Organ Restoration

A DISCOVERY!  Removal for storage of one of the red, wooden pipes (A#) that lives at the back of the organ revealed a surprise.  The young New Gloucester boy who put his penciled signature on nearly all of those red pipes, also sketched a ship on one of them. Teenager George Edwin Whitman must have been engaged to help out when the organ was being installed in the balcony(1857).  We knew of him before this, from Historical Society research on Civil War soldiers from New Gloucester.  He enlisted twice, but during his second hitch he was captured.  He died at Andersonville Prison.  How does the drawing of the ship connect to his Civil War service?  He wrote the word “slaver” across the side of the ship.  

Thanks to our organbuilder, Nick Wallace, for noticing the drawing.  We’ll post a photograph here once it can be enhanced to bring out the lines of the drawing.  After the pipes are put back into the organ case, the drawing will not be visible.

When some of the higher pedal pipes were removed for storage, those housed just behind the front right side of the organ case (as you look at it from the sanctuary), another inscription was found.  It says “Tuned By Calvin Coburn, of East Cambridge, Mass., June 11, 1867.”  This intrigued us, since East Cambridge, MA, is where the organ was made.  We wondered if the factory sent someone to tune the organ 10 years after installation, some kind of warranty maintenance?  Furthermore, organ restorers have long wished to answer the question of whether these organs came to distant places in boxes and somebody local had to assemble them, or whether the organ came with a factory technician to assemble and voice them?  In researching Calvin Coburn, we found out that he was, indeed, an employee of the manufacturer, George Stevens, and did accompany new organs to the sites for which they were made.  This information came from Calvin Coburn’s rather unusual obituary in The Congregationalist (1902), which you can read HERE.  As Coburn was married to a Maine native, he may have checked up on our organ (in 1867) on his way to visit relatives.

Thanks to Jared Tynes for photographing the inscription and helping to research Calvin Coburn.   3/29/2020