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- If it’s an assembly-line instrument you want, don’t go to Lucian White
Retired woodworker is fussy about his dulcimers
By Wayne Arnst, Tribune Staff Writer
A number of folks back in his home state of “Kentuck” made dulcimers (or dulcimores) so instructions Lucian White, 1019 1/2 10th Ave. SW, saw in a woodworking magazine on how to construct one looked simple enough to him.
“I just love to work with wood,” the 86-year-old said. “When God made trees for us, that was the greatest gift we ever had, by golly.
“That plastic stuff make me tired to look at it!”
The dulcimer has three or four or more strings – banjo strings (G, G, and C), White explained.
He said the original dulcimers were three-string instruments, although later models have four strings or as many as the player requests. He prefers the basic three-string model.
White’s woodworking shop in Great Falls is much smaller than the Kentucky mill at which he worked for so many years. And many of the tools he uses for making a dulcimer are homemade. His equipment includes a power sander made from a 1/2-inch drill he got at a rummage sale, spoke shaves to serve as planes for rounded surfaces, a scroll saw and numerous hand tools. He uses carpenter glue when necessary.
It it’s an assembly-line musical instrument that people want, Lucian White would not be the person to ask. It’s true that modern dulcimers may be a little more polished more sophisticated, than White’s. (He uses hardwood, some of which comes from old packing crates.) But, it the buyer wants tradition – a craftsman’s dulcimer made by a man who has worked with wood for 74 years – then a White dulcimer will undoubtedly be the conversation piece he is after.
White, who has made a dozen of the instruments, has given most of them away and has two for sale at Kops Music Mart in Westgate shopping center. “I would take orders if people want,” he said.
The dulcimer is placed on the player’s lap and plucked with a turkey quill, or a piece of plastic if you’re not fussy, and is used to accompany folksingers or just for listening. The not string is played by pressing a wooden peg near the frets.
White doesn’t play the instrument himself.
“Haven’t had time to learn how to play ‘em. Too busy makin’ ‘em,” he said.
White suggested that person wanting to know more details about the dulcimer get a copy of “The Dulcimer Book” by Jean Ritchie.
This explains her search for its origins and history, how to tune the instrument and includes some Kentucky folk songs to be accompanied by dulcimers.
White said he was born in the Cumberland Mountains near Morehead, Kentucky in 1894 in an area settled by the English, Scots and Germans.
His Scottish grandfather “was a timberman, an expert with an ax. Had a reputation for being able to split a hair on a broadax,” White said.
The timber industry today complains about a depressed housing market but, back when his grandfather was cutting poplar trees to build cabins, things were really booming, White said.
The trees were 18 inches at the butt, 12 inches at the top and it was 50 feet up to the first branch, White said. His grandfather would make a house pattern of logs, 24 feet long by 20 feet wide, enough to build a log cabin. He’s finish the entire job in about a week for $1.25 and then the neighbors would hold a house raising and dance on a Saturday. White figures that $1.25 would be worth about $75 today.
The Kentucky hills and its people, especially his grandmother Vianna Hamm, are what White likes to talk about most. “Oh,” he exclaimed, “every boy should have a grandmother like that to tell him stories.”
It was right after the Civil War when the southern general John Hunt Morgan paid his last visit to White’s grandmother’s hunting lodge, White said. Morgan used to come there before the war for recreation and hunting and White’s grandparent’s hospitality.
Grandfather Hamm had gotten a land grant to run the lodge and the area was excellent for hunting fox, white-tailed deer and the like. Also had good fishing, White said.
Well Morgan was one of those generals who never did surrender. He became leader of an outlaw band and would ride in, steal horses and loot a place at the drop of a hat. If there wasn’t any loot worth having or he met resistance in taking it, he’d have his men set all the buildings on fire.
When they came riding into his grandmother’s after her husband had died, she was down in a cellar along, White said. The outlaws were bent on stealing the horses from the corral but were unable to get them out. “For some reason the horses just ran around in the corral making a commotion.”
His grandmother ran up from the cellar and accosted the outlaws by herself. White said “John Hunt Morgan!” she shouted at the former general. “Is this the tanks you give me for slaving over a hot cookstove while you were out hunting?
Morgan just looked down from his big horse and motioned for his men to close the gate. “Come on boys,” he said. “her horse never were any good.” And they rode off.
White said that, without an education, he started work at 12 years of age wheeling sawdust from a mill where wagon wheel spokes were made.
“working my way up and was making $3 a day and could read and write a little,” he said. “Better than an education in those days.”
White served in the Army World War I. He joined up and wanted to become an engineer. “They stripped me naked and set me down with a bunch of other fellas on a cold floor,” he said and told us it’s not what you want – it’s what we want.”
“They made a cook out of me. I never got out of Kentucky.”
He didn’t get out of Kentucky until 1949. He came to Montana because of his wife Elsie.
They were married in 1921. “She wanted to come home every two years,” White said. “Couldn’t keep paying for all those round-trip tickets so I came with her.” They made several trips to Montana to visit her parents before White retired in 1954 and they moved here to stay.
Elsie was born and raised east of Cascade, daughter of Nellie and Basil Carr. Her uncle was T.W. Minton. White’s boss at the Bourbourville, Ky., mill.
When T.W. returned to Kentucky from a Montana horse-buying trip in 1919, he brought Elsie and her two sisters with him, White said. “He was showin’ ‘em off around the mill and this big falla asked me, ‘What da you think o’ them chickens the boss brought back?’”
“Well,” White said, “I’d fell in love with Elsie the minute she walked in. I told that fella to keep his looks off that little gal with the blue eyes ‘cause that was the one I was gonna marry.
“I worried her for about two years and finally married her,” he said.
Great Falls Tribune, Great Falls, Montana. Sunday, 20 April 1980. Section F, page 1.
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1894 - 1987 (93 years)
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