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Melodeon player Margaret McNiff-Locke, born in 1886, was one of the lucky musicians offered their first recording opportunity during the Depression. She married her fellow Leitrim native Michael Locke in Boston in 1912 and lived in New Hampshire. A classical composer who heard her play arranged an introduction to Columbia Records, who scheduled sessions in New York in 1930 and 1932 from which were issued five discs featuring Margaret with Sligo fiddler Joseph Tansey and a banjo strummer named E. Colclough. She concluded her recording career in 1933 with four sides that also featured her daughter Mary McNiff-Locke on the five-string banjo.
