Lawrence Trupiano
1990

The organ was given to the Powhatan church as a gift to honor the donor's mother, who had been the church organist for many years, and the donor lives near the organ's last home on the west coast-- which is how he came to learn of its availability in the late 1990s. The organ replaced a failed imitation organ in Powhatan, and was cherished by the donor's mother for another decade. The congregation had completely turned over in the intervening 23 years, and no one there today ever remembers hearing it, or knowing the previous organist or her family. The honored organist's successor hated the organ and tried to convince the church to wash their hands of it and take it to the dump. She persuaded them to spend a moderate 5-figure sum on another imitation. Luckily, because the organ was a gift to the church, wiser heads prevailed and they removed a back pew and moved the organ to the back of the church a decade ago, rather than taking it to the dump- but they did discard the bellows weights that had followed the organ to 7 homes over 180 years, with no record of the original wind pressure.

In the fall of 2021, the church contacted the original donor and asked him to come and get the organ as they had no use for it and wanted to reinstate the back pew. Through a happenstance word of mouth, I found out about the organ's availability and contacted the donor (I learned of the organ from Alan Laufman and had tried to buy it in 1982 from the Seattle radio station but the owner would never respond to my offer), with thanks to organbuilder Christopher Bono for alerting me to the organ and its plight.

It was arranged for me to take possession of the organ as a transfer of ownership rather than a purchase, with the proviso that I find a suitable home for it. It is my plan to install the organ in my family's ancestral church, the small and rural St. Timothy's Episcopal Church (1838), Westford, N.Y., a small farming town half-way between the organ's second and third homes, Worcester and Middlefield, and some 45 miles due west of organ's original home in Duanesburg (the original mansion is still extant.

An old stereo slide of the organ while in Worcester (ca. 1890), shows a greek-ornament crown on top of the case, which was missing by the time it was moved to Middlefield in the early 1960s. Whether this ornament was original or added later cannot be determined from the available documentation, and I have not yet found evidence of mounting holes for it on top of the case.

As part of the installation in Powhatan, Mr. Trupiano was contracted to provide a small silent electric blower and to provide a period set of replacement pipes for the missing Open Diapason. By the time the organ had arrived in Virginia, the original ivory stop labels were long missing and the organ now contains a varied assortment of pipe and reed organ labels.

Notes by Scot Huntington. -- Originally built for the Duane Mansion in Duanesburg, New York. At an unknown date late 19th century, the organ was moved to the Presbyterian church in Worcester, New York, about 35 miles distant. The organ served there until it was replaced by a two-manual Estey in the 1930s, and the organ was moved again to the Presbyterian church in Middlefield Center, about 12 miles west. In the late 1960s, that church closed and the organ was sold to radio station KRAB in Seattle, and after a period of disuse, sold to a private owner in Oregon. It was next briefly at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Portland, Oregon until replaced in 1984 by a larger, 2-manual 19th century instrument. The organ was listed for sale with the Organ Clearing House, and finally in 1990 it was sold to an individual who gifted the organ to the Providence Presbyterian Church in Powhaton, Virginia.

The Jardine is in high Empire style and the case is veneered in mahogany and flame mahogany burl. The organ has a foot pumping pedal for the organist as well as a separate pumping handle for servants. The instrument has one octave of permanently coupled stick pedals reminiscent of the short pedals on home electronic spinet organs of the 50s and 60s. The horizontal shutters are operated by a hitchdown pedal.