The Alexander Family Piano!

I grew up playing the piano from the time I was about 8 years old until I graduated high school in 1999. I always played my great-grandfather's old Chickering Bros. upright piano, and I loved to play in recitals and piano competitions growing up. Once I entered college, I sort of fell away from playing all that much. I moved on to other things: being a full-time middle school Social Studies teacher, wife, and mother. When my son was very young, he loved to bang around on a different old upright family piano, one that belonged to my other great-grandfather. Now that he is older (8!) he has truly discovered a love for music and playing piano. It has caused me to revisit my roots and start learning to play all over again. My husband has also joined in the fun and is learning to play for the first time ever! Music has run in my family for generations, and I am so excited to pass this love on to my son, so that he can then pass it on to children of his own one day.
Our family piano belonged to my great-grandfather and is at least 100 years old. He purchased the piano from the Good Pasture Church in a small mountain town called Beulah, Colorado in the early 1920s. To transport the piano (a large, upright Ivers & Pond), he somehow managed to lift it onto the bed of a pickup truck and drove it about 30 miles to his home in Pueblo. It swayed the whole way home! Graps (my great-grandfather) played piano and organ by ear. When he would play, he would often take his cigarette and place it on the side of the keyboard where you can still see the nicotine stains on the topmost key to this day. You can see it in the video posted below. :)

• YEAR 1900-1910
• MAKE Ivers & Pond
• SERIAL NUMBER 17292
• FINISH Cherry
• CATEGORY CONTESTANT