Pipe Organ Database

Updated through online information from Scot Huntington. -- The organ was purchased for $100 in 1914, delivered up the steep two-mile mountain road to Heath by ox-cart, and installed by George Ryder of Boston. The Whately records do not indicate any allowance made on the old organ by Estey, and it was not their usual practice at this time to take organs in trade for resale. The available sources imply the Heath congregation purchased the organ directly from the Whately church.
In 2013, S.L. Huntington & Co. of Stonington, Conn. restored the instrument, reversing all previous alterations but retaining the Swell Bass installed at an unknown date but prior to 1874 by Johnson, and including a reconstruction of the original 1850 case and decoration.

Updated through online information from Scot Huntington.

Updated through online information from John Igoe. -- In March 2013 S. L. Huntington & Co. completed a thorough renovation of this notable instrument. The restoration has followed strictly the newly revised OHS Guidelines for Conservation, carefully analyzing details of the organ-s history and construction, recreating the original casework and faux-grain decoration, including the reinstatement of the 1850 gilded façade pipes (found still in use but well hidden inside the 1874 case), and replication of a missing rank of Stopped Diapason pipes.

According to the Citation application received from the Johnson Organ Restoration Committee in December 2008, the organ was taken in trade by Estey in 1912 and subsequently installed here by an unidentified person or firm in 1914.

Status Note: There 1990.

Built for Congregational Church, Haydenville, MA. Sold to First Congregational, Whately in 1874. Moved here in 1914 [by Ryder?]. Case now gone. Historic Organs Recital 3 Jun 1990.