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Private company

Elias Howe Company

American musical firm

The Elias Howe Company was a 19th and early 20th century musical firm located in Boston, USA and founded by Elias Howe, Jr. (1820–1895). His company was successful, selling more than a million copies of his music instruction books by 1892. Howe was cousin to the inventor of the sewing machine and related to Julia Ward Howe, composer of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1840Founded1
  • HeadquartersBoston1

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Elias Howe, Jr. from "Boston of Today"
Photo: unknown (Life time: unknown), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons4

The Elias Howe Company was a 19th and early 20th century musical firm located in Boston, USA and founded by Elias Howe, Jr. (1820–1895). His company was successful, selling more than a million copies of his music instruction books by 1892. Howe was cousin to the inventor of the sewing machine and related to Julia Ward Howe, composer of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.2

The story

Founded by Elias Howe in 1840.1

Leadership

Who has led Elias Howe Company, and when. Pick a name to see everywhere that person has worked.

Products and brands

Location of the Company

The Elias Howe Company for many years was located at 88 Court Street in Boston and many of the volumes of sheet music and instrumental instruction that the company produced bear that address. Archival photos of the Scollay Square area of Boston dating from the 1880s often show the "Howe's Music" sign silhouetted against the sky above the buildings at the end of Court Street.

Howe-Orme brand

The Howe-Orme name arises from the association of the younger Howes (William H. and Edward F. Howe) of Boston with George L. Orme of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. A May 1896 newspaper article announced a deal between Orme & Son and the Elias Howe Company for the United States manufacturing rights (on a royalty basis) for "the celebrated Orme guitar and lute banjo.

G. L. Orme was the younger partner in J. L. Orme & Son, a company founded by his father, James L. Orme. J. L. Orme & Son was a retailer of musical instruments, primarily pianos and organs, and a publisher of sheet music. They also had a musical instrument factory for their violins and guitars over their piano "wareroom". Like Elias Howe, Jr., J. L. Orme was deceased by the time that the Howe-Orme instruments appeared and his son, George, ran the company.

George Orme was an associate of James S. Back, with whom he shared patent rights to the musical instrument design that became the hallmark of Howe-Orme instruments. This design, first described in an 1893 patent (U. S. Patent No. 508858) awarded to Back with half-ownership assigned to Orme. The critical feature described in the patent is a "raised longitudinal belly ridge" extending along the top of the instrument, under the strings, from the end of the fingerboard to the tailpiece. The innovation is depicted on a guitar in the patent application but the patent text makes mention of its applicability to other stringed instruments. A subsequent design patent (U. S. Patent No. D27560) shows the concept applied to a guitar-shaped mandolin. That patent was awarded to Edward F. Howe on August 24, 1897.

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Instruments

The Howe-Orme instrument line comprises several models of guitar and an entire line of mandolin-family instruments including mandolin, tenor mandola, octave mandola, and mando-cello. Howe-Orme instruments were among the first to be produced in the United States in multiple sizes analogous to the members of the violin family. These mandolin-family instruments are unique not only because of the "raised longitudinal belly ridge" but because they are shaped like guitars and have absolutely flat backs. Although guitar-shaped mandolins were subsequently manufactured by other firms, an Elias Howe Company catalog from approximately 1910 notes that the Howe-Orme mandolins were the first such instruments. The catalog also points out the ease of holding a guitar-shaped instrument in contrast to the awkwardness of the bowl-back mandolins of that era.

The guitars had another unique feature in addition to the longitudinal ridge: their necks were easily detachable and their angle could be adjusted without any disassembly. The neck design, like the longitudinal ridge, originated with J. S. Back and is described most fully in U. S. Patent No. 538205, issued to Back, with half-ownership to G. L. Orme, in April, 1895.

Examples of a guitar-shaped mandolin made solely by J. L. Orme company are very rare; after discovering one, a collector called his "the missing link" between the Canadian company and its patents and the variety of "Howe-Orme" instruments made by The Elias Howe Company. Although the J.L. Orme Company made the guitar-shaped mandolin in Canada, advertisements from the company focus on their guitars and their lute-banjos. The J. L. Orme & Son "Lute-Banjo" had a rounded, fat, oval body, with a neck held on by three screws (making the angle adjustable).

The (U.S. based) Elias Howe Company's "Howe-Orme" instruments had bodies shaped like guitars, with (at least for the mandolins) necks that were glued to the bodies with a dove-tail joint.

The patents covered a wide variety of instruments, being used to create guitars, mandolins and lute-banjos. What the two companies' instruments shared was the patented arched soundboard. Opinions by collectors have indicated that the Elias Howe instruments had a pressed soundboard, which kept its shape with internal braces. The Howe-Orme guitar also shared the adjustable neck system.

From Wikipedia’s article on Elias Howe Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Timeline

  1. 1840Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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