The Geib Company was a family business which under various partnership names, produced and sold

pianofortes The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...

, organs, and

sheet music Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses List of musical symbols, musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chord (music), chords of a song or instrumental Musical composition, musical piece. Like ...

in New York City in the nineteenth century.

History

Johannes Geib Johannes is a Medieval Latin form of the personal name that usually appears as "John" in English language contexts. It is a variant of the Greek and Classical Latin variants (Ιωάννης, ''Ioannes''), itself derived from the Hebrew name '' Yeh ...

(John Geib, Sr.) was an organ maker from

Staudernheim Staudernheim is a municipality in the district of Bad Kreuznach in Rhineland-Palatinate, in western Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous countr ...

, Germany. Trained there, he resettled to England about 1760 to practice his craft. He first worked with established firms, and later with Lenkfeld as a partner. There he was awarded several patents for innovative piano mechanisms such as the

grasshopper action Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grasshoppe ...

. Marrying an English woman, they had twins John Jr. and Adam ca.1780, George ca 1782, and William ca. 1793. In 1797 he elected to resettle again, to New York. There he established Geib & Company as an

organ Organ may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a part of an organism Musical instruments * Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone ** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument ** Hammond ...

maker from 1800 to 1802. Following a bankruptcy, he partnered with his son John Jr. to operate Geib & Son, building organs and pianofortes until 1814. John Jr. had another partnership with brother Adam as J. & A. Geib from 1804 to 1808 and again 1816–17.

References

Publishing companies based in New York City Sheet music publishing companies Pipe organ building companies Piano manufacturing companies of the United States Musical instrument manufacturing companies based in New York City Defunct manufacturing companies based in New York City {{US-publish-company-stub