or printing press page at the beginning. The only hint is a postage stamp sized label on the inside of the cover that reads, "J. J. Bettcher, Bookbinder, Independence, Iowa." I'm not sure what to make of that first E in Bettcher. It is not something I have ever run across.
I tried some searches in Google but turned up nothing. There are five Independence references around the state as it is a quite common term used geographically. So I turned to some of my ancestral research tools and soon turned up a likely candidate for the bookbinder. In 1880 there was a man by the name of Julius J. Boettscher living in Independence, Buchanan County, Iowa whose trade was listed as Bookbinder. Odds are he is the man who created this book, including the printed cover with Anna's name on it.
Inside the pages are quite brittle and thus fragile so I will likely never set it out someplace where it can be used or even leafed through. Very carefully I did leaf through it to search for any handwriting or other personalization that Anna may have made but found nothing other than one slight scribble on the backside of the page above. Maybe someday with proper lighting, I can photograph the pages of a song and get one of my daughters to play it for me so I know what it sounds like. I did try A.I. to see if it could recreate the song for me to listen to but it refused due to potential copyright issues though it did create a musical work "in the flavor" of the original, or so it said. The lyrics are close and it is being played on a piano and even though I am not a piano player, I'm pretty sure the notes were liberally replaced at the AI saw fit. Top 100 hit someday?
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