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4-H’er’s piano project full of history, mystery
There’s a little bit of mystery to one of the most interesting projects in the Putnam County Fair 4-H Exhibit Hall this year.
Eighth-year 4-H’er Stone Stauch, the son of Courtney Williams and Adam Stauch, has clearly taken an antique upright piano and turned it into a beautiful coffee bar. The project is also a clear choice for grand champion in the home environment category.
A few things are less clear, though. Where did the piano spend most of its life since it was manufactured more than 100 years ago? Who were the mystery men who left their names in it after tuning it in the middle of the last century?
Maybe most interestingly, is the original manufacturer of the internal mechanisms of the instrument perhaps a long-lost cousin of its current owner?
It’s hard to say, but it’s a story with seemingly as many facets as the piano has keys, hammers and strings.
In his third year in home environment, Stauch is no stranger to finding success in the project. Last year, the now 17-year-old took an antique Singer sewing machine and turned into a desk and terrarium.
While that project was also a grand champion, the South Putnam High School student has outdone himself in 2024.
With his month of June already crowded with football practice and FFA state convention, Stauch also found time, along with his dad and grandparents, to put in nearly 100 hours of work in transforming a weathered piano (purchase price $1) into a repurposed and rejuvenated coffee bar, complete with lighting, electrical outlets and a view of the keys and internal action of the original instrument through tempered glass.
“It was a family effort,” Stauch said, adding that his projects have provided a way to connect with grandparents Dion and Gail Patrick.
“We’ve found this project I love doing with my grandpa and really enjoy with my family,” Stauch said. “It’s always challenging, but we’re happy when we get it done.”
This particular project had its genesis in a shared Pinterest board between Stauch and his grandma, in which they discovered a similar piano that was repurposed into a computer desk. They liked the idea, but ultimately made it their own.
“We found this one on Facebook Marketplace pretty much for free — it was listed for $1,” Stauch said. “So we found it, the lady gave it to us, it was in Cloverdale.”
The seller told them that it had belonged to her father for a time, but the history of the piano before that is the first bit of mystery. One piece of evidence clearly suggests a church, as a note from under the keys had hymn names and numbers, presumably from a church service, as well as the phrase “prayer by Mrs. Patrick.”
“We that found very odd due to my grandparents’ last name being Patrick and this being found in our general area,” Stauch, who resides in the Fillmore/Coatesville area, said. “We weren’t sure who it was. This was at a church for the majority of its life.”
That was found during the initial disassembly process, one that also included the discovery of two crayons — one Crayola and one from the defunct Blendwel brand — and a pencil inside the cabinet.
Stauch said disassembly went rather easily, other than the fact that the instrument is old enough that there were zero Phillips head screws in the entire thing.
“That made it pretty difficult to get some of them out because there were some pretty heavy duty bolts, basically,” Stauch said.
Next came sanding, the most labor intensive phase of the project.
“Sanding and sanding and sanding for like three weeks,” Stauch said. “It was really blistered and nasty. It looks like it went through a fire. Everything is veneers.
“We really wanted to keep the original wood, the problem is we couldn’t,” he added. “It just wasn’t salvageable with the time and resources we had. So we ended up going with the black paint. If you look in the light you can still see it, and it’s stunning. There’s pieces of walnut and pieces of cherry wood here and there.”
Painting came later due to football and FFA, but when it did, that featured some delays due to problems with the paint sprayer.
“We figured out the day we painted that this paint needs two or three weeks to fully cure, so probably just today or yesterday (Saturday or Sunday) it’s finally fully cured to where it’s not going to scratch crazily,” Stauch said.
“This was a very long project,” he added. “We got it done the night before it was due.”
The real delay had nothing to do with sanding or paint sprayers or flathead screws. It was the waiting for the tempered glass to show up.
“It was expensive and it took a while to come in because it was tempered glass,” he said. “It came in Tuesday and the project was due on Wednesday evening.”
With the glass in hand, they were finally able to fully reassemble knowing all the glass pieces fit properly.
Even in places where “new” wood pieces had to be installed to hold the glass in place, they’re actually old pieces, as all wood used in the project comes from the original piano. Only the steel casters on the bottom were replaced entirely.
“The old casters still completely worked, but the problem was they were completely steel casters and they would scratch up anything they were on,” Stauch said. “We ended up taking apart an old dolly cart and taking the wheels from it.”
The biggest headache at this stage might have been the piano keys themselves.
“The keys had to be put in very meticulously. They’re numbered, and they can only go in that order. And we realized some of the numbers are off, so we had to go through playing a jigsaw puzzle to get it back together.”
The piece holding the glass in front of the keys is another source of mystery. While the piano as a whole was manufactured by Seybold Piano & Organ Co. of Elgin, Ill., the action — the collection of internal components that actually makes the sound — was manufactured by Strauch Bros. of New York, a company that boasts of the “highest award” at the 1893 Columbian Exposition (Chicago World’s Fair).
Stauch and his family members certainly took notice of the similarity of his name to that of the manufacturers. In fact, the link may be even closer than it appears. They looked up the history of the company, and sometimes it doesn’t even have the “r.”
“There are some documents in which it’s spelled as ‘Stauch’ — there’s no ‘r’ in it,” Stauch said. “A guy here in the beginning of the book looks very similar to my grandfather, and we’re both from Germany.”
So, does the Stauch family of Coatesville have any connection to the Strauch family of New York? Perhaps. They’re certainly connected now, if only through this 4-H project.
There’s also a bit more local history if one looks close enough. Scrawled on the upper part of the action are two names and dates connected to the instrument being tuned. The first is by J. Brewer on Nov. 21, 1955, and the second by P. Evans of Greencastle on May 10, 1963.
While no information was found on J. Brewer, it has been determined that the second tuner was Paul Evans who tuned pianos as well as delivering milk for Handy’s Dairy.
“This thing is so full of history,” Stauch said.
To that, he’s added a bit of his own, finding a spot on the upper right corner of the action to write his own note: “Repurposed by S. Stauch, 7-12-24.”
Stauch also hopes the piece can help him get more in touch with some additional history and culture. Once the State Fair is over, he’s planning to sell the piano/coffee bar in an online auction. The asking price won’t be low — he has more than $800 in materials in the project, never mind labor — but it will go to a good cause.
“This will be going into an online auction to pay for a trip I’m taking,” Stauch said. “The school is taking a trip in the spring of 2025 to Italy and Greece, and this is hopefully going to help that.”