[ Earlier this year Diana Martin asked Richard Vance what he knew
 [ about the Juelg Co. which made piano rolls in New York.  He sent
 [ her an image of roll label taken from a Juelg roll in his collection.
 [ Diana replied:

> My family is doing some genealogy with the Juelg name.  I received
> an e-mail and the writer felt the rolls were manufactured by several
> music roll makers and then Juelg attached their "label" to them.
>
> What is your opinion on this thought?  Do you know for fact if Juelg
> was a manufacture or a reseller?

Dear Ms. Martin,

I have no way of knowing that for a fact, but I believe Juelg was
a maker, not a retailer, for two reasons:

1.  Big retailers did have rolls made with their own labels, or
added their own labels themselves, but for publicity reasons these
usually were more specific as to the name and location of the store.
Really big retailers like Sears, Roebuck & Co. or Montgomery Ward Co.
had whole lines of rolls specially for them, Sears "Supertone" being
the most common example.  But one can usually identify the actual
manufacturer from physical characteristics of the roll.  See Karl
Ellison's collection of retailer's roll labels at:

  http://mmd.foxtail.com/Pictures/storelabels01.html

The Juelg label doesn't look like these.

2.  By far the biggest maker of 58- and 65-note rolls was The Universal
Music Company, a division of the Aeolian Company, who made the
instruments that played them.  But the Juelg roll is definitely not a
Universal product.  The spool, box, rubber stamp printing on the paper,
etc., are all different.  There is no rubber stamp listing the basic
music roll patents, which always appears on Aeolian products.

The only question remaining is whether Juelg was a company itself,
or if it was one of the many brand names used by the big independent
makers like The Rose Valley Co.  I don't think that was so, however.

On the spool end of the paper of my Juelg piano roll, seen when the roll
is unrolled all the way, is an inspector's rubber stamp.  Rolls come out
of the machine in big bundles, and are immediately marked somehow to
identify them during the subsequent processing and packaging steps so the
paper ends up in the right box, with the correct label.  Either a rubber
stamp is applied right as a bundle emerges from the machine, or the roll
number itself is punched into the paper, beyond the end of the music.

On the Juelg stamp there is one field for the number, and several
numbered squares where subsequent inspectors and operators (the person
who puts the tempo stamps on the paper for example) put their initials
in pencil as the unspooled bundles pass through the various steps to
the final station where the actual labile is put on the leader, and the
roll is rolled up on the spool and put into the correct box.

The number field on this stamp has only the roll number, 5960 in this
case, and no further identification.  This leads me to believe that
Juelg rolls were the only ones made at that particular factory;
otherwise the number might be stamped "J-5960" or something, so that
the paper would end up as a Juelg rather than with some other brand
label and box.

> A lady in New York has a Juelg Co. labeled roll dated 1918 with the
> roll number, title, and composer labeled.  Your label matches the
> label on her roll, but it includes the above.

My example is a scan which I cleaned up and reconstructed for a
replacement label printing program being developed by one or our
members. (Still in Beta, and not yet ready to market.)  The data
fields were deliberately left blank, for subsequent filling-in by the
program's user.

> I thank you again for your time and assistance.

You are very welcome.  It would be nice for you to publish in MMD some
information about the name "Juelg".  It seemed to me to be an odd
choice for a brand name, unless it was actually the proper name for
the maker or seller.  I can't even identify the national origin of the
name, and I have always wondered about that.

Best regards,

Richard Vance

 [ Diana later wrote to Richard Vance and me that she is a member of
 [ the Juelg family branch in America which is descended from German
 [ immigrants of 1848 and a few years later.  The name is German, and
 [ is normally spelled with u-umlaut, but it was changed to 'ue' since
 [ the alphabet used in America doesn't have letters with umlauts.
 [ (The "J" sounds like the English "Y", as in Johannes Brahms.)
 [
 [ She said the present-day Juelg families in Europe still live nearby
 [ each other in the upper Rhine valley, on both banks of the Rhine
 [ river, but the shifting national border has split the contemporary
 [ region politically into Alsace (France) and Baden (Germany), on the
 [ west and east sides of the Rhine, respectively.
 [
 [ -- Robbie