The History of the Woodberry and Harris Organ
Saint Stephen Lutheran Church, Marlborough, Massachusetts
The Woodberry and Harris Organ Company of Boston, Massachusetts, existed between 1888 and 1893. Its principal namesake, Jesse Woodberry, learned the trade with W. G. Vowles Organ Works in Briston, England. He moved to the United States in the early 1880’s and worked for the Hook and Hastings company in Boston. Woodberry, his brother James, and James Cole started their own business in 1886. Two years later, Woodberry and flue voicer Charles Harris formed the firm of Woodberry and Harris. The firm espoused a relatively conservative approach to organ building in the late 19th century.
Reference source: First Presbyterian Church Waynesboro, Virginia
The Woodberry and Harris organ, originally built in Boston between 1888 and 1893, found its’ home in a Methodist Church in or near Malden, Massachusetts. Norma Kent, an elder of the United Church of Christ traveled to a Methodist Church in or near Malden around 1940 for the purpose of purchasing the organ for use in the Methodist Church in West Abington, Massachusetts. From there the organ was moved to the
Congregational Church in Abington, Massachusetts.
The organ was acquired by Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, in the early 1980’s and was rebuilt by John Morlock of the Andover Organ Company. For over thirty-seven years the organ was played at Sunday worship at Mount Olivet
Lutheran. The original proposal presented to the Mount Olivet Lutheran Church at their 26th Annual Meeting to purchase the Woodberry & Harris organ contains many interesting points of information.
The History of the Organ
John Morlock, a friend of the Gerbers (The Reverend Clifford Gerber was pastor at Mount Olivet Lutheran) and, since their coming to Mount Olivet, a friend of our Congregation, has presented us with the possibility of procuring and restoring an antique pipe organ for use in our church. John is a member of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Lawrence, Massachusetts, but also a frequent worshipper at Mount Olivet. Because of the association that he has here, John has long had the ambition of finding a way of making an “in-kind” gift of his particular talents and expertise affordable by us. Recently, he was made aware of the availability of a restorable old pipe organ that is especially suited to the constraints of our building.
The organ in question was owned by Richard Westerdale, a fellow employee with John of the Andover Organ Company in Lawrence. Richard had bought the organ about one year ago at an extremely attractive price and stored it in the basement of a home of a friend in hopes of someday finding a place to live in which the organ could be restored and set up for his personal use. Suddenly, in December, the house in which the organ was stored was sold and Richard was informed that the organ must be removed in three weeks’ time (prior to 1/1/81). Several private individuals wished to buy the organ from Richard, but he was aware of Mount Olivet’s situation and preferred to see it go to a church. He, therefore, contacted John and offered the organ to us for $1,600 (a sum of less than some private buyers were willing to pay), provided we remove the organ from the Quincy basement before 1/1/81.
John extended Richard’s offer to us with the understanding that he would give his time and knowledge to the restoration of the instrument as a gift to Mount Olivet. He asked that we provide him with some necessary voluntary laborers and cover material costs. Without time to call a congregational meeting, and with the annual meeting so close in time, the church council voted to invest $1,600 in the disassembled organ and remove it to Shrewsbury to keep the option open to the congregation for action at the annual meeting. Should the proposal fail, we have every reasonable assurance that the organ can be re-sold without financial loss. At the present time, the congregation has purchased the organ.
Case parts are stored at Dave Hollyer’s shop in Northboro (The Village Craftsman) in the expectation that his company will be refinishing the case. Mechanical parts and pipes are stored in the parsonage basement. The virtues of this organ for our use are its size and present state of repair. Its height is under the 10-1/2 feet available in our choir loft, while most organs are a minimum of 12 feet tall. Although a fair amount of work is required on the organ, it is in basically in sound shape. Most of the work involves undoing poor past maintenance and storage and the routine work required in the set-up of a pipe organ.
Data on the Organ (1981)
1) Built prior to 1895 by the firm of Woodberry-Harris of Boston
2) “Tracker” (or mechanical) key and stop actions
3) Dimensions are circa 10’4” high x 76” deep x 84” wide (the pedal extensions of 28” is included in the total depth)
4) 2 manual keyboards of 58 notes each; flat pedal keyboard of 27 notes
5) Presently has 5 stops, each representing a full rank of pipes; in addition, it is capable of being expanded from 9 to 10 ranks in the future as memorial funds become available (preparation for expansion would be built in at time of restoration).
6) Accessories include 3 standard couplers plus octave coupler; presently has “swell shoe” which would probably be removed in restoration to allow for addition of future pipe work.
7) Case work is of “quarter sawn” oak, presently covered with white paint; containing 25 case pipes with ornamental stenciling (presently covered with aluminum paint). Remarkably similar in many respects to a slightly older Woodberry organ that was rebuilt and installed in Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Quincy by the Andover Organ Company about six years ago.
Reference: Mount Olivet Lutheran Church 26th Annual Meeting Organ Proposal (1981) Mount Olivet purchased the organ in 1981 and restoration ensued. While in use in Abington, the organ case was painted white. The pipes were covered in a silver-colored aluminum paint (Molly Porter referred to this as “radiator paint”). During the restoration at Mount Olivet, Molly Porter, known for her expertise in Early American Art, examined the pipes and offered her services to strip the several layers of silver paint, exposing the faded outline of the original hand painted floral detail. Mrs. Porter retraced the original designs and painted the floral designs in rose, yellow and blue tones. The geometric designs were painted with a gold inlay. The restoration was complete in 1982.
This Woodberry and Harris organ is a tracker organ. A tracker organ is one in which there is a mechanical link between the keyboard and the pipes. The keyboards (called manuals) and the pedal board are causally linked to the wooden trackers that connect
to the windchests which play the notes. Assembled in its new home at Saint Stephen, the “voicing” – sometimes considered a mysterious aspect of the organ — is unique. Voicing is how the pipes will sound once the organ is assembled in its new home. Voicing an organ is far more complex than tuning a piano. The voicer must first refine the tone of each pipe, ensure that it responds correctly to the pressure and speed of the performer’s touch, link the sound of each pipe to all the other pipes – and then refine the sound of each pipe even further in its
response to the acoustics of the room. The process involves making minute adjustments on each pipe – as one organ voicer put it, “to make an eight-foot flute sound less ‘shy’ or give a pipe an ‘extravagant character.'” Voicing an organ can take a year or longer. An organ is “voiced” only once at the time it is installed, essentially freezing its sound as if in a time capsule.
The mechanical action inside a tracker organ consists of many types of devices used for the playing of such said organ, as listed below:
Trackers – trackers are the portions of the action used to make a pulling motion. Trackers can be used over long distances. They are thin strips of wood, roughly 10 mm wide and 2 mm thick. Although flexible, at rest they hold their shape. Playing a note pulls on the end nearer to the keyboard, so they are in tension while the note is playing. The term comes from the Latin verb "trahere", to draw (in the sense of "pull"); cf. modern English tractor.
Stickers — used for a pushing motion; often paired with trackers. Their length is limited by the material, though most of the time, capping off at about 250 mm.
Levers — levers are used to transfer from a tracker (pulling) to a sticker (pushing), or a general change of direction, or both.
Backfalls — backfalls are used for motion over a small or short distance where trackers and stickers would be otherwise illogical to use. As a natural result, the motion also changes direction.
Squares — a specific type of lever commonly used in organs which is at a right angle. Squares can also come in a "T" shape and form.
Rollers — Wooden shafts that rotate. Used for parallel direction in vertical or horizontal motion. They have small levers on each end, like cranks.
Roller board — location upon which rollers are attached (Note: rollers are often used densely in one section of the action and so are often strongly associated with the roller board.)
Stops — knobs that indirectly control the flow of air over certain ranks of pipes. They are activated with a pulling motion by hand, and deactivated (or stopped) by pushing them shut.
Trundle — Trundles are used as a substitute for levers in the action associated with the Stops and Slider boards.
Steam calliopes - such as those built by Thomas J. Nichol in the early twentieth century, used a very simplified tracker mechanism.
Reference: Boston Chapter, American Guild of Organists
The Manual, or keyboard, console with stops control the mechanical operation of the pipes with the resulting organ voice. The present configuration of organ voices and their pipe shapes in this organ are:
Manual 1
8’ Hohl Flute (a flue pipe)
4’ Octave
2’ Fifteenth Mixture (stop is pulled halfway out)
8’ Trumpet (a reed pipe)
Manual 2
8’ Stopped Diapason
4’ Chimney Flute (a flue pipe)
2’ Principal
II Sesquialtera
Pedal
16’ Bourdon (or Gedeckt, a flue pipe)
The sound quality or timbre (tam-bur) of an organ pipe is influenced by many factors including the aspect ratio of the air column (length to width), its shape, the position and shape of the air stream at the mouth of a flue pipe, or the design of the reed tongue and shallot in reed pipes the material of construction and whether the top end of the pipe is open or covered in some way.
The Woodberry and Harris organ is used during worship at Saint Stephen Lutheran Church, Marlborough, MA. It is also featured, from time to time, in the “Saint Stephen Presents” concert series.
Sing a new song to the LORD, who has done marvelous things,
Psalm 98:1
This is a compilation of information gathered from the Boston Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, an article in The American Organist published in June 1984, an article “Hidden gems: The Masons, an 1895 organ and Bach” published in the Worcester Telegram in 2018 describing a Woodberry and Harris organ in the Nashua, New Hampshire Mason Temple (200A Main Street).
The History of the Woodberry and Harris Organ
Saint Stephen Lutheran Church 537 Bolton Street, Marlborough, MA 01752
www.saintstephenlutheran.com
Saint Stephen Lutheran Church, Marlborough, Massachusetts
The Woodberry and Harris Organ Company of Boston, Massachusetts, existed between 1888 and 1893. Its principal namesake, Jesse Woodberry, learned the trade with W. G. Vowles Organ Works in Briston, England. He moved to the United States in the early 1880’s and worked for the Hook and Hastings company in Boston. Woodberry, his brother James, and James Cole started their own business in 1886. Two years later, Woodberry and flue voicer Charles Harris formed the firm of Woodberry and Harris. The firm espoused a relatively conservative approach to organ building in the late 19th century.
Reference source: First Presbyterian Church Waynesboro, Virginia
The Woodberry and Harris organ, originally built in Boston between 1888 and 1893, found its’ home in a Methodist Church in or near Malden, Massachusetts. Norma Kent, an elder of the United Church of Christ traveled to a Methodist Church in or near Malden around 1940 for the purpose of purchasing the organ for use in the Methodist Church in West Abington, Massachusetts. From there the organ was moved to the
Congregational Church in Abington, Massachusetts.
The organ was acquired by Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, in the early 1980’s and was rebuilt by John Morlock of the Andover Organ Company. For over thirty-seven years the organ was played at Sunday worship at Mount Olivet
Lutheran. The original proposal presented to the Mount Olivet Lutheran Church at their 26th Annual Meeting to purchase the Woodberry & Harris organ contains many interesting points of information.
The History of the Organ
John Morlock, a friend of the Gerbers (The Reverend Clifford Gerber was pastor at Mount Olivet Lutheran) and, since their coming to Mount Olivet, a friend of our Congregation, has presented us with the possibility of procuring and restoring an antique pipe organ for use in our church. John is a member of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Lawrence, Massachusetts, but also a frequent worshipper at Mount Olivet. Because of the association that he has here, John has long had the ambition of finding a way of making an “in-kind” gift of his particular talents and expertise affordable by us. Recently, he was made aware of the availability of a restorable old pipe organ that is especially suited to the constraints of our building.
The organ in question was owned by Richard Westerdale, a fellow employee with John of the Andover Organ Company in Lawrence. Richard had bought the organ about one year ago at an extremely attractive price and stored it in the basement of a home of a friend in hopes of someday finding a place to live in which the organ could be restored and set up for his personal use. Suddenly, in December, the house in which the organ was stored was sold and Richard was informed that the organ must be removed in three weeks’ time (prior to 1/1/81). Several private individuals wished to buy the organ from Richard, but he was aware of Mount Olivet’s situation and preferred to see it go to a church. He, therefore, contacted John and offered the organ to us for $1,600 (a sum of less than some private buyers were willing to pay), provided we remove the organ from the Quincy basement before 1/1/81.
John extended Richard’s offer to us with the understanding that he would give his time and knowledge to the restoration of the instrument as a gift to Mount Olivet. He asked that we provide him with some necessary voluntary laborers and cover material costs. Without time to call a congregational meeting, and with the annual meeting so close in time, the church council voted to invest $1,600 in the disassembled organ and remove it to Shrewsbury to keep the option open to the congregation for action at the annual meeting. Should the proposal fail, we have every reasonable assurance that the organ can be re-sold without financial loss. At the present time, the congregation has purchased the organ.
Case parts are stored at Dave Hollyer’s shop in Northboro (The Village Craftsman) in the expectation that his company will be refinishing the case. Mechanical parts and pipes are stored in the parsonage basement. The virtues of this organ for our use are its size and present state of repair. Its height is under the 10-1/2 feet available in our choir loft, while most organs are a minimum of 12 feet tall. Although a fair amount of work is required on the organ, it is in basically in sound shape. Most of the work involves undoing poor past maintenance and storage and the routine work required in the set-up of a pipe organ.
Data on the Organ (1981)
1) Built prior to 1895 by the firm of Woodberry-Harris of Boston
2) “Tracker” (or mechanical) key and stop actions
3) Dimensions are circa 10’4” high x 76” deep x 84” wide (the pedal extensions of 28” is included in the total depth)
4) 2 manual keyboards of 58 notes each; flat pedal keyboard of 27 notes
5) Presently has 5 stops, each representing a full rank of pipes; in addition, it is capable of being expanded from 9 to 10 ranks in the future as memorial funds become available (preparation for expansion would be built in at time of restoration).
6) Accessories include 3 standard couplers plus octave coupler; presently has “swell shoe” which would probably be removed in restoration to allow for addition of future pipe work.
7) Case work is of “quarter sawn” oak, presently covered with white paint; containing 25 case pipes with ornamental stenciling (presently covered with aluminum paint). Remarkably similar in many respects to a slightly older Woodberry organ that was rebuilt and installed in Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Quincy by the Andover Organ Company about six years ago.
Reference: Mount Olivet Lutheran Church 26th Annual Meeting Organ Proposal (1981) Mount Olivet purchased the organ in 1981 and restoration ensued. While in use in Abington, the organ case was painted white. The pipes were covered in a silver-colored aluminum paint (Molly Porter referred to this as “radiator paint”). During the restoration at Mount Olivet, Molly Porter, known for her expertise in Early American Art, examined the pipes and offered her services to strip the several layers of silver paint, exposing the faded outline of the original hand painted floral detail. Mrs. Porter retraced the original designs and painted the floral designs in rose, yellow and blue tones. The geometric designs were painted with a gold inlay. The restoration was complete in 1982.
This Woodberry and Harris organ is a tracker organ. A tracker organ is one in which there is a mechanical link between the keyboard and the pipes. The keyboards (called manuals) and the pedal board are causally linked to the wooden trackers that connect
to the windchests which play the notes. Assembled in its new home at Saint Stephen, the “voicing” – sometimes considered a mysterious aspect of the organ — is unique. Voicing is how the pipes will sound once the organ is assembled in its new home. Voicing an organ is far more complex than tuning a piano. The voicer must first refine the tone of each pipe, ensure that it responds correctly to the pressure and speed of the performer’s touch, link the sound of each pipe to all the other pipes – and then refine the sound of each pipe even further in its
response to the acoustics of the room. The process involves making minute adjustments on each pipe – as one organ voicer put it, “to make an eight-foot flute sound less ‘shy’ or give a pipe an ‘extravagant character.'” Voicing an organ can take a year or longer. An organ is “voiced” only once at the time it is installed, essentially freezing its sound as if in a time capsule.
The mechanical action inside a tracker organ consists of many types of devices used for the playing of such said organ, as listed below:
Trackers – trackers are the portions of the action used to make a pulling motion. Trackers can be used over long distances. They are thin strips of wood, roughly 10 mm wide and 2 mm thick. Although flexible, at rest they hold their shape. Playing a note pulls on the end nearer to the keyboard, so they are in tension while the note is playing. The term comes from the Latin verb "trahere", to draw (in the sense of "pull"); cf. modern English tractor.
Stickers — used for a pushing motion; often paired with trackers. Their length is limited by the material, though most of the time, capping off at about 250 mm.
Levers — levers are used to transfer from a tracker (pulling) to a sticker (pushing), or a general change of direction, or both.
Backfalls — backfalls are used for motion over a small or short distance where trackers and stickers would be otherwise illogical to use. As a natural result, the motion also changes direction.
Squares — a specific type of lever commonly used in organs which is at a right angle. Squares can also come in a "T" shape and form.
Rollers — Wooden shafts that rotate. Used for parallel direction in vertical or horizontal motion. They have small levers on each end, like cranks.
Roller board — location upon which rollers are attached (Note: rollers are often used densely in one section of the action and so are often strongly associated with the roller board.)
Stops — knobs that indirectly control the flow of air over certain ranks of pipes. They are activated with a pulling motion by hand, and deactivated (or stopped) by pushing them shut.
Trundle — Trundles are used as a substitute for levers in the action associated with the Stops and Slider boards.
Steam calliopes - such as those built by Thomas J. Nichol in the early twentieth century, used a very simplified tracker mechanism.
Reference: Boston Chapter, American Guild of Organists
The Manual, or keyboard, console with stops control the mechanical operation of the pipes with the resulting organ voice. The present configuration of organ voices and their pipe shapes in this organ are:
Manual 1
8’ Hohl Flute (a flue pipe)
4’ Octave
2’ Fifteenth Mixture (stop is pulled halfway out)
8’ Trumpet (a reed pipe)
Manual 2
8’ Stopped Diapason
4’ Chimney Flute (a flue pipe)
2’ Principal
II Sesquialtera
Pedal
16’ Bourdon (or Gedeckt, a flue pipe)
The sound quality or timbre (tam-bur) of an organ pipe is influenced by many factors including the aspect ratio of the air column (length to width), its shape, the position and shape of the air stream at the mouth of a flue pipe, or the design of the reed tongue and shallot in reed pipes the material of construction and whether the top end of the pipe is open or covered in some way.
The Woodberry and Harris organ is used during worship at Saint Stephen Lutheran Church, Marlborough, MA. It is also featured, from time to time, in the “Saint Stephen Presents” concert series.
Sing a new song to the LORD, who has done marvelous things,
Psalm 98:1
This is a compilation of information gathered from the Boston Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, an article in The American Organist published in June 1984, an article “Hidden gems: The Masons, an 1895 organ and Bach” published in the Worcester Telegram in 2018 describing a Woodberry and Harris organ in the Nashua, New Hampshire Mason Temple (200A Main Street).
The History of the Woodberry and Harris Organ
Saint Stephen Lutheran Church 537 Bolton Street, Marlborough, MA 01752
www.saintstephenlutheran.com