Note: Not extant. Not playable. (in this location)
2005-02-15 - Identified from company publications as edited and expanded in <i>The Hook Opus List 1829-1935</i>, ed. William T. Van Pelt (Organ Historical Society, 1991). -Database Manager
2016-01-17 - We received a photograph of one page of a journal kept by the first Rector of the church, courtesy of Scott Lamlein. According to the Journal entry this was a G-compass organ, typical of the period, with no GG#. The stoplist also indicates that both Choir and Swell were played from the second manual. Choir stops occupied the first 21 keys, Swell stops the treble from tenor f up. Unfortunately, no pedal stops are listed in the journal, so the presence of a pedal at all seems undecided. -Database Manager
2023-05-20 - The first organ for the original St. John’s Church on Main Street in Hartford was built in 1841 by E. & G. G. Hook of Boston. In keeping with a popular practice of the time, this instrument was placed in an organ/choir loft over the narthex at the back of the church. The organ, Hook’s Opus 47, consisting of two manuals and twenty-two stops, was described by the Hartford Courant in 1842 as having “superior finish, tone and compass, with a Gothic exterior.” During the church’s more than sixty years in Hartford, its organs were moved a number of times, both to improve the church’s layout, which seems to have been an ongoing issue, and the sound of the instrument. The first move, which happened before 1861, brought the organ down from the loft to the main floor of the church, possibly in conjunction with a tonal improvement to the instrument in the 1850s. -Scott Lamlein
2023-05-20 - In 1861, the purchase of a new organ, Hook’s Opus 295 of two manuals and thirty stops, provided an opportunity to move the instrument back to where some felt it gave better service. -Scott Lamlein
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