Scot Huntington on March 16th, 2024:
This organ was begun as a G-compass instrument and altered to C-compass prior to its installation in Haydenville. Newspaper used to shim the stoppers of the Sw. St. Diapason was dated 1849. Like Johnson's first two-manual organ, this, Johnson's second two-manual, was built on speculation. The original case decoration was faux-grained in imitation of either rosewood or mahogany and was very high-style and well done. The case was redecorated with a two-tone (drab brown framing and oak panel insets), and was in a style with large and somewhat crude gestures known as "theatrical" graining. This likely coincided with the late 1850s installation of new faux-grained pews on the main floor which replaced the original 'provisional' benches. The original pedal stop was a 17-note Open Diapason down to 12' G, and the pipes are still so labeled. When the organ was converted to C-compass, the pipes were shortened and fitted with stoppers, thus explaining the unusually large scale of the Bourdon pipes. The organ originally had no Swell bass, and at an unknown date a 17-note unenclosed St. Diap. Bass was added behind the Great and underneath the Swell chest, and the Bellows Signal stop action was repurposed as the Sw. St. Diap. Bass--all being of Wm. Johnson manufacture. At this remove, it cannot be confirmed whether the stop was added while the organ was in Haydenville, or after it was moved to Whately where it was altered by men from the Johnson factory in 1874.

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Database Manager on April 25th, 2015:
Updated through online information from Scot Huntington. -- In preparation for the 2015 Annotated Johnson Opus List, the available sources were examined critically, but they do not explain the discrepancy between Johnson's dating this organ to 1851, and internal evidence in the organ itself which definitively date its installation to 1850. The church records are silent on both the purchase and installation of this organ, and the first use of the building for services. A 50th-anniversary history of the church is the only mention that the dedication of the building occurred concurrently with the installation of the first Congregational minister on March 4, 1851, and is also the only printed source which credits Gov. Joel Hayden as the purchaser of the organ. The church treasury records are silent on any purchase expenditures for this instrument, or its 1874 successor, Op. 417. Cyrus Burnett Smith, eleven-years old in 1850, signed the organ as bellows pumper in a hidden location, twice in 1850, and successively for the years 1851-1854. There is also a date of December 1850 on one pedal pipe. The organ was clearly finished and usable in Haydenville in 1850, but there is no official record of services being held in the building prior to the dedication service, although there is a newspaper account that an assembly met in the building on Jan. 18, 1851 with speeches and music presented, in order to decide on the finishing appointments of the interior. <br>The organ was removed in February 1874 in preparation for the installation of Op. 417 (Johnson taking the organ in trade for an allowance of $500).

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Database Manager on December 20th, 2008:
Identified through information in the OHS PC Database, confirmed through a Citation application from the Johnson Organ Restoration Committee of Heath, Massachusetts, December, 2008. This was the original location of the organ, which was moved to Whately First Congregational in 1874 by an unidentified person or firm. The organ was subsequently obtained by the Heath Congregational Church (Heath Union Church) in 1914.