Jesse French

Jesse French was an American piano manufacturer and philanthropist.

Life and career

The son of Jacob and Mary Ann French, Jesse French was born in Devonshire, England on 23 July 1846. In 1848 he moved with his family to Nashville, Tennessee. He was educated in Nashville Public Schools and at Brown's Business College in Peoria. He married Callie Lumsden on January 2, 1872.
French began his career working for a printer. During the American Civil War he worked for the United States Postal Service at a branch in Nashville. He then worked in the office of the Tennessee Secretary of State; ultimately rising to the role of Assistant Tennessee Secretary of State. He held that post for seven years. He made an unsuccessful bid for the role of Tennessee Secretary of State in 1872; losing the election by a single vote.
In 1872 he began a sheet music business in Nashville, and in 1875 he became a partner in the Nashville piano retail firm of Dorman, French & Smith. In 1885 he founded the Jesse French Piano and Organ Company, a piano manufacturing company, in Nashville. His sons Horace Edgar French and Jesse French Jr. joined the business. A building for its business was completed there about 1890. One of the largest music businesses in the South, it was influential in the development of ragtime. Its building in Nashville was listed as an endangered landmark in 2011.
French established a second company, the Field-French Piano Company, in St. Louis, Missouri in 1887. It was ultimately absorbed into the Jesse French Piano and Organ Company. He remained the owner of the JFPOC until he sold the Nashville business in 1902. In c. 1900 he became a partner in the Krell Piano Company in Ohio. He later founded the Jesse French & Sons Piano Company in New Castle, Indiana where the family operated a manufacturing plant.
The firm's building in Nashville is at 240 5th Avenue North. The Library of Congress has two photos of it from the Historic American Buildings Survey. The Camp Sewing Machine Company building is next to it in a circa 1900 Calvert Brothers photograph.
The company's New Castle manufacturing plant is pictured on a bookmark and in a Krell-French Piano Company advertisement. A Music Trade Review insert from November 3, 1900, includes photographs of Albert Krell, Jesse French, Edwin B. Pfau, and H. Edgar French, the company's executives.
The company's St. Louis location was at 1111 Olive Street. It had branches in various other cities.
Jesse French died on 7 May 1927 in New Castle, Indiana.