Books › Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937 › scan 180
Scan 180
Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937
16 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 154. See the scan on archive.org.
1the organ was junked. But the Pedal wood pipes, which were very large scale, are now in the possession of John Hays Hammond, Jr. at Gloucester, Massachusetts.
3One of Thomas Appleton's largest organs was built in 1849? for Central Congregational Church, corner of Newbury and [address hidden], Boston.42 It had 3 banks and 28 speaking stops, and cost $6500. The soft metal of the front pipes, which went to G and were at least 13 ft., caused these pipes to settle several inches at the bottom by the time it was sold in 1879. S. S. Hamill43 bid $250 for it, as he said, "Just to start the fun." He was startled when nobody raised his bid and he found he had bought the organ. He recovered his outlay, however, as he made three organs out of it and sold them.
5One of his most celebrated organs, the second one he built for the Handel and Haydn Society, and used by them before they purchased the German organ, was sent to San Francisco about 1865. Another concert organ of his, built for the Odeon (the old Boston Theatre altered to a concert hall) was taken to a music hall in Philadelphia about the same time.44
7After a long struggle he failed in Boston, because, in his zeal to make fine instruments, he put in improvements and extras yet charged only the contract price. After finishing up some organs in New York City he moved to Reading in 1851. There his son Edward, an engineer, put up for him in 1852 a two and a half story factory costing $2400, half of it open to the rafters to allow for setting up the organs.44
9Thomas Appleton's last and biggest organ was built in 1868 for the Baldwin Baptist Church, [address hidden], Boston, when he was eighty-three years old. It had a very ornamental chestnut case and was so large that there was room in the factory for only one-third of it to be set up and tried out. In 1871 he took charge of putting up and altering one for the Unitarian Society (Christian Union Church) now replaced by the Community Church, Reading. He died in Reading July 11, 1872.
11An interesting example of an early English organ is one bearing the date of 1805, built by William Gray. It is now on exhibition in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, where it is occasionally
1342 Information supplied by William B. Goodwin.
1443 See p. 255.
1544 Information supplied by Mr. Francis Appleton from a family record of Thomas Appleton's statement made to his son in his eighty-seventh year.
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