Unknown Builder
1879ca.

Identified through online information from T. Daniel Hancock. -- Very little is known about this instrument, which was apparently procured at the same time many other improvements were made to the church building in 1879. The congregation reorganized in 1864 after several tumultuous decades before and during the Civil War. After a series of false starts and disapointments, a simple brick structure was constructed at South and Pearl in 1869, called Bentley Chapel. In 1879, two Second-Empire style towers were added to the building, the interior walls replastered and frescoed, a seating gallery added, and the name "Grace" adopted. At or about this time, a pipe organ was purchased and installed, as is indicated by one surviving photograph showing the stencilled pipes and case hiding behind a "prayer garden" which had been created at the front of the chancel--doubtless the subject of the photograph. The chapel was converted to a Sunday School Hall in 1895 when a new gothic-style sanctuary was constructed ajacent to the west. The organ served in the new sanctuary until 1908, when the Ladies' Aid Society finished raising money for a new organ, a two-manual Estey. At that time the old organ was sold or donated to the Methodist-Episcopal Church in Marionville, Missouri, and was installed in their Buckingham Chapel. There seems to be no record in Marionville as to what became of it later.

Updated through online information from T. Daniel Hancock.