"By hook or by crook" actually originated in villagers' rights to collect wood. They could take from the woods anything which they could collect from the ground or pull down "by hook or by crook" from standing trees - this was usually dead wood.
Twister's banjo would be highly fashionable in 1895, and was starting to trickle down to the poor end of the populace by then. My Grandpa played a tenor banjo about ten years later.