A Brief History of the Conn Company (1874-present)*
by Margaret Downie Banks, Ph.D.
Curator of Musical Instruments
National Music Museum
Vermillion, South Dakota
© Copyright 1997 by The National Music Museum.
All Rights Reserved.
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pages, may be copied, retransmitted, reposted, duplicated or otherwise
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*Excerpted and updated from Elkhart's Brass Roots: An Exhibition
to
Commemorate the 150th Anniversary of C. G. Conn's Birth and the 120th
Anniversary of the Conn Company by Margaret Downie Banks (Vermillion,
South Dakota: The Shrine to Music Museum, 1994).
Two of the several types of Union labels commonly found on Conn
instruments manufactured between 1906 and 1916. Details from Conn instruments
in the collections of the National Music Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota. Photographs by Simon
R. H. Spicer.
© Copyright 1997 by The National Music Museum.
The Metal Polishers, BrassWorkers and Platers Union of Elkhart was
organized in 1901. Five years later, in 1906, a little more
than a year after the company's incorporation (December 13, 1904), the C. G.
Conn Company, as it was now called, became the first industry of its kind to
open its doors exclusively to the use of union labor. A new union was
established: Local No. 335 of the Metal Polishers, Buffers, Platers, Brass
Moulders, Brass and Silver Workers International Union of North America.
Instruments manufactured between 1906 and 1916 bear a union label.
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Dr. Margaret Downie Banks, Curator of Musical Instruments
National Music Museum
The University of South Dakota
414 East Clark Street
Vermillion, SD 57069-2390
E-mail: mbanks@usd.edu
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