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IN the 1890's, a man named George Durkee lived in Chicago and worked as a shop foreman at Lyon & Healy Harps Inc. Not much is known about him -- at one point, a fire destroyed company records -- except that he supervised workers who assembled harps. Some elegant concert harps were built from Mr. Durkee's own designs, and he won several patents just as the 19th century came to a close. Over the next few decades, and especially after the fire, his name disappeared from company documents and his contribution to harp design was forgotten.

Until this year. Marijo Clogston made a mistake while browsing on eBay, the Internet auction site, and found herself the shocked owner of a $15,000 antique Lyon & Healy harp. It was a beautiful harp, to be sure, one of the few covered in 24-karat gold leaf. But Mrs. Clogston, a 78-year-old widow with a passion for folk harps, had not planned to buy it.

'I was aware of the reputation of Lyon & Healy's gold harp,' Mrs. Clogston said from her home in Boerne, Tex., outside San Antonio. 'I saw the reserve price and knew it was out of my range, so I thought I'd just have the fun of bidding and let someone else have the harp.'

'By accident I went beyond the reserve price and I got the harp,' she said, with a low laugh. That mistake eventually led her to discover Mr. Durkee's work at Lyon & Healy (www.lyonhealy.com), and to four of his harp patents from the 1890's.

Mrs. Clogston already had nearly a dozen folk harps -- smaller counterparts to the antique six-footer on its way to her from a Florida dealer. 'I didn't really intend to become a collector,' she said. 'I get a little music catalog, and several years ago it had a little harp in it that was in my price range, so I bought it.'

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That first harp turned out to be badly made, so Mrs. Clogston got on the Internet and discovered harp chat groups. The members advised her to return the harp.

'One thing led to another,' she added. 'I was hooked, and I started to find out about different types of harps. I bought another one and thought, gee, I'll learn to play.'

With that, she may have been following her family's example. Her mother enrolled at the University of Texas at age 75 to study music. Her son is a doctor, lawyer, pilot and real estate agent. She devoted her life to keeping a home and raising her child, and when she told her son she was spending $15,000 on a harp, he didn't chide her. 'He's taken some chances and come out ahead,' Mrs. Clogston said, 'so I think he considers risk a part of the family history.'

The Florida dealer who sold the gilded concert harp on eBay had bought it at an estate sale and knew nothing about its background. The instrument arrived intact, but Mrs. Clogston found that at some point it had been clumsily repaired and incorrectly reassembled. Intent on playing it, she went back to the Internet, where she participates in two harp mailing lists: harplist@onelist.com and harpcircle@onelist.com.

'Harplist is kind of stiff,' Mrs. Clogston said. 'They hew to the line and don't digress. But harpcircle is a lot of fun. Both are very serious about harps.'

But no one on either list knew anything about Mrs. Clogston's newest acquisition. The harp bore a brass plate that read 'Lyon and Healy Makers Chicago No. 203 Manufactured Under Five Patents.' So Mrs. Clogston went back to the Internet.

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'I have a good friend, Harold Dayton, who I have never met face to face,' she said of a Web pen pal. 'I'm not sure whose idea it was first to check the patents, but we both went after it with vim and vigor -- to find the patents, the history of the harp, who made it and where it was made. Harold checked with the patent office and I tried looking on the Internet under 'patents.' The serial number is on the harp, so I contacted Lyon & Healy and they told me the style number.'

But they found no trace of the patents. The Patent and Trademark Office offers patents online dating only to the 1970's. Then, a keyword search turned up a reference to MicroPatent, a patent and trademark research company. Mr. Dayton sent an e-mail message inquiring about the harp patents.

'The documents they were looking for were very old,' said Lynn Tellefsen, a vice president for marketing at Information Holdings, the parent company of MicroPatent (www.micropatent.com). 'You can't get them digitally anywhere, though the patent office has something on paper somewhere. But they are part of the MicroPatent database that isn't available to the public.'

Ms. Tellefsen said that a researcher at MicroPatent started with Lyon & Healy and the patent class codes that existed in the late 19th century, and narrowed the search through a process of elimination until she found the patents Mrs. Clogston was looking for. 'As you can imagine, there aren't too many patents in that category from that time, so the database was very small,' she said.

MicroPatent sent copies of five patents to Mrs. Clogston free, and she was thrilled to learn that four of them covered the design of her harp.

'The patents told me that the different components of the harp were invented by one man, George Durkee,' Mrs. Clogston said. Kana kaanum kaalangal serial song download. 'They have drawings of the different parts he invented. I learned just enough about the harp's construction because he spells it out, movement by movement. I can look at the drawings and tell where they are different from my harp.'

'The patents made a lot of sense,' she added, 'and I can see how my harp evolved.'

The patents also allowed Mrs. Clogston to date the 77-pound harp to 1895.

It is currently in pieces on her floor, and she is teaching herself how to restore it, using the patents, manuals and advice from experts. A professional restorer wanted $500 an hour. 'He told me what books to get, how to start the work, and said he'd answer my questions,' she said, 'until I pestered him with so many that he asked me to stop.'

George Durkee won patent numbers 437,917, 437,918 and 437,919 on Oct. 7, 1890, and patent 438,038 on April 23, 1895. The patent from 1895, Mrs. Clogston said, is 'the one that looks the most like my harp.'

'I want to learn to play it,' she added. 'My harp, when new, was a jewel with a beautiful tone, and I expect it to be the same when I get through with it.'