Note: Not extant. Not playable. (in this location)
2014-07-14 - This entry describes an original installation of a new pipe organ. Identified by Scot Huntington, using information found in an un-named publication. -- Elbridge Gerry (1837-1927), scion of a wealthy colonial family involved in the triangle of trade, had substantial mansions in Manhattan and Newport. He married Louisa Livingston, whose grandfather Robert Livingston was given 500,000 acres of Catskill mountain land in 1709 as part of the Hardenburgh Patent. The Livingston (and later Gerry) families built substantial summer estate buildings and stables on Lake Delaware in the town of Andes.<br>Elbridge T. Gerry, grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, commissioned Hilborne Roosevelt to build an organ for the billiard room of their Lake Delaware summer estate (perhaps originally owned by the Livingston family). The individual ranks are signed and dated by their maker, and this evidence indicates the organ was either modified in 1880, or certain ranks were replaced.<br>The organ was substantially enlarged in 1886 with the addition of a third manual, new keydesk, and action. Anecdotal reports indicate the feeders and reservoir were originally in a room underneath the organ.<br>Robert Livingston Gerry, son of Elbridge, founded the Lake Delaware Boy's camp on Lake Tunis (Bovina, New York) in 1909- originally intended as a summer retreat and vocal coaching experience for the boys of the principle Episcopal church choirs of Manhattan. In 1912, the camp moved to permanent facilities on Gerry estate land in the town of Andes, and the wooden chapel of St. Joseph was one of the first permanent buildings. In 1915, the Roosevelt organ was moved to the camp chapel. When the Gerry children built the substantial Upjohn chapel of St. James on estate land in nearby Bovina, it was intended to move the Roosevelt to St. James. This never occurred, and the organ remains, essentially as built in 1886, at the camp in Andes.<br><br>An undated entry in an Elbridge Gerry scrap book describes the organ in its two manual state prior to the 1886 enlargement. However, there are not enough sliders and toeboards on the original windchests to accommodate all the listed stops, or the compass of the stops listed therein. These discrepancies are annotated in the stoplist, which is transcribed verbatim from the Gerry notebook. -Database Manager
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