Scot Huntington on May 21st, 2023:
The Richard Bridge remnants in the Methodist Church in Schylerville are not from this organ as stated in a previous entry, but are from the 1756 organ originally installed in King's Chapel, Boston and eventually replaced there by W.B.D. Simmons, retaining the Bridge case. The Newport organ was highly regarded by the parishioners, lasting over a century, proving more durable there than any organ that succeeded it. The church was lengthened in the early 19th century, which having thus modified it's proporations, ruined the acoustics by changing it from a shoebox to a tunnel. The organ was now considered inadequate in the newly-lengthened church, and was replaced by Henry Erben in the 1830s, taking the Bridge in trade. He retained the old case, replaced the collapsing facade pipes (the Erben pipes, themselves now collapsing, are still extant), and made the new Stopt Diapason "out of the best of the two wood flutes", i.e. Stopt Diapason 8' and Flute 4'. Erben sold the Bridge within a new case to "a church in Portsmouth" where it reportedly existed to some point mid-20th century, after which it was lost. Hook & Hastings widened the Bridge case with added wings for their large 2-manual organ installed in the 1880s. The historic Bridge case exists in this widened condition.
Database Manager on November 8th, 2005:
Updated through on-line information from Paul Cienniwa. -- The organ was completed in 1733 and installed in 1734. The original console is the the Museum of Newport History (see photo at Trinity website). Note skunk-tail sharps. Original façade is still at Trinity; some of the pipes sound if blown through. They were presumably incorporated into the original instrument (i.e., not just ornamental). For some anecdotal information, visit Trinity's website. -- Manual compass = C,D-d3.
[Ed.: The referenced website is no longer online. 2022-06-30]
Database Manager on November 4th, 2005:
Updated through on-line information from John Speller. -- Case and façade pipes survive in church (housing present Wicks organ), one keyboard and stop jambs in Newport Historical Society museum, pipework went to Methodist Church in Schuylerville, New York in nineteenth century but no longer there. Orig. stop list: GREAT: Open Diapason, Stop Diapason, Principal, Flute, Twelfth, Fifteenth, Tierce Bass, Tierce Treble, Trumpet Treble; ECHO: Open Diapason, Stop Diapason, Trumpet. See Barbara Owen, "Colonial Organs: Being an Account of Some Early English Instruments exported to the Eastern United States", BIOS Journal, 3(1979), pp. 94-96. -- Great: C, D-d3 50 notes; Echo: c1-d3 27 notes
Database Manager on October 30th, 2004:
Organ was gift of Rev. Dean Berkeley, later Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland. Building dates from 1726. Parts of the case still exist.