SMITH'S MARCH. COMPOSED AND DEDICATED TO GEN. PERSIFOR F. SMITH THE HERO OF CONTRERAS BY T. J. MARTIN.
Baltimore [MD]: Published by Miller & Beacham, Suc. to F.D. Benteen. Lith. by A. Hoen & Co., [1848?]. 10" x 13". 5, [1 advt.] pp, disbound, loose. Title printed on front wrap with decorative typeface, bordered by ornate illustrations. Light scattered foxing, bit of edge wear. Music only, no words. Good+. Last page lists titles and prices of 'New and Popular Music' being issued by Miller & Beacham.
"Sheet music for 'Smith's March' for the piano, with an illustrated lithographic print cover depicting two soldiers in dress uniforms beneath an American eagle, one with an American flag and the other with a gun and cannon, standing under a palm tree. The bottom of the print has a variety of foliage including palm tree, yucca, and prickly pear, and military equipment including cannons, howitzers, an ammunition chest, and cannonballs arrayed before a distant Mexican city" [online U Tx at Arlington, 'A Continent Divided: The U.S. - Mexico War,' article on Smith's March].
"Thomas J. Martin was from New Orleans. He was a free man before the Civil War, and wrote quite a bit of music in the late1850s. Not much is known about Martin" [online Landscape of Words, June 2020].
In addition to this Baltimore publication Martin, a New Orleans native, composed at least eight pieces of sheet music published in New Orleans during the 1850s." On June 25, 1860, "Martin was arrested for alleged threats to burn down the house of Ann Severs, a retired white actress. According to these accounts, Martin had responded to threats by her that she would expose his three-year-old affair with her white daughter, Fanny Thayer, which relationship had produced a child. Within a few days, the press was awash with claims about nearly thirty well-to-do Northern - born white women with whom he had been intimate in New Orleans. He was described as a guitarist and a well-informed, Northern-educated man of refined manners who had come to know these women as his piano student" [Lester Sullivan, "Composers of Color of Nineteenth-Century New Orleans: The History behind the Music" accessed on JStor], Item #40483
Price: $750.00