English family of brass instrument manufacturers, musicians, music sellers and publishers. They were active in England and the USA during the 19th century.
In 1833 John (Henry) Distin (b Plympton, Devon, 1798; d 1863) formed with his four sons a brass ensemble known as the Distin Family Quintet (see illustration), which toured from 1837. In 1844 the family went to Paris, where they tried the new instruments of Adolphe Sax and immediately adopted them for their quintet. In 1845 John Distin established a firm, Distin & Sons, to sell music at 31 Cranbourn Street, Leicester Square, London, and in the following year they became the British agents for the ‘saxhorns’. John Distin’s eldest son, George, died in 1848, and it was as a quartet that the family toured the USA in 1849.
Henry (John) Distin (b London, 22 July 1819; d Philadelphia, 11 Oct 1903), the second son, who had received his early training in music at the RAM, took over the family firm in 1850. In that year the firm began its own manufacture of brass instruments (which eventually led to a breach with Sax, who transferred his agency to the firm Rudall, Rose and Carte in 1853). Additional premises were opened about 1857 at 9 Great Newport Street, Long Acre, which became the principal place of business after 1859, when 31 Cranbourn Street was given up; the new premises were expanded in 1862 and again in 1866. The firm published much band music in the series Distin’s Band Journal. Henry Distin’s efforts at improving valved instruments were rewarded in 1867 with a prize medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. In 1868 he sold the firm to Boosey & Co., which continued it as Distin & Co. until 1874.
Distin subsequently lost most of his wealth in several unfortunate business endeavours and in 1877 emigrated to New York. He set up shop at 79 East 4th Street (then 285 and 355 Bowery), but most instruments of that period were made at 115–21 East 13th Street or in Moses Slater’s factory in Cortland Street. They included ‘echo’ and ‘Paris’ cornets and the first ‘melody horns’ – instruments with crooks and an echo or muting valve intended as substitutes for French horns. By 1880 Distin was importing instruments for J.W. Pepper of New York and Philadelphia, and in the summer of 1882 he moved to Philadelphia to help Pepper establish a factory. Pepper, however, wished to sell cheaply to a mass market, so Distin, whose interest was in high-quality instruments, formed a partnership with Senator Luther R. Keefer and other businessmen to establish the Henry Distin Manufacturing Co. (2 March 1886). The factory, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, produced Distin instruments in substantial numbers until February 1909, when Brua C. Keefer sr purchased the company. Keefer replaced Distin’s name with his own, but instruments modelled on Distin’s were manufactured until about 1940. From 1884 to 1888 Distin published music and sold instruments in Philadelphia, first at 917 Filbert Street and then at 913 Arch Street. From 1889 he and his son William Henry, also an instrument maker, lived in Williamsport, but in 1890 Distin vested all rights with the company and retired to Philadelphia with a pension.
As a cornettist Distin spurred the growing popularity of early valved brass instruments, while as a manufacturer he improved their design and mechanism and the tools of their construction. His ‘light piston valve’ (patented in 1864) became the prototype for the modern cornet valve, and his ‘center bore cornet’ (patented in 1884), whose design freed the flow of air from abrupt bends in the tubing, became the standard of excellence in the USA. He also took out 19 patents for improvements in the design and manufacture of instruments, including several for percussion instruments and their accessories. Instruments by Distin are found in many American collections, notably the Shrine to Music Museum at the University of South Dakota and the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan.
Waterhouse-LangwillI
H. Distin: ‘History of the Distin Family since 1798’, New York Times (7 Aug 1881)
Obituary [H. Distin], Williamsport Gazette and Bulletin (13 Oct 1903)
A. Carse: ‘Adolphe Sax and the Distin Family’, MR, vi (1945), 193–201
P. Bate: The Trumpet and Trombone (London, 1966, 2/1970)
L.P. Farrar: ‘Keeping-up with Keefer: Distinland not so distant’, Newsletter of American Musical Instrument Society, x/3 (1981), 1–2; see also xi/3 (1982)
N. Groce: Musical Instrument Makers of New York (Stuyvesant, NY, 1991), 41
ROBERT E. ELIASON, LLOYD P. FARRAR