The Boston Musical Instruments Manufactory was founded in 1869 as an amalgamation of the partners and workers of Graves & Co. and Elbridge G. Wright & Co.  (Catalogs claim the company was founded in 1841, the year Wright began operation in Boston.) From the early 1850s Wright had abandoned the double piston Vienna valve, incorporating instead the string-operated rotary valve as found on these horns, so this horn design predates the founding of Boston Musical Instruments Manufactory. Soon after the merger with Graves, however, Wright withdrew and joined Hall and Quinby.

The company offered a full range of voices of trumpets (including the well-known “Boston Three Star Trumpet”), cornets, trombones, upright horns, and tubas for military bands as well as fine orchestral horns. Instruments could be ordered in copper, brass or German silver and either left or right-handed. Two earlier horns in this collection are both based on the original model by E.G. Wright. They  represent both options of base metal and chirality: one is brass and left-handed while the other is nickel-silver and right handed. Serial numbers were introduced in 1880 and the newer model horn in this collection is dated to 1893 by its serial number.  In the twentieth century double horns in the C.F Schmidt design with piston thumb valve were added to the catalog.