Helen Minerva Gilchrist (1831- 1912) 

Helen Gilchrist was a child when her family moved from Vermont to a log cabin in Hills Grove, Illinois. In a few years, they built a frame house. The children attended a seminary school before going back east for the education their parents thought best for them. 

Helen was twelve when she was escorted to New York to live with her Aunt Miriam Holton, who ran a finishing school called the School for Young Ladies. She also visited her uncle in Westport, New York, and studied for a few terms at an academy there. In New York City, she attended galleries, concerts, and the theater. 

At a finishing school girls learn manners and skills to help them run a household. Girls could study music, needlework, reading, painting, and French. Young ladies were also expected to learn sewing techniques. Helen completed a hand-sewn appliquéd bedcover with patriotic classical motifs while staying at her aunt's home. This cover could have been for her hope chest, for use in her home when she married. 

For $47.00 Helen's aunt bought her a second-hand piano on which to practice her lessons. When Helen returned home in 1849, the piano was shipped west by sailing vessel to New Orleans and up the Mississippi by steam boat, then by wagon from Warsaw, Illinois, to Hills Grove. It was the first piano in McDonough County, and many people came to hear Helen play songs such as "Haste to the Wedding," "The Campbells are Coming," and "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton." 

Why do you think that the arrival of a piano was an important event in Hills Grove in 1849? 

Would the style of this piano impress the people in 1849 Illinois? Why?

In 1850, Helen married Dr. Leonard T. Ferris of Fountain Green, Illinois. The Ferrises had five daughters and five sons. Three of the children died very young. Helen lived in Fountain Green until her husband died in 1900, when she moved to Carthage, Illinois to be near one of her daughters. 

"The Story of an Old Piano" was written in 1900 by one of Helen's daughter-in-law. She read it aloud at Helen's fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration, at which Helen played the piano. In the story, the piano sentimentally tells of its adventures and joys while in the care of Helen, from a teen, to a bride, a mother, and a grandmother.