Updated through information from Unpublished Organ Research Notes of Dr. Stephen Schnurr; as edited by Joseph McCabe, 2008 -- Geo. H. Ryder of Reading, Massachusetts provided a new three-manual thirty-four rank, thirty stop organ in 1874, opus 24. Church records include the following on May 5, 1874, "on motion of Bro. Haines, Brothers Massey & Foljambe were authorized to execute a contract with Geo. M. Ryder for building the organ in accordance with his proposition as reported to this meeting, Price $5,800. Then on September 29, 1874, "a letter was read from Mr. Ryder in reference to coloring the pipes of the organ which on motion was referred to Mr. Ryder to exercise his own judgment in the premises. Barbara Owen, in The Organ in New England, notes that this may have been the builder-s first three-manual instrument. In reference to the organ, some sources refer to the congregation as the Erie Street Methodist Episcopal Church, no doubt in deference to the church-s location at that time. (There was, indeed a contemporary congregation by the name of Erie Street Church.) However, the organ was undoubtedly built for First Church, as identified in an article in the Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, journal, The Vox Humana. (This article gave the purchase price as $7,000.) The instrument was housed in a Gothic case measuring thirty feet in height, twenty in width, twelve in depth. The Reverend Edgar H. Boadway, in the Boston Organ Club Newsletter, March 1966, page 10, called this a magnum opus for the builder. The organ was rebuilt for the current church building when the congregation moved in 1905.

Identified through information in Descriptive Catalogue of Superior Church Organs Manufactured by Geo. H. Ryder & Co., published in Boston, January, 1896. That list gives the location as Erie Street Methodist Episcopal; later information indicates this was First Methodist.