Note: Not extant. Not playable. (in this location)
2022-02-12 - This organ was recently identified by Stephen Pinel in the compilation of a John Brown opus list, based on newspapers now digitally available on the internet. The Allegany County Reporter ran several articles in 1905, announcing the placement of the order, installation, and dedication concert. Unfortunately, no details of the organ were recorded other than the cost, $2,570, and that it was the largest organ in Wellsville at the time of installation-- a distinction it held until a large two-manual was installed by Wirsching in the Christian Temple roughly ten years later. Brown had previously installed an organ of 16 stops but with mechanical action in the Lutheran church in 1901, and the Congregationalists had installed a tracker instrument by an as-yet unknown builder costing $2000 in their new and substantial building in 1875. The tubular-pneumatic Baptist organ was installed with a Kinetic electric blower, perhaps the first in town-- the Brown installed in the Lutheran church just four years earlier was hand-pumped, but soon after was fitted with a water motor. The newspaper announced the signing of the contract in the 15 January edition, the installation by Brown's sons Frank and Calvin on April 11th, and the dedication on June 13. The paper reported the organ occupied a footprint that was 15 feet wide, and 8'4" deep. The organ was dedicated by George Carter, organist of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Buffalo. Unlike the dedication of the Lutheran organ in 1901 whose artist programmed major organ standards, the dedication of the Baptist organ in 1905 was the increasingly usual light-weight panoply of orchestral and operatic transcriptions. The congregation organized in 1852, building a small frame building the following year which burned in 1867. They built a larger building with 'steeples' (plural) in 1869, and the 1905 instrument is the first mention of a pipe organ for this congregation. There has not been a Baptist church in Wellsville longer than anyone now remembers, nor is there any building fitting the description. It is possible the congregation merged into the Christian Temple at some point after they built a grand new building in 1913. The Temple congregation merged with the Congregationalists in 2016, forming Grace United Church. The Brown and Wirsching organs have vanished without a trace. -Scot Huntington
2022-02-14 - While Brown's larger instruments of this period were typically tracker-pneumatic or tubular-pneumatic with mechanical action reserved for his smaller instruments, according to the Kinetic blower records which generally recorded the type of action, this organ was a tracker. This may seem to go against type for Brown when applied to an organ larger than his earlier organ in town (16 stops), and the 2 h.p. blower was considered good sized for a tracker in those days- if that can be any indication of its size. The Erie had regular passenger and freight service through the Southern Tier, in particular from Wellsville to Buffalo, Erie, and Cleveland, and east to Elmira, Binghamton and New York. A tuner needed to service a fussy pneumatic action was no more than an hour or two from Buffalo, Elmira, Rochester, or Erie by car, on the same roads that exist today, or by train. -Scot Huntington
2022-03-13 - The Hillgreen, Lane & Co. contracts have revealed the disposition of this instrument: the pipework was reused in a new instrument built in 1934-35 by the Hillgreen, Lane & Co. for the chapel of Keuka College, on the shores of Keuka Lake, one of the larger finger lakes. This was replaced by the Schlicker Organ Co. in the 1960s. Presumably, little if any of the old organ was reused. -Scot Huntington
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