DR. HARFFY’S HARPSICHORD

Dr. William Harffy, a British surgeon, left Detroit in 1796 and moved to the Canadian side of the river. He took his junky old harpsichord with him—a decision he came to regret.

“Curse the music. I wish it was sold. I care not for what…You will favor me if it could be in any ways disposed of,” Dr. Harffy wrote to a friend on October 17, 1799.

But he couldn’t sell it—it was a wreck. So when a friend of his, Commodore Alexander Grant, sailed from Grosse Pointe to Ontario for a visit, Dr. Harffy decided to have a little fun.

He snuck the harpsichord on the boat. It sailed back to Michigan with the commodore. He came to regret this decision, too.

“I really am sorry that the harpsichord was put in Mr. Grant’s boat,” Dr. Harffy wrote to a mutual friend. “For he talks about it. God, how he talks about it.”

The harpsichord was removed to a village storehouse and never heard from again.