What is the origin of the Cigar Box Guitar?
We have dated the cigar box guitar back to the 1850’s. That’s about the time the US Government imposed a tax on cigar makers, forcing them to ship the cigars in smaller boxes instead of big crates. If you look at every cigar box you’ll see what almost looks like a dollar bill printed on it but it’s actually a tax stamp. Every cigar box is still shipped with a tax stamp on it. Back in the mid 1800’s cigars were wildly popular. Men were smoking them, teenagers were smoking them, even children were smoking them, and so cigar boxes were everywhere. Some were thrown out; some used for storage. But back then there was American ingenuity. If someone wanted an instrument and they couldn’t afford it – they figured out a way to build it. Well, you have these wooden boxes that are roughly the size of a banjo or a fiddle and it was just like a knowledge that sprouted up in several different areas. People started using these boxes to build their guitars. In the late 1870’s, a man named Daniel Carte
