Bill's Stories: Maine Violin Maker #2

Hector Durgin, of Bangor

As I mentioned last time (see Bill’s stories #1), Bill Dalbec is 84, with a gravelly voice. Based in Portland, Maine, he gives hints of having had a very colorful life, but in recent decades, dived into the world of hunting down, buying, repairing and selling violins. In many cases, he learned curious stories about the violins and their makers.

Today’s story is about another 18th-19th century Maine violin maker. Enjoy!

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Bill’s Violin Tale #2

I did some research on the Durgin violin — Hector Wilbur Durgin, the Bangor violin maker. He ran a dry goods company on Main Street in Bangor, and in the back room, he made violins. What he sold, primarily, at that store, was corsets. And those corsets were made by a company in Hartford, CT.

I talked to the guy that I bought the violin from, and he lives across the street from where the guy had his violin shop in Bangor.

As I very often do, I find violin makers’ grave stones. My wife and I do a lot cemetery repairs, so I went out to find the gravestone, and you can see it, it’s nothing but a natural rock just sitting about a foot and a half off the ground, with Hector Durgin on it.

What I found out was, he was born in 1844, and he died in 1928. The violin that we have was dated 1927. I had a 1916 violin of his that was not very good, so I put it in a raffle for charity, and they made about $500 on the raffle, and the guy that got it was very pleased with it.

But anyway, there were five violins that were found in the corset factory in Hartford, CT. And of those was the 1927 violin, with the number 17 in it. He died in 1928 so there’s a good chance that was the last violin he ever made.

So the guy who had the violins called a violin dealer in Bangor because he read the labels on the violins, and what’s unique about that guy was, he was a salvage person. In other words, he would pay for the rights to salvage copper pipe and any quality woodwork from these old buildings. Years ago, we used to have a salvage place in Portland where you could go and find all kinds of fireplace mantels, fireplace fronts, nice casings like your door there.

So he was a salvage guy, and he salvaged the violins around 1972. And what happened was, he didn’t know what to do with them so he put them in his closet for 50 years. Then finally, he was getting ready to move to Florida, and he had all these violins, so he called this violin dealer in Bangor, who bought all five of them. So the salvage guy shipped them up from Hartford.

And I went in with a Russian violin student that I brought up there to see the instruments. He had an expensive Italian violin, left it in his car, and it imploded, and he asked me to repair it but I said I once tried to fix a $20,000 Italian instrument and it fell apart when I touched it, so I wasn’t going to repair his. Instead, I brought him up to a shop in Bangor, and they repaired the Italian violin for him. But while we were there, the Russian kid saw the Durgin violin and said, “I like the looks of that violin, can I play it?” And the guy says, “Yeah, you can play ‘em all.” So he played that violin, and the owner of the shop went nuts. He said to me, “Where the hell did you get this guy? Incredibly great player.” And I said, “He kind of came through the door asking about repairs.”

So anyway, I bought two of the violins at that time. I wanted to buy them all but he wouldn’t sell them all, so he kept three. So now I own a Durgin violin.

If I don’t sell it, I was thinking about either donating it to the Maine State Museum, because they have a small collection of violins, or the Bangor Historical Society. I’ve often donated violins to different historical societies.

This is the violin you played and liked, the blond one with a one-piece back.

Durgin applied for a passport in 1878 to go to Europe. They didn’t have pictures on passports in those days. What you had was a description of hair, eyes, chin shape, stuff like that. The reason he was asking for the passport was, he said he wanted to go to Europe to improve his studies.

There’s a good chance he might have gone to Cremona, Italy to study. Other people from Maine had done that prior to him. Stanley, the man that invented the Stanley Steamer in Kingfield, Maine, took himself and his family, his nephews, for several years to Cremona to learn violin making. And you can find their violins occasionally around Lewiston or Portland. Because they were having problems with heavy dark varnish at the time, they would send the violins to New York to have them finished by Wurlitzer, which had a big music shop in New York.