Joel Sweeney

Born to a farming family in Appomattox County, Virginia, he claimed to have learned to play the banjo from local enslaved Africans.

[1] Aside from his important role in popularizing the instrument, he has often been credited with advancing the physical development of the modern five-string banjo.

He supposedly added the fifth string because he was "allegedly unhappy with the limited rhythm and melodic variation of the four-string banjos popularly in use.

These claims are part of an effort, beginning in the nineteenth century, to divorce the banjo from its African American origins.

That same month, he performed alongside James Sanford at the Broadway Circus in New York with a blackface burlesque of The Dying Moor's Defence of His Flag called "Novel Duetts, Songs, &c".

They did several shows at the Theatre Royal, Adelphi, and later in the Waterloo Rooms in Edinburgh, followed by a return engagement in Glasgow, this time at City Hall.

Joel Sweeney's younger brothers, Sampson ("Sam") and Richard ("Dick"), and his sister Missouri were also talented banjo and fiddle players.

In 1862 during the American Civil War, Sam Sweeney enlisted in the Confederate Army, serving in Company H of the 2nd Virginia Cavalry.

Sam Sweeney died, possibly of smallpox, on January 13, 1864, and was buried in Graham Cemetery, Orange, Virginia.