Briggs’ Banjo Instructor was published in Boston by Oliver Ditson around 1855. It is a stroke-style banjo method by the minstrel banjoist Thomas F. Briggs, and it pairs lessons in music notation with a collection of dances, polkas, jigs, reels, and songs. Briggs died in San Francisco in October 1854 while touring with Christy’s Minstrels, and his friends sought out a publisher. The publisher’s preface states that many of the melodies were learned by Briggs from Black musicians on Southern plantations and had never before been published.
