The C.F. Martin company has been building guitars in the US since the 1830s. Martin came here to get away from the restrictive crafters guild system in Europe. Washburn has been in business since the 1880s. Guitars were around, and they were plentiful, although smaller instruments like the fiddle and banjo were more popular in the mid-19th century.

I don't recollect what kind of guitars they were using on the show - but the 1880s guitars are more like what we play now, than earlier guitars, which were smaller and narrower. One man theorized to me that the evolution of musical instruments has always had to do with volume, volume, volume - how can we make this thing play louder? Thus bigger guitars, steel strings, resonators on banjos, etc.

I had some gripes with this show, as did a lot of other reenactors, but on the whole I thought it was good. It could have been better, but I thought they did very well with what they had.