BARBARA OWEN

Eighteenth-Century Organs and Organ Building in New England

THE first organs on the American continent were Spanish. During the first great flowering of Iberian culture in South and Central America, organs were both imported and built for the great cathedrals and churches of New Spain, which then included what are now the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. An organ is recorded as early as 1610 in Santa Fe, and there were barrel organs used in the California missions before 1700. In the more southern centers of New Spain instruments of considerable size and scope dating from the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries may still be found.

The beginnings of the organ in the east-coast colonies of North America were much more humble, however. Here the earliest date at which the use of an organ is recorded is 1703. In this year a group of German settlers known as the “Hermits of the Wissahickon” lent a small organ in their possession to the Gloria Dei Church in Philadelphia for the first Lutheran ordination ceremony to be conducted in the New World. This was a very small “positiv” type of organ which probably contained no more than three or four stops. When this little instrument first came to these shores is unknown, but in all likelihood it was brought over by these German colonists when they arrived in the latter part of the seventeenth century. It might be mentioned here that there is no foundation for the tradition that the Anglican Church in Port Royal, Virginia, imported an organ in 1700. Their own church records make no mention of an organ until 1771, and the organ possessed by the Smithsonian Institution, which long purported to be the mythical “1700” organ, has since been proven to have been built by an American builder in 1813 for a church in Alexandria, Virginia.

Although the liturgically oriented Lutherans and Anglicans may fairly be credited with the practical introduction of the organ to the thirteen original colonies, the first organ in Boston was introduced not by an Anglican, but by a Puritan. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Thomas Brattle, treasurer of Harvard College, a founder of the Brattle Square Church, and one of the leading citizens of Boston, had in his home a small English chamber organ of four stops1 in a handsomely carved oak case (fig. 352). In all likelihood it was the only such instrument in New England, and was enough of a curiosity to have been recorded by at least two diarists. In his diary entry for September 3, 1708, Chief Justice Samuel Sewall, referring to a room in which a funeral had been held, wrote, “I used to go to the same room for the sound of Mr. Brattle’s Organs.”2 On May 29, 1711, the Rev. Joseph Green recorded that he “was at Mr. Thomas Brattle’s, heard ye organs and saw strange things in a microscope.”3 It is evident from the first of these references that the organ was not new when Judge Sewall mentioned it. The question then arises as to just when Mr. Brattle acquired this little English chamber organ which was to become, upon his death, the first recorded church organ in New England. Thus far it has been a mystery which has defied solution, but a conjecture may be permitted. In 1689 Thomas Brattle made a trip to England. Born in the colonies, he had probably never seen an organ before this time, but he doubtless saw several in Restoration England, where the art of organ building was just beginning to recover from the blows dealt it by the Commonwealth, during which virtually all church organs had been ruthlessly destroyed and many organ builders forced to flee to the Continent. Brattle was a cultured man, interested in music and the arts. Did he, perhaps, fancy some small chamber organ seen in the home of a friend, and conceive the idea of owning one like it? Could he not have ordered one built for him during his stay, or purchased one already built? The answers to these questions we shall probably never know, yet it seems quite likely that, during this one visit to the Old World, Thomas Brattle decided that he would like to own an organ, and either brought one back to Boston with him on his return, or ordered one sent to him at some later date.

Fig. 352. Chamber organ (the “Brattle organ”) by an unknown maker, England, early eighteenth century.

Fig. 353. Detail from the will of Thomas Brattle, Boston, 1713.

Just as the actual date of the first recorded organ in New England is unknown, so also is its maker. There is much folklore concerning it, and it has at various times been attributed to Renatus Harris or Bernard Smith, two of the leading London organ builders of the Restoration period, as well as to the obscure Preston of York. This small organ, still in existence,4 has been rebuilt and altered many times, but the wind-chest, wood pipes, and some of the metal pipes are original.5 During its restoration in 1965 by Charles B. Fisk of Gloucester, Massachusetts, great care was taken to examine all of these original parts for clues to the identity of the builder, but none were found.

Until Brattle’s death in 1713, this organ remained a house instrument, used for secular music and perhaps in private devotions, as seemed to be the custom of certain English Puritans. In Brattle’s will (fig. 353), however, he stipulated that the organ be given to the Brattle Square Church with the condition that within a year after his death a skillful organist be found to play it; otherwise the organ should go to King’s Chapel, on the same terms.

The Brattle Square Church was founded by some of the more liberal-minded Puritans as a protest against the, to them, increasingly ingrown religion of the Mathers and other old school divines, and was known as the “Manifesto Church” because of the document which its founders drew up to justify their withdrawal from the more conservative flock. Nonetheless it was still a Puritan church, and it would not be until 1790 that its members would discard the Matherian notion that the use of instrumental music in worship was an Old Testament practice which, since it is not specifically recommended in the New Testament, must be avoided by followers of the New Testament faith. Thus, the Brattle Square Church informed Thomas Brattle’s executors that “with all possible respect to the memory of [their] deceased Friend and Benefactor . . . they did not think it proper to use the same [the organ] in the publick worship of God.”6

Brattle was a remarkably broadminded man for his age. He had vigorously opposed the Salem witchcraft proceedings (of his part in which the pious Judge Bentley later publicly repented, and concerning which even the stern Cotton Mather finally admitted misgivings), and, at the end, had demohstrated the extent of his goodwill toward the abhorred Church of England by offering the organ to King’s Chapel if it was refused by his own church—even, it will be noted, in preference to Harvard College, of which he was treasurer. Thus, in the summer of 1713, King’s Chapel voted “that the Orgins [sic] be accepted by the Church, and that Mr. Miles answer Mr. William Brattle’s letter concerning same.”7 New England possessed its first church organ.

Had the Brattle Square Church broken the Puritan ice by accepting Thomas Brattle’s small organ, Boston’s native school of organ building might have begun its development a half century sooner. Another whole generation was to come and go, however, before any change in the old attitude would be felt. The idea that God was displeased with instrumental music in the worship service, even as an accompaniment to psalm-singing, died hard, especially when reinforced by threats, such as Cotton Mather’s, that this practice would lead to “. . . the imposition of all the Instruments used among the ancient Jews. . . . Yea, Dancing as well as Playing, and several other Judaic actions.” Mather’s authority for all this is a typical piece of twisted Puritan logic. Having combed the New Testament for some indication that instrumental music was used by the Apostles or the early Church and finding none, he concluded that God “rejects all He does not command in His worship” and “therefore, in effect, says to us, I will not hear the melody of thy organs.”8

The Anglican churches were, of course, unaffected by Puritan taboos, and, during the course of the eighteenth century, imported organs from the Mother Country as fast as they could afford them. Thomas Brattle and other liberals had obviously started the Puritans thinking, however, and they spent most of the rest of the eighteenth century arguing the pros and cons of instrumental music in their worship. The volume of verbiage expended on this subject is, indeed, rather remarkable. Harvard students wrote papers on it and discussed it at their Commencements; eminent and not-so-eminent divines preached sermons and published tracts on it. Tempers waxed hot on occasions, and stubborn church members marched righteously out of the service when their minister took a position opposite to theirs. In the latter half of the eighteenth century an unidentified English gentleman offered £500 to any Puritan church which would obtain an organ and use it in their worship, but when the Brattle Square Church finally did decide to get an organ late in the century, one of its members, according to tradition, offered to give a sum equal to its price to the poor for the privilege of depositing the organ in Boston Harbor. Around the same time the First Church made up its mind that it too ought to have an organ, and solicited funds from some of its wealthier members. One of these, instead of donating the suggested sum, used it to finance the publication of an anti-organ tract.9

Most of the larger city churches, when they began to think in terms of instrumental music, were thinking in terms of an organ. The matter was somewhat different in the small city churches and the rural churches. Many could not afford an organ, and even if they could there was no guarantee that anyone could be found to play it. Still, like their larger city brethren, many of these smaller churches began to aspire toward instrumental music, especially since it offered some hope of raising the congregational singing from the low level to which it had fallen during the first century-and-a-half of New England’s existence.

A discussion of the practice of psalmody in the colonies is outside the scope of this paper except as it directly affected the introduction of organs into New England churches. It may be briefly stated that, it having sunk to so low a state as to prompt impassioned tracts and sermons from the more sensitive among the clergy and laity, two avenues of reform gradually began to develop in the latter half of the eighteenth century. One of these was the introduction of instrumental assistance. The other, favored no doubt by those who still harbored doctrinal prejudice against the use of instruments in worship, was the singing school. Many reformers backed both approaches, and indeed, by the time the reform was accomplished in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the two avenues had become a single thoroughfare. Although the earliest collections published for the use of singing schools were clearly meant for unaccompanied singing, accompaniments for certain pieces are found as early as 1804 in the Bridgewater Collection, followed in 1807 by the Hartford Collection and Newburyport Collection. From this time on, pieces with instrumental accompaniments or interludes are frequently encountered in songbooks, even where the bulk of the contents are still intended for unaccompanied singing.

As previously stated, not all churches introduced instrumental music via the organ. Particularly in rural areas, the first instrument used to aid congregational singing was the bass viol, or the so-called “church bass,” colloquially known as “God’s fiddle” (to distinguish it from “the Devil’s fiddle,” or violin, commonly used in secular entertainment in this period). The bass viol had three to five strings, and its size was somewhere between the modern violoncello and bass viola da gamba. The first bass viols were imported, but soon were being made in quantity in Boston. By the turn of the century, New Hampshire had become a center for the making of these instruments. It was a convenient instrument for many small churches—portable, relatively unobtrusive, and easily learned by any amateur with a musical bent. Many churches later added other instruments—German flute, clarinet, violin, bassoon, cornet, ophicleide, trombone; whatever was handy—and the church band was born. The next step, sometimes not taken until well into the nineteenth century, was an organ. But by then any reservations against “worshipping God by machinery” had quietly died, and the introduction of the organ was hailed as an auspicious event.

While musical education had begun and instruments were beginning to find acceptance in churches of other than Anglican tradition by the middle and late eighteenth century, the beginning of a native school of organ building was still some years in the future. Its foundations were being laid, however, by the prospering Anglican churches. The first such church to have an organ was the previously mentioned King’s Chapel of Boston, which inherited Thomas Brattle’s four-stop chamber organ in 1713. Twenty years later the first organ actually designed for church use made its appearance in Newport, Rhode Island. In 1724 Trinity Church of that town erected a handsome wooden building, which still stands in virtually original condition. To Newport, and to Trinity Church, came Dr. George Berkeley in 1729. Dr. Berkeley, a noted philosopher and later Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland, built a house in Middletown, just north of Newport, where he remained until 1731. He enjoyed his stay in Rhode Island, and made warm friends in Trinity Church. Being a man of some considerable wealth, he determined on his return to his homeland to send a gift to the church whose fellowship he had enjoyed in the New World. This took the form of a small two-manual organ built by Richard Bridge (fig. 354), which arrived and was set up in 1733.10

William King Covell unearthed several items pertinent to the Bridge organ in the records of Trinity Church. This instrument apparently arrived early in 1733, for on February 25 of that year it was

Voted: that the Church Wardens write to Mr. Charles Theodore Perchival, in Boston, to acquaint him that the organ is arrived for the Church, and that he is desired to come up here and assist us with his advice, in putting the same up, and that he shall be satisfied for his assistance in the affair. Also to Mr. Richard Munday, to desire him to come here forthwith, to advise and assist us in preparing a plan to set up the organ in the Church. The Rev. Mr. Honyman is desired to draw a letter of thanks to the Rev. Mr. Dean Berkeley, for his generous present of an organ in this Church, and likewise a letter of thanks to Mr. Henry Newman, for his care about and shipping the same, in order to be sent to England as soon as conveniently may be.11

This would certainly seem to confirm that the organ was sent directly to Trinity Church by Dean Berkeley. Charles Theodore Perchival was actually Karl Theodor Pachelbel, son of the German organist and composer Johann Pachelbel. Henry Newman was the counsel for the Province of Massachusetts in London who apparently handled the details of shipping the organ from England. The handsome oak case of the Bridge organ has the distinction of being the oldest surviving English case in America although it has housed several later organs and has had wings added to the sides, not visible in figure 354.

In the church records Mr. Covell also found some correspondence with Richard Bridge dating from 1755, in which some dissatisfaction is expressed with one of the original stops of the organ, possibly a reed stop. The pipes of this stop were returned to Bridge with instructions to either improve them or replace them with another stop,12 but the outcome of this matter is not known.

Fig. 354a. Organ case by Richard Bridge, London, 1733, in situ in Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island.

Fig. 354b. Original keyboard from the Bridge organ, 1733.

Shortly after the arrival of the Richard Bridge organ in Newport, two more organs appeared in Boston, the first in any churches since King’s Chapel acquired Thomas Brattle’s chamber organ over two decades previously. In 1723 Christ Church in the North End, a daughter church of King’s Chapel, erected that delicate jewel of a building which still graces the North End of Boston. For thirteen years it had no organ, although inquiries were made as early as 1734 into the possibility of obtaining one. In 1735 the vestry seriously considered the offer of “an Organ with eight stops or more” by a party in Philadelphia, to the point of starting a subscription to raise the money to buy it.13 Nothing further seems to have been done with regard to the Philadelphia organ, however, and in August of 1736 William Price received a letter from William Claggett of Newport, Rhode Island, concerning an organ which the latter had for sale.14 Price, although a merchant by profession, was also an amateur musician, and had played the Brattle organ at King’s Chapel for a year prior to the advent of Edward Enstone from London.

Claggett’s organ was of definite interest to Christ Church, despite the fact that they tried to haggle down the price from £400 to £300. The vestry empowered Price and Stephen Deblois, another musical amateur who later played the organs in both King’s Chapel and Christ Church, to go to Newport to inspect the instrument at the church’s expense. Mr. Price alone went to Newport, in September of 1736, reporting back that “said Organ is readily worth the money demanded for the same and very suitable for our Church.”15

The vestry acted on Price’s recommendation, paying Claggett £320 for the organ and preparing the gallery of the church for its installation. Claggett himself installed the instrument in late October, and it was used in a service for the first time early in December of 1736, the organist being William Price. There are several curious things about this organ. Apparently it either had no case, or its original case did not suit the church, for in April of 1737 Price submitted a bill (which he actually paid himself as his contribution to the organ) for “projecting and drawing a draft of ye Organ” (i.e., the organ case), “directing ye workmen to making it” and “drawing 6 large Pennels [sic] of Cut Work. . . . Ditto 6 smaller.”16 It would seem also that the organ was a rather poor and defective one, for beginning in 1743 and recurring repeatedly in the church records from then on are payments to Thomas Johnston, James Buck, and a Mr. Halliburton for altering and repairing Claggett’s organ.

Unfortunately, no description of this organ exists, and it is not known whether it had one manual or two. A far greater mystery, however, is the question of who actually made it. The previously mentioned fact of its constant need for repairs could indicate one of two things: that it was, when purchased, already an old organ; or, that it was a somewhat amateurish creation of Claggett himself. The fact that it apparently had no outer case when purchased might point to the latter assumption—unless, of course, its original case was so simple that the church felt a more elaborate one was needed. Our knowledge of Claggett throws little further light on the matter of whether or not he was the actual builder of Christ Church’s organ—which would, indeed, have made him the first organ builder in New England. He is believed to have been born in Wales in 1696, came to Boston some time prior to 1714, when he married Mary Armstrong of that city, and moved to Newport in 1716. His primary occupation was that of clockmaker, and he is referred to by clock historians as being “among the earliest builders of fine clocks in America,” along with Benjamin Bagnall of Boston and Peter Stretch of Philadelphia.17 That he was a clockmaker should in itself be enough to establish him as a man of considerable mechanical skill, but he was also a dabbler in the then novel science of electricity, and, as an engraver, he printed paper money for Rhode Island in 1738. He made at least one large and elegant clock with a movement of ten bells which played two current English ditties, and one writer cites an unidentified 1725 source as referring to him as a “musical instrument maker,”18 but none of these facts is really sufficient to establish him as an organ builder. Indeed, the organ which was sold to Christ Church is the only musical instrument of which there is any record in connection with William Claggett.

There is one fact, or perhaps absence of fact, which inveighs rather strongly against the possibility of Claggett’s having been an organ builder, however. A great many references have been found to the repairing, altering, and tuning of the organs in Christ Church, Boston, and in Trinity Church, Newport, where Claggett lived from 1716 to his death in 1749. It is true that he did indeed set up the organ which he sold to Christ Church, but this is the first and last record of his having done anything whatever to it, all subsequent tuning and repairs having been executed by a variety of other persons. What is much more pertinent, however, is that when Trinity Church in Newport received Dean Berkeley’s gift in 1733, individuals from Boston had to be asked to set up this organ. This was only three years prior to the sale of Claggett’s organ to Christ Church, and he was at that time a well-known figure in Newport. Surely if he were an organ builder the members of Trinity Church would have known of it, even though, being a Baptist, he had no distinct connection with that church. Even assuming that the Christ Church organ was the first which he had built, it is likely that thereafter he would have been asked to at least tune Trinity Church’s organ. But instead, in the vestry’s letter to Richard Bridge in 1755 (only six years after Claggett’s death) this revealing passage appears: “We waited so long in hopes an organ builder might accidentally come here, but as there is no one expected now, we hope for the credit of your organ, you’ll repair this to your satisfaction . . . ,”19 This letter was written, as may be recalled, concerning the unidentified set of pipes which had never worked properly since the organ was installed in 1733. Indeed, although Bridge sent another organ to the colonies in 1756 (for King’s Chapel), and requests for a new stop to replace the defective one were made again in 1769, 1770, and 1774, there is no indication that the church’s desires in this matter were ever satisfied. The church was so insistent in its attempts to rectify this defect in the Bridge organ that it seems hard to believe that it would have overlooked a local organ builder had one in fact existed, no matter how rank an amateur he might have been. In view of this, it seems more likely that the organ which Claggett sold to Christ Church in 1736 was either one which he had imported from England for such a purpose or, quite possibly, a chamber organ which he had had for his own use and for some reason decided to dispose of. Considering the station in life which he occupied as a successful artisan in a prospering seaport community, this latter assumption—while it must remain an assumption for want of better proof—seems much more likely than the assumption that, in a time and place where information on the art was severely limited, he was the actual builder of the Christ Church organ.

In April of 1734 the cornerstone was laid for the third Anglican church to be founded in Boston. This was Trinity Church, serving parishioners in the then newly settled southwest corner of the town. The building was completed in 1735, and although some sources state that it possessed an organ as early as 1736 or 1737, the church records are silent with regard to organs until 1744. In November of that year a two-manual instrument built by Abraham Jordan of London arrived in the port of Boston on the good ship Swan, destined for Trinity Church. With this organ came detailed directions for setting it up, which are preserved in the church’s archives.20 So detailed, indeed, are these directions, that a great deal of information about the contents and appearance of the organ can be gleaned from them.

This first two-manual organ in Boston—possibly the first actually built expressly as a church organ—contained thirteen stops and had, of course, no pedals. The main case was in five sections, three towers and two flats, the flats being surmounted by decorations in the form of gilded urns and the towers having gilded pipe shades. The keydesk was attached to the main case and enclosed by doors. In addition, there was a chaire (ruckpositiv) division on the gallery rail, resembling the main case, but smaller in size. The treble portion of the chaire pipework was enclosed in a primitive “guillotine”-type swellbox, basically an “echo” box with an opening covered by a vertically sliding panel controlled by the player’s foot. It must be remembered in this context that Jordan was claimed as the inventor of the swellbox, having first introduced such a device in his organ for St. Magnus Martyr Church in London, built in 1712. Although a similar mechanism had been in use at an earlier date by the Portuguese, Jordan, if not actually the inventor (or reinventor), does indeed seem to have been the first to have introduced the idea to England.

The organ was blown by two diagonal bellows weighted with forty-four pounds each. The case was of fair size, the width of it being 10 feet 2 inches, the depth 6 feet 9½ inches, and the height to the impost 7 feet 7 inches. As the portion of the case above the impost is usually somewhat taller in proportion to the part below, the total height of this case was probably something in the vicinity of from 15 feet to 17 feet.

To the directions Jordan appended a little testimonial, giving locations of some of his recent work in England, and stated that the Trinity organ, while in his workshop, was tried and approved by “Mr. Hendall our great Master”—undoubtedly Georg Frederic Handel—as well as John Robinson, organist of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, London. “They all allow & say yours is as good an Instrument for wt it contains as ever went out of England,” stated Mr. Jordan. The organ cost £300, which, added to the shipping costs, brought the total paid by the church to £362.3.7.

The organ was probably set up by people having little experience with that sort of work, and thus Jordan included a “tunning brass” (tuning cone) with instructions to tune the organ to the bass of the stopped diapason. One hopes that the stoppers in these pipes did not change their position much with the jarring of their long ocean voyage! Jordan also gave optimistic advice on the alleviating of cyphers (notes which sound when they shouldn’t): “if a key speaks without touching,” he said, “then open or unscrew the Foreboard and take a goose feather and brush ye pallet & all will be right.”

That the organ presented a pleasing aspect in the church is attested to by an entry in the journal of Capt. Goelet, a visitor to Boston, who heard the organ on October 14, 1750, shortly after its installation:

This Build is very Plain without, with Large Sash Windows, But within Verry Neat and Comodius, the Architect Modren, with a Very Neat Little Oargan Pretily Embelished, this Church hav^g no Steeple Looks more Like a Prespetarian Meeting House.21

Early in the nineteenth century the organ seems to have fallen into a poor state of repair. The then organist, Peter Albrecht van Hagen (1781–1837), who occupied the position at Trinity Church from 1801 to 1809, saw fit to discuss the matter in some detail in a letter (unfortunately undated) found in the church records. Most of the troubles seemed to be the “Common Case with an Organ which is getting old,” as van Hagen put it—moth-eaten felts, cracked bellows leather, sticking keys, oxidation of pipe metal, “Verdegrease” on reed tongues, leaks, and rattles. The petition ends with a request for the addition of pedals to the organ and a raise in salary for the organist.22 Apparently van Hagen’s plea was not in vain, for in 1808 the Jordan organ was repaired by William Goodrich (1777–1833).23

In 1829 the church erected a new granite edifice, to which the old organ was moved. No further description of it is found until 1834, however, when an anonymous writer in New-England Magazine gave the following description, supplied by “a gentleman amateur, the son of a former rector.”

It is of moderate size, with two rows of keys, and consists of a great organ and swell. When played full, it has good body of tone, and all the stops mix well. But the solo stops, played as such, are not good, especially the reeds. The organ was put up again in the new edifice, where it still remains; but it is altogether insufficient in power, as well as in variety and excellence, for Trinity Church.24

The 1834 article also suggests that the organ was secondhand, and came from Salisbury Cathedral or some other Salisbury church. The previously mentioned description in the church records would seem to negate this suggestion, however, as does the fact that Salisbury Cathedral erected a splendid four-manual organ by Harris in 1710, which was still in use in 1744. In addition, research by a Salisbury historian, Miss Betty Matthews, fails to discover any local church which might have sold an old organ between 1735 and 1745.25

The Jordan organ remained in use until another English instrument was purchased in 1837. It is said to have been sent to a church in Pittsfield, but has long since vanished.

North of Boston, the thriving seaport town of Salem was rivaling its neighbors in growth and wealth. St. Peter’s Church in that town had recently put up a new building, and, feeling the need of an organ for their new structure, its members began to take up a subscription for one. Thus, in 1743, “John Clarke, Esq., imported an organ for the church, the first to be set up in the town, and John Young was engaged to put it in place. The cost of the Organ was £382, a generous part of which was paid by Mr. Clarke.”26 The church minutes for October 5, 1743, put it more succinctly: “Voted, that Capt. John Clark have leave to put up his organ in St. Peter’s Church.”27 Little else is known about this organ, probably a chamber organ, which was replaced in 1754 by one built by Thomas Johnston of Boston.28

Of all the organs mentioned thus far, at least two had two keyboards, but the first three-manual organ of which there is any record in a New England church was built in 1756 by Richard Bridge of London for King’s Chapel (see fig. 354), replacing the over-fifty-year-old Brattle organ, which was sold to St. Paul’s Church in Newburyport. This Bridge organ was the first of three English instruments destined to have a profound influence on Boston organ building in the next fifty years.

Richard Bridge was one of the more notable eighteenth-century English organ builders. Said to have been trained by John Harris, and a contemporary of John Byfield, his case designs and tonal work were firmly rooted in the turn-of-the-century tradition established by Renatus Harris. As noted, Bridge had already built one organ for an American church—Dean Berkeley’s gift to Trinity Church in Newport—and for many years it was thought to have been his only instrument in the colonies, due to a persistent but erroneous legend originating some time in the nineteenth century to the effect that the builder of the King’s Chapel organ was one Adrian or Adam Smith. Not only are British organ historians unable to identify any builder of this name, but the records of King’s Chapel contain the letter written to the church officers of June 15, 1756, from Thomlinson, Trecothick, and Company of London, the agents commissioned to procure the organ, here quoted in full:

London, 15th June, 1756

Gent^ṣ,—We have at length the Pleasure of inclosing your Invoice Bill of Lading for your Organ, w^c̣ḥ s ship’d on board the “Beaver,” Cap^ṭ Farr, and cost £571.12s.2d—it has been very thoroughly tried by Mr. Stanley and several other of the most noted Organists who agree in pronouncing it a fine toned, compleat Instrument.—we have no other fear about it than that of its meeting an Accident on its way to you.

Inclosed are some directions from Mr. Bridges; also a Certificate from some of the Gent^ṣ who have tried it.—the Alteration made was judged quite necessary, and indeed Mr. Stanley is of the Opinion that it would have been as compleat, altho’ some other parts of the Direction had been disregarded.

Mr. Bridges has found it a very hard bargain; and to enable him to carry it thro, we have been obliged to advance him part of the money some time ago, and to pay him the whole remainder on delivery.29

This letter, incidentally, also debunks another popular myth concerning the 1756 King’s Chapel organ which holds that it was selected or approved by Handel. From the above it will be seen that it was not Handel but the blind John Stanley, organist of London’s Temple Church, who judged and approved the organ.

Fig. 355. Announcement from the Boston Gazette, August 30, 1756.

The organ arrived early in August of 1756, and notice later appeared in the Boston Gazette for August 30, 1756 (fig. 355). Thomas Dipper, a professional musician from England, was brought to Boston to play the new Bridge organ, and from that time on King’s Chapel has held a prominent position of leadership in the musical life of Boston.

In 1771 or 1772 William Selby, another English musician and a composer of some accomplishment whose works were published in both London and Boston, came to King’s Chapel. After a brief term as organist of Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island, Selby returned to Boston in 1776 or 1777 to resume his post at King’s Chapel and to become a leading figure in Boston’s musical life (fig. 356).30

One of the earliest concerts of sacred music in New England history was given in King’s Chapel by Selby in 1786, containing vocal, choral, and instrumental works in addition to an unidentified organ solo.31 A similar concert was given in King’s Chapel in 1812 by George K. Jackson, another English-trained musician, and in 1815 it was the scene of the first performance of the newly formed Handel and Haydn Society.

Fig. 356. Portrait of Peter Farrington by an unknown artist, United States, 1781.

The earliest known description of the Bridge organ of 1756 dates from 1834 and, because of its critical comments, it is worthy of quotation in full:

The late Dr. G. K. Jackson declared this organ to be the best he had ever touched in America. Its chorus stops are, however, very numerous and powerful, compared with the fundamental stops. The great organ has, in addition to the stopt diapason, only one open diapason and trumpet; yet, besides the principal, twelfth, fifteenth and tierce (or seventeenth), there are a cornet of four ranks, and a sesquialter of four ranks. This multiplication of the harmonics, especially the seventeenths, with a diapason so comparatively feeble, renders this organ, when played full, too harsh and discordant. It is therefore seldom played full; and, when managed by an organist possessing good taste as well as skill, it is probably superior in effect, though not in power, to any organ in New-England. It has a great organ, choir organ, and swell, with three rows of keys. The long keys are black, the short keys white, contrary to what is usual. The choir organ contains a vox-humana stop, the only one, probably, in North-America; but it has no open diapason or dulciana. The stops are by no means numerous, there being only nineteen or twenty in all the three organs. The number of pipes, however, owing to the many small ones contained in the eight ranks of the cornet and sesquialter, is 1330. Dr. G. K. Jackson thought, that the full organ was deficient in the bass; and in consequence, a sub-bass was added, in 1825, by Mr. Goodrich. . . .32

This organ remained in use with little alteration until 1860, when it was rebuilt by the Boston firm of Simmons & Willcox. At this time, parts of the Bridge organ not used in the rebuild, including two of the wind-chests and several sets of pipes, were incorporated into a new organ for the Methodist Church of Schuylerville, New York. The King’s Chapel organ was again rebuilt in 1884 by Hook & Hastings, still retaining of some of the original stops. In 1909, however, an entirely new organ was installed. The only parts of the Bridge organ now remaining in King’s Chapel are the pipe shades, cherub heads, crown, mitres, cartouches, and other carvings from the original case, the present case being, with these exceptions, a reproduction of the original one (fig. 357).

Fig. 357. Organ by Richard Bridge, London, 1756, in situ in King’s Chapel, Boston.

From the time of the importation of the King’s Chapel organ in 1756 to the end of the century, church and chamber organs were imported from old to New England in rapidly increasing numbers, although the former were almost always for Anglican (Episcopal) churches. Except for certain other organs which, like the organ of King’s Chapel, exerted a discernible influence on the early organ builders of Boston, it is not necessary for the purposes of this study to go into great detail regarding many of these.

Until the 1750s there were no organs known of outside the Boston area, but in 1755 or 1756 Christ Church in Stratford, Connecticut, imported an English organ through the agency of the Deblois family in Boston, and in 1759 or 1760 Capt. Richard Alsop donated an English organ to Christ (now Trinity) Church in Middletown, Connecticut. After the Revolution this organ was referred to as the “Crown and Mitre” organ because (like the organs in Newport and King’s Chapel) the top of its case was adorned with those royalist emblems. No other organs are recorded in Connecticut until 1785, when Trinity Church in New Haven purchased an organ from Henry Holland of London at a cost of £157. A few years later, in 1791, an organ was obtained by Christ Church in Norwich, Connecticut.

Boston’s neighboring town of Cambridge acquired its first organ in 1764. This was a two-manual instrument built by John Snetzler and obtained through the interest of Barlow Trecothick, Lord Mayor of London. Like others in the Boston area, it suffered damage during the Revolution, and a description of its condition is found in a contemporary letter describing a service which General George Washington attended on New Year’s Day, 1776:

Unfortunately the organ could not be used. Some of the leaden pipes had been taken out to furnish ammunition for our men at the fight in Charlestown last June, and it was quite out of order, but a bass viola and clarionet played by some musical soldiers led the singing which was very good.33

Another Snetzler organ came to New England two years earlier than the Cambridge one, but, considerable research notwithstanding, its original location has not yet been discovered. It made its appearance in the little Congregational Church of South Dennis on Cape Cod in 1858 (fig. 358) and has resided there, in regular use, ever since. The church records are vague concerning its origin and local tradition adds little. Some sources say it originally came from Providence; others say somewhere in Connecticut. Possibly it was in more than one church before coming to South Dennis, but the instrument itself offers no information save the little slip of paper pasted inside its windchest signed and dated by John Snetzler, London, 1762. While it has suffered some alterations during the nineteenth century, probably at the time of its moving in 1858, it is an important instrument in that, of all the larger English organs imported to New England during the eighteenth century, it is the only one to survive in reasonably original condition.

Fig. 358. Chamber organ by John Snetzler, London, 1762, now in the Congregational Church, South Dennis, Massachusetts.

While there were a few English organs of three manuals, and more of two (or, more correctly, one-and-a-half, since the upper manual was almost always incomplete with a compass which began only at G below middle C), the majority of these eighteenth-century imports had but one manual, and the South Dennis organ is therefore typical of these. While there is the possibility that it was originally used as a chamber organ (which would be one explanation of why its early history is so difficult to trace), it nonetheless has all that is needful for a church organ of its period, and, indeed, the organ builders themselves seemed to discriminate little between chamber organs and small church organs in the eighteenth century, regarding both tonal design and case design. The South Dennis Snetzler has the divided stops common in English organs of the day, and it is possible because of this to play much of the eighteenth-century English organ literature on it, including certain of the cornet voluntaries. It also has a thirteen-note coupled pedalboard which is apparently original, and quite unusual in a pre-1800 English organ of any size. The King’s Chapel organ, built only six years earlier and having three manuals, had no pedal keyboard until one was added in the nineteenth century; this was true of other larger organs as well, including most of those built for some years after 1762. Snetzler’s organ in Christ Church, Cambridge, however, might have had a pedalboard, for some years ago a thirteen-note box-type pedalboard very similar to that on the South Dennis organ was found among some other old organ parts in the cellar of Christ Church (fig. 359). The other parts were unfortunately destroyed, and were never identified.

As the colonies prospered, chamber organs began to appear in the homes of the more cultured merchants of New England. Since record of such organs has survived only in isolated instances, particularly in cases where, like Brattle’s, they were given to a church, there is no way of even estimating how numerous they might have been. As early as 1756 the household inventory of the estate of Addington Davenport iii, the son of the first rector of Trinity Church in Boston, recorded an organ.34

Fig. 359. Pedalboard probably from the 1764 Snetzler organ, found in cellar of Christ Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Some time prior to 1798 (possibly as early as 1785, when Dr. Chauncy, the pastor, began to agitate for one), the First, or “Old Brick,” Church of Boston acquired a chamber organ by Jonas Ley of London (date unknown) which was large enough to contain a reed stop (hautboy). By 1834 the First Church had purchased a larger English organ, but the old chamber organ was still doing duty in the Episcopal Church of Dedham, having gotten there by way of the First Church in Dorchester. It has long since disappeared. Prior to 1800 the New South Church in Boston likewise acquired an English chamber organ which had originally belonged to a Mr. N. Frazier.

Without doubt the most famous and influential of these chamber organs which found their way into churches, at least since the Brattle organ, was that acquired in 1770 by the First Congregational Church in Providence. For, as Brattle’s instrument had been the first to sound in any Anglican church in New England, so this chamber organ, thought to have been the properly of merchant Jonathan Badger, was the first to enter the doors of a Congregational church. The Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles, pastor of the Congregational Church in Newport, records in his diary on July 10, 1770, that “an Organ of 200 Pipes” was rather surreptitiously placed in the church without the knowledge of the congregation.35 Benjamin West, a local musician and member of the church, spent a month preparing for his first service as organist of the church, but history is distressingly blank as far as the outcome of that service and the reaction of the congregation are concerned. Indeed, the records of the church itself make no mention of the organ or its fate. It is Dr. Stiles who records its somewhat stealthy entrance, and who likewise records its similarly mysterious exit by noting on May 16, 1785, that “the small house Organ . . . is now gone.”36 Possibly, like some of the organs in Boston, it was destroyed during the Revolution, its pipes melted up for bullets. As the first church organ in Providence, however, it did have an immediate and lasting consequence in that the Anglicans, apparently taken by surprise by their Congregational neighbors, promptly acquired an organ for themselves in 1772—from the Deblois Concert Hall in Boston—illustrating how little the difference between the organs devoted to secular and sacred uses in the eighteenth century.

No organs are known to have made their appearance in the three northern New England states until the last decade of the eighteenth century. These were without exception small instruments of the chamber-organ type, and while a few of them were probably English, a large number were among the first fruits of the native school of organ building. The first church organ of any consequence in the northern states was that built by Thomas Elliot for St. John’s Church, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1807, replacing a smaller instrument by Johnston destroyed in a fire. Although no description of it has been found, part of the casework still exists, showing it to have been a reasonably good-sized instrument, probably of two manuals, which Dr. Oliver of Salem professed to have “much admired.”37 It existed in regular use until 1914. The Second Congregational Church in Portland, Maine, acquired an organ in 1798, but it could not have been of much importance, since it was replaced not long after by one of local manufacture. The state of Vermont is not known to have contained any organs until the early nineteenth century.

Most of the owners of chamber organs in the eighteenth (and early nineteenth) century were cultured members of the well-to-do merchant class in New England. Many of these men, and members of their families, were proficient in music as amateurs, and often owned harpsichords or fortepianos as well. Even those who had not the time nor talent to master the instrument could enjoy the small barrel organs which became plentiful in this period. Advertisements for these precursors of the phonograph are frequently encountered in newspapers around the turn of the century and, while many were imported from England, some, especially after 1800, were domestic products. A few are preserved in museums and in historic houses such as the Jay Mansion in Bedford, New York, and the Black House, Ellsworth, Maine.

A barrel organ (fig. 360), presumably destined for some royalist’s home, was captured from a British vessel in 1780 by Capt. John Somes of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and given by him to the Independent Christian Church (First Universalist Society in America) of that city. The church resourcefully supplemented its two barrels of secular tunes with a barrel of hymns, and used it until 1802—one of the first organs used in any non-Anglican church in the colonies, and perhaps the first barrel so used. It still exists, unplayable, in the church’s historical collection.

Some professional musicians also owned chamber organs in this period. As early as 1801 singing master and carpenter Oliver Holden of Charlestown (see Crawford, p. 619 and fig. 340), the composer of the still popular hymn tune Coronation, owned a small chamber organ by Astor & Company of London, preserved today by the Bostonian Society in Boston’s Old State House, and restored by Douglas Brown of Groton, Massachusetts (fig. 361).38 Dr. George K. Jackson owned a large chamber organ which was sold to a man named Snowdon or Sowdon upon his death in 1823, and the ultimate fate of which is unknown.

Fig. 360. Barrel organ by Longman and Co., third quarter of the eighteenth century.

Fig. 361. Chamber organ by Astor and Co., London, ca. 1801.

In 1763 the first organ of any consequence to be used in a concert hall appeared. This was a Snetzler organ which was used in the Boston Concert Hall on Hanover Street, managed by Stephen Deblois, from 1763 to 1774. Nothing is known of it after this date, and it may have been, like many other organs, a victim of the Revolution, especially since the Deblois family were loyalists, much of whose property was confiscated. It is possible, although presently unprovable, that this is the same Snetzler organ, previously alluded to, which has stood in the Congregational Church of South Dennis on Cape Cod since 1858, and whose previous whereabouts are unknown. A place called the Columbian Museum in Boston had what was described as a “concert organ” in 1799, but nothing is known of its maker or disposition; it could conceivably have been the foregoing instrument in a new post-Revolutionary home.

Around 1790 the Brattle Square Church, which some eighty years earlier had refused Brattle’s small chamber organ, became the first Congregational church in Boston to acquire an organ. Various dates are ascribed to it, but the earliest sources point to 1791 or 1792. A letter from William Turner to Governor Hancock dating from the earlier year refers to this organ, giving the price as 250 guineas.39 Although built by Samuel Green of London (fig. 362),40 it was ordered through the agency of the music dealers Longman and Broderip of the same city. Dr. Thacher’s “Century Sermon,” preached in the Brattle Square Church on December 29, 1799, is quite explicit regarding the occasion upon which the Green organ was first used:

As an evidence of the change of public opinion, I observe that the grand and melodious organ, which now assists our psalmody and devotions, was opened for the first time on the 17th day of June, 1792. That, which eighty years before was rejected when offered freely, was then procured at a great expense.41

Fig. 362. Organ by Samuel Green, London, 1790, in situ in the Brattle Square Church, Boston (now destroyed).

A somewhat different story, however, was given by Samuel Lothrop in his history of the Brattle Square Church. Lothrop states that an organ was introduced “by a vote of the parish, passed December 19th, 1790,” but that “the introduction of the organ was not effected without considerable opposition and difficulty.”

It is well known that many were opposed to it, and that for several years it was never played but as an accompaniment to the singing; no interludes were allowed between the verses of the hymn, and no symphonies at the opening and close of worship.42

Lothrop also gives a slightly higher price of 500 pounds, with 128 pounds expended for alterations to the gallery. A few years later, in 1802, two columns were erected to give the gallery further support. From this evidence, it can be assumed that the congregation voted to purchase the organ late in 1790, that negotiations were carried out in 1791, and that the organ was actually installed sometime during the spring of 1792.

William Goodrich replaced the old diagonal bellows with a horizontal one, and at sometime a pedal keyboard was added, but aside from these, Green’s organ stood in the Brattle Square Church for nearly a century virtually unaltered, until the congregation moved to a more fashionable location in the Back Bay in 1871 and the old building was razed (fig. 363).43 An account of the last service held in the old building makes mention of the organ, stating that

The organ, though nearly one hundred years old, has lost none of that purity and rotundity of tone for which it has long been famous, and yesterday it seemed to be conscious of the peculiar solemnity of the day, so grand and beautiful were the effects educed from it. It will be of interest to state, in passing, that it is probably [sic] that a large part of the old organ will be recast and incorporated into the new one.44

For their new building (now owned by the First Baptist Church of Boston) the Society ordered an impressive three-manual organ from Hook & Hastings, which still exists virtually unchanged save for the electrification of the action. Scattered through the three-manual divisions of this organ are seven stops salvaged from the Green instrument—hardly a “large part,” but a worthwhile survival nonetheless.45

Fig. 363. Elevation drawing showing the Green organ in the southwest interior of the Brattle Square Church, Boston.

In 1798 the First Church Society of Salem voted to purchase an organ. A two-manual, thirteen-stop organ was built in 1799 for the church by John Avery of London, and it was installed in 1800. As it was only the second organ in Salem, and the first in a Congregational church, the process of setting it up drew such a crowd of spectators that the church found it necessary to appoint a committee to keep them from interfering with the work. A description of the organ is found in the manuscript collections of the Essex Institute in Salem:

The organ in the Rev^d D^r Princes meeting house Salem is of the following dimensions—its height is 7 feet, length 10 and width 5 feet. The case is of pine painted in imitation of mahogany & varnished to immitate mahogany: and it cost in London £341 Sterling, was built by the celebrated John Avery.46

The unknown writer of this description adds elsewhere in his account that “a mahogany case would have been 40 guineas dearer.” Dr. Oliver, in another account from the same manuscript collection, states that Avery was “reputed the first Organ builder for delicacy of tone.”47 This organ was replaced or rebuilt in 1826.

The Green and Avery instruments were the last English organs of any consequence to be imported in the eighteenth century, and among the very few to come from the estranged Mother Country after the Revolution. Already, even in the 1790s, a thin streamlet of American-made organs was beginning to trickle into New England churches, the forerunner of the great river of domestic instruments which would come to flood tide in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Although virtually all of the major organs in the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War were imported, the seeds of a native school of organ building were already sending forth vigorous shoots. Significant activity occurred in Pennsylvania, encouraged by the liturgical traditions of the high concentration of German colonists there. Johann Gottlob Klemm (1690–1762), believed to have once worked for one of the famed Silbermanns in Germany, was building organs as early as the 1740s, including a large one for New York City’s Trinity Church. During the 1760s Philip Feyring, another immigrant, built organs for several important churches in Philadelphia, including two Anglican ones. The still-extant cases of these two latter show them to have been of substantial size. Around this same period David Tannenberg (1728–1804), a Moravian of Lititz, Pennsylvania, and a pupil of Klemm’s, began his significant life work in this field, leaving a considerable output at the time of his death in 1804. He was the most prolific and gifted of this group, and several of his instruments remain in use today. John Dieffenbach (1744–1803), a Schwenkfelder of Reading, Pennsylvania, built his first small organ in the fateful year of 1776. Unlike some of the other regional groups which were slower in taking root, the Pennsylvania school failed to fulfill its promise, and its effective influence may generally be said to have ceased with the death of Tannenberg.

Besides the Pennsylvania builders, there was a small amount of pre-Revolutionary activity in North Carolina, conducted, however, by offshoots of the Pennsylvania Germans. In New York City, one Gilbert (or Gilfert) Ash is supposed to have built an organ around 1756, and a man named Frederick Heyer advertised organs there in 1773, although whether he built or imported them is not known.

Fig. 364. Portrait of Edward Bromfield (1723–1746) of Boston by John Greenwood, Boston, ca. 1745.

Whether William Claggett or any of the other shadowy figures who sold, tuned, and repaired organs in the pre-Revolutionary period in New England actually ever essayed to build an organ is not known. Thus far there has been found no actual record of any of them having done so, but the possibility must always exist. The first person of whom any positive record exists with regard to the building of an organ in New England is Edward Bromfield (1723–1746) of Boston, an amateur (fig. 364). This in itself is no particular cause for surprise; what is unusual is that he was a devout Puritan, a member of the South Church. It has long been known that many well-placed English Puritans, notably the poet Milton, saw no harm in the use of instruments to aid their private devotions; presumably Thomas Brattle was of this same mind. A glimpse into this attitude of the more liberal-minded Puritans toward music is given by the Rev. Thomas Prince, young Bromfield’s pastor, shortly after this promising young man’s untimely death in 1746. Having briefly described Bromfield’s unfinished chamber organ of two manuals and “many hundred” pipes, he states that it was

. . . designed not merely to refresh his spirits but with harmony to mix, enliven and regulate his vocal and delightful songs to his great Creator, Preserver, Benefactor, and Redeemer. He thought the Author of nature and music, does, by his early choristers of the air, with which the day-spring rises, teach us to awake with them, and begin our morning exercises with grateful hymns of joy and praises to him.48

Bromfield, the son of a Boston merchant, was clearly an exceptional person. Entering Harvard College at the age of fifteen, he received his first degree four years later, and his second three years after that. He is described as having been thoughtful and kind, with interests involving nature, mathematics, theology, and the mechanic arts. The organ he began, apparently from knowledge gained solely from the study of the few English instruments then in the city, was left unfinished when he died at the age of only twenty-three. Whether it ever reached the state where it was playable is unknown. It was subsequently either set up or stored in the Old South Church, but there is no record of its ever having been used there during a service of worship, nor is there any record of its having been completed by anyone. In the British siege of Boston during the Revolution the church was seized by British soldiers and used as a stable. The organ was removed and stored elsewhere for safety, but at some point during the war the building in which it had been placed was burned down.

The next person to build an organ in Boston after Bromfield was Thomas Johnston (1708–1767), who is unquestionably the first who could be called a professional organ builder. He too was a Puritan, a member of the liberal Brattle Square congregation, at least as late as 1763, when he was appointed a member of a committee to revise the psalmbook, but he may later have become a member of the then Anglican King’s Chapel, as he was interred in that church’s burying ground.

Thomas Johnston lived all of his life in Boston, and therefore it must be concluded that he was entirely self-trained in matters pertaining to the organ. There is no question that he possessed the necessary manual, mechanical, and artistic skills to learn the art. His primary occupation seems to have been that of engraver, but he is also known to have done painting, wood carving, and japanning. In addition, he was regarded as a good amateur musician. In 1739 he and a Mr. Mason (or Macon) were appointed to lead the singing in the Brattle Square Church, and between 1754 and 1756 he was paid for singing in King’s Chapel. He owned a chamber organ, probably of his own making, and it is assumed that he played it; certainly his son William did, for his proficiency on the organ was such that he served as organist of Christ Church from 1750 to 1753.

Johnston seems to have gotten his start in organ building like many another after him; by tuning and repairing other people’s organs. Between the time of its installation in 1736, and 1743, he tuned and kept in repair Claggett’s organ in Christ Church. In 1743 he made some alterations to it and repitched it a half-tone sharp, and in 1750 he is recorded as having moved some bass pipes in it. Although it is not specifically mentioned in the records of King’s Chapel, it is not unlikely that he occasionally tuned Mr. Brattle’s small organ, and he certainly was familiar with its successor.

Just when he built his first organ is not known. In 1752 Claggett’s organ in Christ Church was in such poor condition that it had to be completely taken down for repairs by Mr. Johnston. In the interval of three months during which this work was carried out he was paid £10 by the church for the use of an organ of his own. Previously, in 1741, he had lent an organ, probably this same one, to Trinity Church, while they awaited arrival of their English instrument. This was obviously a chamber organ, and we can probably assume that he built it himself, although we shall never know for certain. If he did built it, and if it was indeed the same instrument lent to Trinity Church in 1741, then perhaps it is indeed Johnston, not Bromfield, who deserves credit for being the first to build an organ in Boston. In that same year, 1752, he contracted with Christ Church to replace Claggett’s organ, but this project was not carried out until 1758 or 1759. Meanwhile, he is known to have built an organ of one manual and six stops for St. Peter’s Church in Salem, in 1754. In 1770 St. Peter’s acquired a larger organ, from England, and Johnston’s instrument was moved to St. Michael’s Church in Marblehead. In 1832 a new organ was built for St. Michael’s by E. & G. G. Hook, who took the Johnston organ in trade. Its nameboard, reading, “Thomas Johnston Fecit, Boston: Nov-Anglorum, 1754,” was recorded as having been seen by various people in the Hook factory at different times during the nineteenth century; however, it seems to have disappeared when the firm moved to new quarters in 1889.

In 1754 Lewis and Gilbert Deblois built Concert Hall, a Boston musical landmark for nearly a century afterwards, on the corner of Hanover and Queen (now Court) Streets in Boston’s North End, not far from Prince Street, where Thomas Johnston lived. The Deblois family were of Huguenot stock, and were members of King’s Chapel. Lewis, Gilbert, and their father, Stephen, were all organists, one or more of them having served as organist in various churches for nearly a quarter of a century, including Christ Church and King’s Chapel. They carried on a successful importing business on the ground floor of their Concert Hall, and their stock included musical instruments.

When the Concert Hall was opened, or shortly thereafter, it contained an organ by Thomas Johnston. In 1763 Lewis Deblois replaced this organ with a new one by Snetzler imported from London and advertised the Johnston organ for sale (fig. 365). Apparently no Boston church took advantage of this offer, and it was not until 1771 that the organ was sold, through the agency of members of the Deblois family who belonged there, to King’s Church (now St. John’s Church) in Providence. In December of 1772 it was formally consecrated, an act calculated, no doubt, to eradicate all influences of the “Festivity, Merriment, Effeminacy, Luxury, and Midnight Revellings” with which it had presumably been contaminated during its stay in Concert Hall. The music for the occasion was performed by Josiah Flagg of Boston and a small choir, and a sermon was preached “On the Lawfulness, Excellency and Advantage of Instrumental Music in Public Worship.”49

Fig. 365. Advertisement from the Boston Gazette, June 27, 1763.

Since, as has been seen, Providence’s only other church organ, located in the Congregational Church, did not remain in use for long, the Johnston organ in St. John’s soon became well known, especially since the church was often used for public gatherings. In 1791 its use by the church seemed threatened, since it appeared that a loan made by Lewis Deblois to the church at the time of its purchase had never been repaid. The loyalist Deblois family, having been proscribed, was now in London, but through its agents reminded the church of the unpaid loan. The wardens of the church responded, pleading: “We persuade ourselves that your intention is not to distress the Church; having so long experienced the utility of an organ in Divine Worship, we should deeply deplore its loss.”50 Fortunately, the matter was finally settled to everyone’s satisfaction, and the church retained the organ.

The Johnston organ was moved to the church’s new building in 1811 by a local “organ artificer” identified only as Dan Thompson who, according to accounts in the church records, did some releathering and general repairing, made two new front pipes, and set up and tuned the instrument in its new home. It was used again at the consecration of the new building on June 11, 1811, played by the blind Oliver Shaw of the Congregational Church. In 1834 the church purchased a new two-manual organ from Hook. As neither the pipework nor case of the Johnston organ was retained, it must have been taken in trade, sold, or destroyed.

The organ which Johnston built for Christ Church in Boston was almost certainly the largest he ever attempted (fig. 366).51 It had two manuals, but the number of stops is questionable, since the only stoplist of this organ to come down to us was recorded in the early nineteenth century, after the Revolutionary War during which some of its stops seem to have become lost. Its history begins on August 11, 1752 when the vestry of Christ Church

Voted That Mr. Johnson make for the church called Christ Church a New Organ with the Echo equall to that of Trinity Church of this Town, and that he be paid for it two hundred Pounds Lawful Money to be done according to the terms already mentioned & also that Mr. Johnson if he pleases make a Double Diapason in the Trebble.52

It should be remembered that in 1752, when the agreement was drawn up, the Trinity Church organ was the largest in Boston. However, by 1758, when Johnston was actually at work on the Christ Church organ, the newer and larger Richard Bridge organ had been standing in King’s Chapel, where Johnston had been singing, for two years. That he took this for his model, rather than the older Trinity Church organ, is obvious from even the most cursory comparison of the casework of the two organs, which fortunately still exists. Since the Bridge organ then represented the latest and best example of English organ building, there can be little doubt that the Christ Church organ profited from Johnston’s study of it.

Fig. 366. Photograph of case organ by Thomas Johnston, Boston, 1759, in situ in Christ Church (Old North), Boston.

The post-Revolutionary stoplist of Johnston’s magnum opus53 shows no “Double Diapason in the Trebble” (i.e., a 16-foot open diapason beginning at middle C), so it must be assumed either that it never was made, or that it was one of the stops lost during the conflict. Johnston apparently had some difficulty in collecting his full payment for this organ, for the church records show small amounts of money being trickled to him at various times during the year 1759, and in at least one instance church officials had to pay a personal visit to two of the subscribers, who lived in Charlestown, in an effort to collect their pledges. As late as 1764 Johnston petitioned the vestry requesting “some allowance in consideration of the hard bargain he had in makeing the organ,” whereupon they voted to pay Johnston an additional ten pounds, plus three pounds “for half the cost of an additional Stop he has put into the organ.”54 From the church records it would appear that Thomas Stevens and John Longley, probably cabinetmakers, built the case for Johnston’s organ, although the design and embellishments were obviously his.

During the Revolutionary War Christ Church was closed from 1775 to 1778, and the pipework of the organ, along with other items of value, was removed and stored for safety. Although a Huguenot congregation worshiped in the building at some time during its “closed” period, they apparently did not use the organ, and it was not until 1778 or thereafter, when its rightful congregation returned, that the pipes were replaced. A writer of 1834 states that nearly all of the great stops were intact, but that some were lacking in the swell. In this state the Johnston organ remained in regular use until 1808, when most of the old pipes were replaced by William Goodrich. In July of this same year Christ Church’s earliest recorded concert was given, the proceeds of which were to be devoted to the establishment of a singing school as well as the organist’s salary. Three voluntaries were programmed (none, unfortunately, by title), various chants and psalms, and two anthems (“Now Is Christ Risen” and “Ode of Musick”).55

In 1820 the vestry of Christ Church voted to rebuild the organ, and in 1821 William Goodrich provided an entirely new instrument, using only Johnston’s casework, and taking the old interior work in trade. All of this was ultimately discarded with the exception of a wooden stop (probably the 8-foot stopped diapason) which was said to have been incorporated into a one-manual organ built for the Orthodox Congregational Church of Cambridgeport.

The anonymous writer of the invaluable articles in the New-England Magazine for 1834 quotes William Goodrich as having stated that Johnston built two other organs, similar to the Christ Church instrument, for churches in Marblehead (Massachusetts) and Portsmouth (New Hampshire).56 In all probability Goodrich mistook Johnston’s 1754 organ from St. Peter’s Church in Salem as an original installation in the Marblehead church. The Portsmouth church, however, was Queen’s Chapel (now St. John’s Church), later to become the final home of the much-traveled Brattle organ. The first reference to the Johnston organ occurs in a letter from the Rev. Arthur Browne of Queen’s Chapel to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London, from which it can be concluded with some certainty that the idea of purchasing an organ was the church’s and not Browne’s. The letter, dated December 12, 1760, reads in part:

By the state of the case, which will admit of no Contradiction, you may perceive that the Parish is justly indebted to me for House Rent three and twenty years; which Debt, if honestly discharged would extricate me from all my Difficulties, which they are well able to perform having now contracted for the Building of an Organ in Boston at no less a price than 200 pds. Ster: Thus can they exert themselves in matters unnecessary, regardless of weightier ones.57

The Johnston organ remained in use until 1805, when the church and its contents were totally destroyed by fire.

Fig. 367a and b. Two pages from the household inventory of Thomas Johnston, Boston 1767.

Johnston died in 1767, and the inventory of his estate (fig. 367 a and b) included “part of an Organ” (fig. 367a). Whether the latter was a church organ or a chamber organ we do not know, nor do we know of its fate, but it does indicate that Johnston was building organs right up to the time of his death, and that, in addition to those mentioned here, he doubtless built other organs of which no record remains. Along with household items and tools of the engraver’s and japanner’s trade, Johnston’s estate also contained many woodworking and metalworking tools which could have been used in organ building, as well as such specific items as “brass tuners” and a small quantity of block tin, an ingredient of pipe metal. There is no mention in the inventory of Johnston’s own chamber organ. This is thought, however, to have gone to his son-in-law Daniel Rea, Jr., who was an amateur musician and well thought of as a singer.

Various individuals are recorded as having tuned and repaired organs in New England in pre-Revolutionary days, including many of the early organists, some of whom, as a condition of their employment, were required to do their own tuning and maintenance. If we exclude these and the highly questionable Claggett, then the names of those definitely recorded as having actually built organs in this period may be narrowed down to Bromfield and Johnston. And since Bromfield was unquestionably an amateur, Johnston emerges as the one New Englander who may justifiably be called a professional organ builder, despite the fact that this gifted individual combined organ building with several other professions.

Following the Revolution the lessening of trade with England, the liberalizing of the Puritan churches, and a growing national pride in native craftsmanship conspired to give impetus to the growth of organ building in New England. During Johnston’s last years, he made the acquaintance of a young medical doctor, Josiah Leavitt (1743–1804), who showed great interest in organ building and may even have assisted Johnston in his work. Leavitt was but twenty-four years of age when Johnston died. What he did during the period of the Revolution is not known, but the year 1786 finds him as a practicing physician in Sterling, Massachusetts. In this year his early fascination with the organ seems to have caught up with him, for he began building a four-stop chamber organ for his own use. He seems to have had some difficulty with the mechanical part of the work, and engaged Eli Bruce, a twenty-one-year-old mechanic of nearby Templeton, to assist him. Virtually all of the pipes were of wood, for although there is good evidence that Johnston knew how to cast pipe metal and make metal pipes, the process was difficult for an amateur, and required special equipment. Shortly after finishing this organ, Leavitt moved to that part of Massachusetts which is now the state of Maine, and nothing further is heard of him until sometime around 1790, when he is recorded as having repaired the Snetzler organ in Christ Church, Cambridge. This organ had been unusable since the war, most of its metal pipes having been melted down for bullets. Leavitt, again assisted by Bruce, removed the swell and apparently managed to find enough pipes to serve the remaining manual, for the organ, thus repaired, remained in use until 1844, when replaced by George Stevens. This is the first recorded organ work done by Leavitt since having built his own chamber organ, unless Leavitt is the unnamed person who made repairs to the Bridge organ in King’s Chapel in 1788.

While various Boston organists are recorded as having tuned organs in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Leavitt seems to have been the first man since Johnston’s death to essay any extensive repairs or rebuilding. Johnston’s son Benjamin, who moved to Newbury around 1770 and worked primarily as an engraver and japanner, is also said to have built organs, but thus far no tangible proof of this has been found. Leavitt’s experience was broadened when, in 1792, he assisted in installing the Green organ in the Brattle Square Church. Shortly after this, Leavitt began building organs of his own in earnest. His first effort seems to have been an “organized harpsichord,” although whether or not he made the harpsichord part is difficult to say, since Leavitt was known at other times to have “organized” existing stringed keyboard instruments, as did Goodrich later on. It was evidently a success, and was glowingly commended, as can be seen from an article which appeared in the Massachusetts Centinel for May 26, 1790 (fig. 368).

William Selby, the organist of King’s Chapel, was an Englishman who, during the late eighteenth century, was perhaps the leading figure in Boston musical circles. A testimonial from him doubtless carried considerable weight. Two other things in this article are worthy of notice. One is the note of national pride on which the account begins; the other is the implication of the widespread use and desirability of keyboard instruments in the home in this period.

In 1792 Leavitt built a small organ for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Dedham which, however, seems to have been shortly superseded by a large English chamber organ which had formerly been in the Old Brick Church of Boston. In the same year he became organist of Christ Church, a position he held until 1795. Around 1793 Leavitt built an organ of one manual and seven stops for the Universalist Church on Hanover Street, which was finished in time for the installation of the Rev. John Murray, the founder of Universalism, as pastor on October 24 of that year. Early in the nineteenth century the congregation divided, and the organ was sold at auction to an unknown individual in Vermont.58 Thus it may possibly have been the one-manual organ recorded as having been used in the First Unitarian Church of Burlington from 1817 to 1830.

Fig. 368. Announcement from the Massachusetts Centinel, May 26, 1790.

Fig. 369. Announcement from the Columbian Centinel, February 8, 1792.

Fig. 370. Description from the [Newburyport] Morning Star, November 5, 1794.

Fig. 371. Advertisement from the Columbian Centinel, December 14, 1793.

Leavitt’s name must have become quickly known among the non-Episcopal churches, for in 1794 he built an organ for the First Religious Society of Newburyport. Although not a large organ, it had a rather oversized case with “Praise Him With Organs” inscribed across the top in gilt letters. This instrument was moved to the Society’s new building in 1801, where it remained until replaced by Joseph Alley in 1834, at which time it is said to have been sold to the Unitarian Church in Eastport, Maine. If this is so, it was replaced by a larger organ in 1855.

Leavitt seems to have had an unusually good press, as figure 369 would indicate. These press notices are important in that they give us a glimpse into the thoughts of Leavitt’s contemporaries, both with regard to their ideals of organ tone and the evident support and encouragement they were then giving to native artistic and musical endeavors—a far cry from the attitudes of three-quarters of a century later, when European music and art were glorified at the expense of native talent. Little wonder, then, at the disparity in originality and output between the two eras.

Leavitt’s organ for the Universal Religious Society of Boston was described in the Columbian Centinel for February 8, 1792 (fig. 369). The Newburyport Morning Star for November 5, 1794 (fig. 370), carried an article on the completion of the organ for the First Religious Society there. Although this latter instrument was a good-sized one-manual instrument of eight stops, the size of the case seems excessively large, and one wonders if Leavitt perhaps had plans to enlarge it at a future date, which were never carried out.

Leavitt also made good use of the medium of advertising. His advertisement from the Columbian Centinel for December 14, 1793 (fig. 371), provides evidence of the practice, to continue well into the latter part of the nineteenth century, of building (or partially building) organs on speculation rather than contract. Interesting also is the knowledge that the “trade-in” principle is hardly a new one, and was probably used to good advantage in fields other than the budding musical instrument business.

Other organs built by Leavitt include one dating from 1792 for the Congregational Church in Worthington (now Berlin), Connecticut, the first in any Connecticut Congregational church, and at least one chamber organ built in this same period for Joseph Hurd of Charlestown.59 The Connecticut organ disappeared when the church constructed a new building in the mid-nineteenth century. Although Leavitt lived until 1804, he is not known to have built any organs other than those recorded here. His name turns up in the records of various churches, however, in connection with repairs to existing organs.

Organ fever seemed to be contagious in the hinterlands of Massachusetts and Eli Bruce, having assisted Leavitt in some of his organ work, commenced to build a four-stop instrument for himself. Although discouraged by friends and relatives, he nonetheless, in good Yankee fashion, finished the organ. It ultimately found its way to the Orthodox Congregational Church of Templeton around 1832, and remained in use there for several years. Just as Bruce had originally become interested in organs through being asked to assist Leavitt, so he in turn hired an assistant, a Mr. Howe of Marlborough, who in turn began to build an organ for himself. This instrument, however, was left unfinished at Howe’s death.60 Unlike Leavitt, who graduated from chamber organs to church organs and made something of a name for himself, Bruce and Howe can be credited with only a single organ apiece. Bruce, however, through his connection with Leavitt, was to play an important part in the encouragement of at least two other embryonic organ builders in his area, both of whom would eventually exceed Leavitt’s output.

The only other builder of any consequence to work in this period, and the only one besides Leavitt to produce any quantity of church organs, was Henry Pratt (1771–1849) of Winchester, New Hampshire. Henry was the son of Noah Pratt, a house joiner from Wrentham, Massachusetts, who also built a number of churches. Henry was born in 1771 and the Pratts moved to Winchester during the 1780s. There are various accounts of how young Pratt first became involved in organ building, although all are agreed that the person who precipitated his taking up this occupation was Capt. Samuel Smith, a wealthy and prominent citizen of Winchester.

The anonymous writer of 1834 in the New-England Magazine states that it was in 1798 that Capt. Smith first approached Pratt to build an organ, which was to be his first. Elsewhere, however, he mentions an organ built by Pratt in 1792,61 so a misprint in one of these dates is suspected. Julius Pratt, Henry’s son, is quoted as saying that Henry, working with his father on a church in Hudson, New York, in the year 1788, obtained the plans of an organ in another Hudson church, and, on returning to Winchester, showed the plans to Capt. Smith. The latter then commissioned young Pratt to build a similar organ, which was completed in 1789.62 In 1933 Maria Pratt Smith, Henry’s granddaughter, recounts the same story in a letter to The American Organist, with but one difference—Boston is given as having been the place where Pratt was working when he obtained the organ plans, and they were those of an English organ.63

From the above it would seem that the New-England Magazine date of 1798 was a misprint, 1789 being intended. This source makes no mention of the organ plans Pratt is supposed to have obtained, but does state that Pratt studied “a very inferior instrument” in the Episcopal Church of Claremont, New Hampshire, made by Dr. Israel Newton of Norwich, Vermont, who is said to have built at least one other organ, and is Vermont’s first recorded organ builder.

Of equal interest is the organ in Hudson or Boston which Pratt also presumably used as a model. After W. J. Bruce’s article appeared, the American Historical Record printed some letters on the subject, one from a Mr. Magoun stating that there was no organ in Hudson until 1811. Probably this 1811 organ was one built by Pratt himself for Christ Church, a fact which may have confused Julius Pratt. Certainly Boston was a more likely place to find an English organ in 1788. Trinity Church, King’s Chapel, and Concert Hall all had good-sized English organs at this time, but one suspects that it was not a church organ but a chamber organ which Pratt chose as his model. Not only would the simpler scope and construction of a chamber organ bring it more within the grasp of a neophyte, but also Pratt’s interests seem to have run in this direction, for much of his subsequent output consisted of this type of instrument, and even his church organs (none of which exceeded one manual) were little more than large chamber organs.

There were, of course, a number of chamber organs of both English and American make in the homes of some of Boston’s more prosperous and musical worthies by 1788, but a house joiner from New Hampshire was not likely to have access to them. However, there was, as early as 1785, a chamber organ of seven stops built by Jonas Ley of London in the Old Brick (First) Church of Boston. Of all the English organs in Boston, this seems the most likely to have been chosen by Pratt as his model. If it was indeed the Ley organ that Pratt studied, it was a happy choice. Not only was it built at a time when the art of building chamber organs was at its apex in England, but it was also of sufficient size to give Pratt information on all of the basic stops. In addition to the usual wooden stopped diapason and metal open diapason and principal pipes, it also had a compound stop (sesquialtera) and a reed stop (hautboy).64

Although Henry Pratt had not built an organ prior to 1788, he was skilled in woodworking, and had made fifes, violins, and clocks. He also repaired guns and watches, certain proof of the mechanical aptitude so necessary for a successful organ builder. After Capt. Smith had commissioned him to build his first instrument, he researched his project with a thoroughness quite extraordinary for a youth of seventeen or eighteen. Besides studying the organs in Claremont and Boston, he also consulted with Eli Bruce, obtaining from him the scales of the wooden pipes he and Leavitt had made. He further supplemented his knowledge from what is described as “an old Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.”65 Could this have been the famous L’Art du Facteur d’Orgues by François Bedos de Celles, which formed a part of Diderot’s encyclopedia of Arts et Metiers? If so, one wonders how and when a copy of this work, first published in 1766, could have found its way into his hands.

Capt. Smith made an agreement with Pratt to give him “. . . a bushel of rye per day while you are building it, and, if you succeed in making an acceptable instrument, I will pay you $300.00 additional.”66 Pratt completed his task a year later, in the summer of 1789. It was a chamber organ of five stops and met with the approval of Capt. Smith, who presented the finished instrument to the Congregational Church. In 1842 it was purchased by the Universalist Church, which used it until 1877, by which time it had fallen into a bad state of disrepair and was superseded by a reed organ. In 1903 it was moved to the Winchester Public Library, where it was restored by the Stuart Organ Company in 1977, and has since been used in several concerts. The stopped diapason, open diapason, and principal are made of old pine, as is much of the mechanism. Even assuming that Pratt was familiar with the process, the casting of pipe metal was probably too difficult a procedure for a novice to attempt, so the twelfth and fifteenth stops are made from the thin sheet lead that was used as a waterproof lining in tea chests shipped from England. Pratt was probably not the first or last to utilize this handy source of ready-made pipe metal; there is evidence that Leavitt and Bruce used this material also.67

Pratt was apparently in little haste to become an organ builder, for he is not recorded as having built another instrument (apparently a small chamber organ for his own use) until 1792. In 1799 he was commissioned by George Holbrook, the bellfounder, to build an organ, which was then sold by Holbrook to the Congregational Church in Pittsfield. In 1801 Capt. Smith ordered another organ, which on completion he presented to the First Parish in Northfield, Massachusetts. From this time until his death in 1849, Henry Pratt seems to have been engaged full time in organ building. By 1834 he had already built twenty-three one-manual organs of from four to six stops for country churches, as well as nineteen chamber organs of smaller size. Of these at least three are still in existence,68 and possibly more, since positive identification of his work (which he never signed) is difficult.

Henry Pratt has particular historical significance for two reasons. One is that he began building organs for small rural Congregational churches at a time when the Puritan prejudice against instrumental music was far from dead; indeed, his contributions may have helped to hasten the death-blow which dispatched this prejudice within his own lifetime. His work is also important in that it was part of an ongoing tradition, providing the link between Johnston, Leavitt, and William Goodrich. Leavitt, it will be recalled, often visited Johnston’s workshop as a young man, laying the foundations for what, some years after Johnston’s death, became a full time career as an organ builder. Although Leavitt died in 1804, he probably knew Pratt, and there is in any case the recorded connection between the two through Eli Bruce, who, while not primarily an organ builder, worked for both builders, and provided Pratt with some of Leavitt’s pipe scales. In 1800 William Goodrich of Templeton, Massachusetts, then a young man of twenty-three, spent eight months working for Pratt while the latter was engaged in building the organ for the Northfield church. After Goodrich moved to Boston, he kept in touch with Pratt, and “each made known to the other all the knowledge, discoveries, inventions, and improvements, of which they became possessed.”69 One can perceive many reasons for this friendship. The two men were but six years apart in their ages, and they shared the endowment of an inventive, inquiring, and restless intellect. The result of this was often blind alleys entered out of curiosity, such as Pratt’s invention of a wood pipe open at both ends and intended to simulate the German flute—a clever idea but impossible of execution since no way could be found conveniently to plant such pipes on a windchest.

Henry Pratt’s career actually spanned two periods in the development of New England organ building. His importance, however, stems from his early work in the post-Revolutionary period. Although he worked continuously during the important period following the War of 1812, he was greatly overshadowed by William and Ebenezer Goodrich, Thomas Appleton, and the Hooks, for whose work, in many ways, he helped prepare the way.

The period prior to 1812 saw the emergence of a number of other small organ builders, mostly part time, and largely outside the mainstream of the growing Boston tradition. Few of these builders had an output even approaching that of Leavitt or Pratt in this period, with the possible exception of George Catlin (1778–1852) of Hartford, Connecticut, who built two or more church organs in the period between 1800 and 1812, and advertised that he made chamber organs and pianos as well.70 Of the rest, most are known for having built a single church organ, and many built no more than a chamber organ or two. Still, there was a rather surprisingly large number of these semi-amateur organ builders at work in this period, in itself an indication of the growing interest in the art that was to flower so abundantly in New England during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

TABLE VIII

Church and Concert Hall Organs in New England in the Eighteenth Century

	Date	Location	Maker
1713	Boston, Mass.	King’s Chapel	unknown, English (chamber organ imported prior to 1708 by Thomas Brattle)
1733	Newport, R.I.	Trinity Church	Richard Bridge
1736	Boston, Mass.	Christ Church	unknown (either William Claggett or English)
1743	Salem, Mass.	St. Peter’s Church	unknown, English
1744	Boston, Mass.	Trinity Church	Abraham Jordan
1745	Boston, Mass.	Old South Church	Edward Bromfield, Jr. (never finished and never used in a church service)
1754	Salem, Mass.	St. Peter’s Church	Thomas Johnston
1754	Marblehead, Mass.	St. Michael’s Church	unknown, English (secondhand from St. Peter’s in Salem)
?1755	Boston, Mass.	Deblois Concert Hall	Thomas Johnston
1756	Boston, Mass.	King’s Chapel	Richard Bridge
1756	Newburyport, Mass.	St. Paul’s Church	unknown, English (secondhand from King’s Chapel, Boston)
1756	Stratford, Conn.	Christ Church	unknown, English
1759	Boston, Mass.	Christ Church	Thomas Johnston
1760	Portsmouth, N.H.	St. John’s Church (formerly Queen’s Chapel)	Thomas Johnston
1760	Middletown, Conn.	Trinity Church (formerly Christ Church)	unknown, English
1762	Original location unknown (possibly Boston or Providence): since 1858 in Congregational Church, South Dennis, Mass.	John Snetzler
1763	Boston, Mass.	Deblois Concert Hall	John Snetzler
1764	Cambridge, Mass.	Christ Church	John Snetzler
1768	Marblehead, Mass.	St. Michael’s Church	Thomas Johnston (secondhand from St. Peter’s, Salem)
1770	Salem, Mass.	St. Peter’s Church	unknown, probably English
1770	Providence, R.I.	Congregational Church	unknown (a chamber organ belonging to Jonathan Badger)
1772	Providence, R.I.	St. John’s Church (formerly King’s Church)	Thomas Johnston (secondhand from Deblois Concert Hall)
1785	Boston, Mass.	First Church (“Old Brick”)	Jonas Ley
1785	New Haven, Conn.	Trinity Church	Henry Holland
1789	Winchester, N.H.	Congregational Church	Henry Pratt
1790	Boston, Mass.	Brattle Square Church	Samuel Green
1791	Norwich, Conn.	Christ Church	unknown, probably English
1792	Berlin, Conn. (formerly Worthington)	Congregational Church	Josiah Leavitt
1792	Dedham, Mass.	St. Paul’s Church	Josiah Leavitt
1793	Boston, Mass.	Universalist Church	Josiah Leavitt
1794	Charlestown, Mass.	First Church	unknown
1794	Newburyport, Mass.	First Religious Society	Josiah Leavitt
?1795	Boston, Mass.	New South Church	unknown, English (chamber organ purchased from Nathan Frazier)
1798	Portland, Me.	Second Church	unknown
?1799	Boston, Mass.	Columbian Museum	unknown
1799	Pittsfield, Mass.	First Church	Henry Pratt
1800	Salem, Mass.	First Church	John Avery
1801	Northfield, Mass.	First Parish	Henry Pratt
1803	Providence, R.I.	First Church	John Geib

selective bibliography

Along with the specific references cited in the footnotes, certain important general sources have been drawn upon to provide material for this article.

Henry M. Brooks, Olden-Time Music (Boston, 1888).

Talmage W. Dean, “The Organ in Eighteenth Century English Colonial America” (University of Southern California, Ph.D. diss., 1960).

Leonard Ellinwood, A History of American Church Music (New York, 1953).

John T. Fesperman, A Snetzler Chamber Organ of 1761 (Washington: U.S. Government Pamphlet, 1970).

Sinclair Hitchings, “Thomas Johnston,” Boston Prints and Printmakers 1670—1775, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xlvi (1973).

Joyce Ellen Mangier, “Music in King’s Church, Providence,” Rhode Island History, xvii (July 1958).

Robert J. Reich, “An Historical Organ at Schuylerville, N.Y.,” The Tracker, v (January 1961).

Eliot I. Wirling, “Pipe Organs of New England,” Old-Time New England (Fall 1954).

1 Oscar George Theodore Sonneck in his landmark volume Early Concert-Life in America (Leipzig, 1907; repr. Wiesbaden: Dr. Martin Sändig oHG, 1969), pp. 250–251, identified the earliest concert in America as the one advertised in the Boston News-Letter for December 16, 1731, under the direction of Peter Pelham. On pp. 1–9 he also discusses the advent of public concerts in England and Europe and cites a London tavern as the location for the first concert to which the audience had to pay an admission fee; he credits the initiative for it to John Banister in 1672.

2 The revisions were published in the Bay Psalm Book (Cambridge, 1640).

3 Among these music historians are George Hood, F. L. Ritter, L. C. Elson, Daniel Gregory Mason, Albert Stoessel, Deems Taylor, Paul Henry Lang, John Tasker Howard, and Cyclone Covey supported by Walter Muir Whitehill.

4 Although Sonneck’s book Early Concert-Life in America dealt with a later episode in the history of American music, he was the first major scholar to recognize that there had been a musical culture in the fledgling years of the colonies. Other authors who supported the counter-movement were Henry Davey, Gilbert Chase, Irving Lowens, Robert Stevenson, Irving Sablonsky, and H. Wiley Hitchcock.

5 Percy Scholes, The Puritans and Music in England and New England (Oxford, 1934; repr. 1969); Henry Wilder Foote, “Musical Life in Boston in the Eighteenth Century,” American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, New Ser., xlix (1939), 293–313.

6 The cutoff point of £200 was suggested by a colonial law of 1651 concerning apparel, amended in 1662, which specified that “no person within this Jurisdiction, . . . whose visible estates real and personal, shall . . . exceed the true and indifferent value of two hundred pounds, . . . shall exceed their ranks and abilities, in the costliness of fashion of their Apparel in any respect, especially in the wearing of Ribbonds or great Boots, (Leather being so scarce a commodity in this Country) Lace, Points, &c. Silk Hoods, or Scarfes . . .” (William H. Whitmore, The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts [Boston, 1890], pp. 5–6).

7 Scholes, Puritans and Music, p. 206.

8 Scholes, Puritans and Music, p. 291–292.

9 Scholes, Puritans and Music, p. 33, states that during his search of the Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, 8 vols. (Salem: Essex Institute, 1911–1921), he found only one musical instrument, iii, 231; it belonged to Nathaniell Rogers of Rowley who died in 1654 [actually 1655]. Apparently Scholes did not search the Probate Records of Essex County, 1635–1681, 3 vols. (Salem: Essex Institute, 1916–1920), for among the many psalmbooks and bells, he could have located three citterns belonging to: Thomas Wells of Ipswich, d. 1666 (ii, 72); Samuel Winsley of Salisbury, d. 1667 (ii, 83); Jonathan Browne of Salem, d. 1667 (ii, 84); and “a drum & sticks” among the household items of Daniel Rolfe of Ipswich, d. 1654 (i, 176). These are included in Table I.

10 Scholes, Puritans and Music, pp. 36, 42–43.

11 This writer concurs with Abbott Lowell Cummings, Rural Household Inventories, (Boston, 1964), p. xiii, that the appraisers taking the inventory recorded items in the order they found them. This arrangement illuminates the colonists’ patterns of living.

12 In the case that a householder died intestate or with only a nuncupative will, the colonial Massachusetts law of 1641 regarding dowries allowed a wife one-third of her husband’s estate free and clear of any liens and incumbrances he might have incurred during his lifetime (Whitmore, Colonial Laws, p. 42). In this case the colonial laws of 1641 and 1649 concerning wills provided that the children’s inheritance be divided among them with a double portion for the eldest son. If both parents died intestate the county court of the jurisdiction in which they lived had the power to assign the portions among the children. If the children were all female they usually received equal shares (Whitmore, Colonial Laws, p. 158).

13 Thomas Bellows Wyman, Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, in the County of Middlesex and Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1629–1818, 2 vols. (Boston, 1879), p. ix.

14 All existing household inventories for Suffolk and Middlesex Counties from 1630 to approximately 1730 were read (with occasional glances at wills) from the contemporary ledger copybooks on file in the two courthouses. When an instrument was located, the entry was checked against the original inventory taken in situ and preserved in the individual’s docket file. At that time all other papers found therein were searched as well. By this means, extant original wills for those individuals who owned instruments were read as well. Still there are instances where the original will has disappeared, but a record of it exists in the ledger books. Because the various documents were probated at different times, it is rare to find an individual’s inventory and will side-by-side in the ledgers. Although there are indexes for locating the records of an individual’s documents in the copy ledger books, those in the Suffolk County Probate Registry have a high incidence of inaccuracy.

For bibliography of the Essex records, see footnote 9.

15 Instead of assigning docket numbers in chronological order as the documents for each individual were filed, which was done for the Suffolk County Probate Court Records, the clerks for the Middlesex Court seem to have filed the dockets in alphabetical order without numbers until 1871. In this year, probably for the purpose of indexing the records, the clerks first numbered consecutively the dockets filed in alphabetical order, whereupon beginning with the year 1871 the docket numbering system was converted to a chronological one.

16 Reports of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, 39 vols. (Boston, 1876–1909), I, 5. Hereafter these Commissioners’ Reports will be abbreviated as BRC.

From John D. Cushing at the Massachusetts Historical Society it was learned that the clerks of probate often worked at home. Mr. Cushing also stated that in his extensive study of the incidence of fires in New England, 1630–1820 (a typescript is on deposit in the library at Sturbridge Village), there was virtually no building left standing by 1820 that had not burned at some time. This fact coupled with high tides and other natural disasters, and the scattered files of the clerks of courts for want of a single location in which to store the records, no doubt accounts in large part for the low percentage of records which have survived.

17 The Boston newspapers which have been searched for references to music and instruments from their inception through 1734 are: Boston News-Letter, beginning 1704; Boston Gazette, beginning 1719; New-England Corn ant, 1721–1726; and the New-England Journal, beginning 1727. All published Massachusetts diaries written prior to 1735 and listed in American Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of American Diaries Written Prior to the Year 1861, comp. William Matthews (Boston, 1959), have been read along with a number of unlisted ones both published and in manuscript.

18 Several entries are plural but do not specify exact numbers. See for example Increase Gatchell’s inventory (d. 1729) for number of flutes.

19 Excluded from the statistics are the listings of instruments in plural by Enstone and Hardcastle. The less familiar instruments will be described in detail later.

20 The phrase “with his music” in the seventeenth century commonly signified a musical ensemble. Sewall’s Diary entry for July 16, 1689, corroborates this usage of the word: “Saw London Artillery Company pass by about 2 aclock. . . . Had Musick besides the Drums” (The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas, 2 vols. [New York, 1973], I, 228). Here “Musick” obviously refers to a band of music. See also OED, “music” entry.

21 See Table i for the inventories of John Paine, shopkeeper, and Robert Cutler, ironmonger, both deceased 1665.

22 See Table i for Increase Gatchell’s inventory, deceased 1729.

23 The Puritan and Separatist movements of Calvinists which came to the American continent held that each of its own congregations of believers was an autonomous body, but the movement was intolerant of other religious sects. Each Puritan congregation chose its own minister, and administered religious, moral, and sometimes civic discipline. In order to exploit the resources of the New World, the Crown gave the Puritan colonists full authority to govern all English subjects living in New England. Further, the Crown permitted the Massachusetts Bay Company to govern itself, and to locate both its headquarters and charter in New England. This freedom worked to the Company’s advantage, for the Crown had relinquished direct control over the Company’s charter and the activities of its servants, the colonists themselves. In his introduction to and compilation of The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, 1641–1691, 3 vols. (Wilmington, Del., 1976) 1, xiii–xiv, John D. Cushing compared the organization of the Company’s structure to a modern corporation: “the Governor had powers similar in many respects to those exercised by a modern chairman of the board; the eighteen Assistants might be compared roughly to a board of directors; while the Freemen, at least in the early days of the company, were actually the stockholders. These three elements, together with a Deputy Governor, were required to meet quarterly in a general court for the purpose of electing officers, admitting new members, and making necessary rules for the management of the company and the welfare of the people.”

24 In 1631 the second annual meeting of the General Court reelected John Winthrop as governor and unanimously approved an order of considerable consequence for the colony. Recorded in A Memorial History of Boston, ed. Justin Winsor, 4 vols. (Boston, 1880–1881), I, 118, it reads as follows: “And to the end that the body of the commons may be preserved of honest and good men, it was ordered and agreed that for time to come no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are members of some of the Churches within the limits of the same.” Controversy, protests, and conflict ensued, because the requirements of church membership for enfranchisement was not only in direct violation of the charter, but they created a religious elite which controlled the New England Commonwealth.

By the time Massachusetts Bay became a royal colony, the colonists had already established a firm social, political, and economic foothold for themselves. Winsor, Memorial History, I, 166, 199.

25 When an individual’s religious affiliation was not indicated the available original church records were searched. By this means a number of instrument owners’ religious connections were identified.

26 Cyclone Covey, “Puritanism and Music in Colonial America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3^rd Ser., viii (1951), 382.

27 Covey responded to the challenge and was supported by Walter Muir Whitehill. See letters to the editor of William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., ix (1952), 129–133.

28 Mr. Whitehill read volumes iv–vii, covering graduates of the classes of 1690 through 1725, of Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College (Boston, 1933–1945), continued by Clifford K. Shipton and henceforth known as Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 17 vols. (Cambridge, C. W. Sever; Harvard University Press, 1873–1975). Mr. Whitehill’s participation in the controversy is to be found in William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., ix (1952), 135.

29 Although one’s estate value is hardly a clear indication of one’s economic or social situation it is referred to here simply as another crumb of evidence in obtaining a clearer picture of the musical environment. In determining the owner’s social class, the writer has drawn the following monetary lines: below £200, lower middle class; £200–1,000, upper middle class; above £1,000, upper class.

30 The reader should be reminded that Table ii is based on literary references to musical instruments. This may tend to exaggerate the wealthier and/or better-educated component of owners, and, if so, it may create a class bias in the statistics.

31 The year he joined the Artillery Company.

32 The year he joined the Artillery Company.

33 The year he graduated from Harvard College.

34 The year he graduated from Harvard College.

35 The year he graduated from Harvard College.

36 The year he graduated from Harvard College.

37 The year he joined the Artillery Company.

38 The year he graduated from Harvard College.

39 The year he joined the Artillery Company.

40 The year he joined the Artillery Company.

41 The year he joined the Artillery Company.

42 The year he graduated from Harvard College.

43 The year he joined the Artillery Company.

44 Sonneck in Early Concert-Life in America, p. 251, and Henry Woodward in “February 18, 1729: A Neglected Date in Boston Concert Life,” Notes, xxxiii (December 1976), 250, both assume the February 1, 1733 concert was postponed until February 15.

45 The writer was tempted to include a fifteenth virginal, culled from the Suffolk County inventory (mis’l. docket) of Antipas Boyse (ca. 1640–1669), a wealthy Boston merchant, which included the following item: “. . . 1 virinall . . . In the closett.” However, other items in the list (it appeared among other effects of a gentleman’s toilet) and its location within the home, not to mention its unusual spelling (not only was the “g” missing, but it appeared in the singular), forced the writer to conclude that it was in fact a urinal.

46 James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England. Showing Three Generations of Those who Came before May 1692, on the Basis of the Farmer’s Register, 4 vols. (Boston, 1860), iv, 101.

47 For Merry Mount, see Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan, or New Canaan, containing an Abstract of New England (Amsterdam, 1637); William Bradford, The History of Plymouth Plantation, 1602 to 1648, ed. Alfred Seelye Roe (Boston, 1901); and Scholes, Puritans and Music, pp. 81–89. “Merry Mount” was a small heretical community established by Thomas Morton about 1625 in the colony of Plymouth. Over and above their moral and religious objections to Morton’s enclave, the Pilgrims found the pagan practice of setting up a maypole particularly offensive. But as Scholes points out the real charge against Morton and his followers was that they sold liquor and lead to the Indians.

For Gibbons, see Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, ii, 245; and Winsor, Memorial History, I, 282–293, 578.

48 Winsor, Memorial History, I, 578; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iii, 532.

49 Probably about one-third of the instrument owners’ wills survived and were read by the writer.

50 Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv, 210, reports that Mary’s husband, William Stone (1662–1730), died in Guilford. Perhaps an attempt to pick up the trail in Connecticut records would prove fruitful.

51 For Hammond’s Journal, see Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 2nd Ser., vii (1891–1892), 148–149. For Morton’s account of this experiment, see Charles Morton, Compendium Physicae, ed. with a biographical sketch of Morton by Samuel Eliot Morison, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xxxiii (1940), 173.

52 Sarah Foster married Col. Thomas Hutchinson, Sr. (1675–1739), in a resplendent ceremony attended by Sewall (see his Diary, I, 493). Although no journals for Thomas Sr.’s generation are extant, their son Thomas Hutchinson, Jr., did leave diaries. (See Peter O. Hutchinson, Diaries and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Jr. [Boston, 1884–1886].) In his journals dancing was a subject learned by the youth. One can assume that this interest in dancing (and probably music, too) did not suddenly spring up in the younger generation.

53 The index to M. Halsey Thomas’ edition of The Diary of Samuel Sewall identifies Mr. Hiller as Joseph; Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, v, 263, states that Joseph Sr. “emigrated from England, kept a tavern, practiced some law in the interest of London clients, but was generally known as a tin-plate worker.” Hence Hiller could have brought with him or imported a virginal which he then sold to Sewall; or was he making wire strings and possibly stringing the virginals for the Sewalls?

54 Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv, 364, states that Valentine became a freeman in 1675. The following diarists comment on Valentine’s suicide: Sewall, Diary, ii, 1011–1012; Jeremiah Bumstead (1678–1729), diary published in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xv (1861), 200; and Joshua Blanchard (1692–1748), diary published in Abraham English, “Builder of the Old South Meeting-House,” New England Magazine, New Ser., xiii (1895–1896), 397. Bumstead states: “Mr. Harris minister, & Mr. Auchmuty giving oath of his distraction, he had a funerall, and was buryed in y^e Church yard on y^e 4 day of y^e month.” According to a colonial law passed in 1660 regarding “self-murder,” any man “willfully guilty” of his own death was “denied the privilege of being Buried in the Common Burying place of Christians,” but should be buried along the highway with “a Cart-load of Stones laid upon the Grave as a Brand of Infamy . . .” (Whitmore, Colonial Laws, p. 137). In order for Valentine to have been buried in the churchyard, he first would have had to be judged non compos mentis.

55 Scholes, Puritans and Music, p. 255; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, ii, 62; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv, 536–537; Boston News-Letter, January 22, 1730.

56 Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, I, 396; ii, 468; Middlesex Probate Court Records, iii, 32, docket 10756; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, I, 291; Middlesex Probate Court Records, I, 199, docket 3420 (although the docket contains no originals).

57 Anna Maria Fay, “Some Accounts of the Life and Times of the Rev. Peter Bulkeley (1583–1659),” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxi (1877), 154. Hereafter abbreviated as NEHGR.

58 Bulkeley’s will specifically leaves “6. M. Aynsworth notes upon the 5 bookes of Moses & upon the psalmes” to his son Edward. This would indicate that Bulkeley was familiar with, if he did not possess, the Ainsworth Psalter.

The Concord Public Library has a repository of Bulkeley’s papers. Although the librarian could not specifically recall any musical references among them, the writer feels this material is worth perusal.

It might be mentioned here that neither Bulkeley’s original will and household inventory nor their contemporary copies in the court’s ledger book by the court clerk are extant. The surviving copy book is in a late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century hand.

59 Thomas Mace, Mustek’s Monument; or, a Remembrancer Of the Best Practical Musick, Both Divine, and Civil, that has ever been known, to have been in the World (London: T. Ratcliffe, and N. Thompson, 1676; facsim. repr., Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1958), p. 62.

60 Foster purchased the press from Marmaduke Johnson who had brought it from England but had been forbidden by the colonial legislature to set it up. (See George Emery Littlefield, Early Boston Booksellers, 1642–1711 [New York, 1969], p. 89.)

61 Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, ii, 222–228.

62 Samuel Eliot Morison, “The Rev. Seaborn Cotton’s Commonplace Book,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xxxii (1935), 320–352.

63 NEHGR, iv (1850), 263.

64 Ralph Day’s careful assignment in his will of his property to his heirs and his specification of their responsibilities reflect a prudent man. His wife, Abigail, was entitled to the free and full use of the parlor and cellar as well as the whole southerly end of the house. A new door into the yard was to be constructed for her; she was given free use of sundry furniture, although he specified the pots and kettle she was to have; and she was allowed free passage into the hall to use the oven and the said room [in which] to brew and wash.” She also received land and pasture and their two sons were directed to care for it for her at the expense of the estate. All this she was entitled to with the condition that she remayne in the state of widdowhood.” Should she marry, Day specified that she would be allowed £10 worth of the goods aforementioned and the sons were to be “discharged of getting firewood for her.” (Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, ii, 450.)

65 Hoar was a 1650 graduate of Harvard College who went to England where he took a doctorate in medicine. He returned to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was president of Harvard College from 1672 to 1675. Soon after his resignation from that post he died.

66 Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, Ser. 1, vi (1799), 106.

67 William S. Pattee, “Quincy Inscriptions,” NEHGR, ix (1855), 151. See also The Diary of Tutor Henry Flynt of Harvard College 1675–1760, Edward T. Dunn, ed., 3 vols. (Buffalo, N.Y., 1978), ii: 1106–1107. The writer is indebted to the Rev. Edward T. Dunn, S.J., of Canisius College for bringing the epitaph to her attention.

68 Sewall, Diary, ii, 855; Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, v, 441–444.

69 Sumner Chilton Powell, Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town (Middletown, Conn., 1963), pp. 41–42, 116–120. A portrait of Browne is said to have been the property of Henry A. Whitney of Boston in 1895. See Oliver Ayer Roberts, History of the Military Company of Massachusetts, 4 vols. (Boston, 1895), I, 283. The writer’s efforts to locate this portrait have proved unsuccessful thus far.

70 Peter Thacher’s manuscript journals (vol. I: 1679–1682; vol. II: 1682–1699) may be found at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

71 It is presently not known who occupied Hobby’s house after his death in 1715. The newspaper advertisement may be referring to balls that Hobby may have hosted in his house (he was noted as a “gay man, a free liver” [Winsor, Memorial History, ii, 540]), or perhaps Enstone (an Anglican as well as Grainger) briefly taught dance in the evenings in this house before removing to his “Large House in King Street” in September of 1720 (See Boston Gazette for September 12, 1720). Yet another although lesser possibility is that Grainger himself taught dancing in the evenings after regular school hours. If so, this endeavor was a brief one; this is the only hint that Grainger was ever directly involved with dancing.

Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1882), I, 396, quoted Timothy Cutler’s opinion of Grainger from the King’s Chapel Church Documents of Massachusetts, p. 230: “There is also one Mr. Grainger, a Churchman, who is a private Writing School Master; has about 100 Scholars, and recommends himself by his distinguishing capacity for that business.” And Sewall entered in his diary for March 8, 1720 (ii, 942): “Went to the Town-house to meet Mr. Oliver &c. Col. Fitch express’d himself as much prizing Mr. Granger’s Accomplishments to Teach Writing; never such a person in Boston before. Resolves to send his Son to him; has told him he will do so. Professes himself of the Church of England. As far as I could gather, He and Capt Noyes would be glad he might Teach in the new South-School-house.” Obituary notices in both the Boston Gazette and the Boston News-Letter for January 10, 1734, considered Grainger’s death a public loss.

72 Benjamin Wadsworth’s interleaved almanac, account book, and diary (in pencil: p. 77), Massachusetts Historical Society.

73 Foote, Annals, I, 269; Boston Gazette, December 16, 1723.

Grainger, Sir Charles Hobby (ca. 1665–1715) (whose house Grainger occupied sometime after Hobby’s death), and Enstone were all Anglicans. Both Hobby and Grainger served King’s Chapel as vestrymen, while Enstone played the organ there from 1714 to 1723. Grainger ended his private teaching career in 1733 when he was chosen to take over the Episcopalian parochial school funded by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

74 Sewall, Diary, I, 124; Winsor, Memorial History, ii, 315; Dictionary of American Biography; Charles Morton, Compendium Physicae, ed. with a biographical sketch of Morton by Samuel Eliot Morison, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xxxiii (1940). Morton, in his Compendium Physicae, Chapter 24, “Of Hearing,” p. 172, gives abstract reference to viols and violins: “Now Seeing there is Such an Agreement between the Eye and the Ear (as is before noted) the Same is the reason of Sounds in all other concords, and yet it must be confessed there are Some men have less regard to harmony in Eye, or Ear, than others tis Supposed they will not boast of it as their perfection. Some are also more pleased with the Sound than with the proportion, therefor [sic] the briskness of a trumpet or the [Squeale] of a Violin Soundly Rubb’d to make a noyse dos affect them more than the best compositions of Viol Consorts, but that is because they are more Sensuall than Rationall.”

75 Edmund Browne’s library, appraised in 1678 at thirty-eight pounds, contained 180 volumes among which were his “musicall bookes.”

76 Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, vii (1919), 251. Scholes, Puritans and Music, p. 376, abbreviated this entry.

77 Whitmore, Colonial Laws, p. 57.

78 Could the curious spelling of “Viall Inns” in Morton’s inventory refer to the association of the violin with inns?

79 BRC, xi, 49.

80 Annie Haven Thwing, The Crooked & Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston, 1630–1822 (Boston, 1925), pp. 88–89; BRC, xi, 48; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv, 201.

81 “Letter from Leonard Hoar to Josiah Flynt,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 1st Ser., vi (1799), 106.

82 The Diaries of Benjamin Lynde and of Benjamin Lynde, Jr., ed. F. E. Oliver (Boston: Houghton & Co., 1880), p. 134. For the numerous references Benjamin, Jr., made to dancing, see pp. 133, 135, 157.

83 See “The Jew’s Harp as Aerophone” by Frederick Crane in the Galpin Society Journal, xxi (1968), 66–69.

84 Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, 1 (1911), 316.

85 Daniel C. Colesworthy, John Tilestons School (Boston: Antiquarian Book Store, 1887), p. 46.

86 Roberts, Artillery Company, I, 185–186.

87 Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, ii, 88–89; Roberts, Artillery Company, I, 284.

88 The writer has examined firsthand an early pewter fife in private ownership. The instrument’s design places it no later than the eighteenth century and it could be considerably earlier. Its known provenance points to a New England origin. That Dyer was a militiaman and an ironmonger and that his “flutes” were located in his shop suggest that he was either making and/or selling fifes. Was he a second fife maker?

89 The range of the mock trumpet was f′ chromatic to g″ or b″ depending on whether or not the instrument was equipped with keys which assisted in reaching the two highest notes. This range was the same as the clarino or highest register of the true four-octave trumpet; only in the clarino register or fourth octave could a “clarino” trumpet player produce a stepwise succession of notes necessary for playing melodies. It should also be noted that trumpeters were not required to be proficient in the entire harmonic series of their instruments; because the trumpet was so difficult a player specialized in one portion of the range. See: Thurston Dart, “The Mock Trumpet,” Galpin Society Journal, vi (1953), 35–40; Caldwell Titcomb, “Baroque Court and Military Trumpets and Kettledrums: Technique and Music,” Galpin Society Journal, ix (1956), 66–70; and Colin Lawson, “The Early Chalumeau Duets,” Galpin Society Journal, xxvii (1974), 125–129.

90 Other lip-vibrated instruments less demanding of the player were also used in the Bay Colony. Madam Sarah Knight made mention of a post horn sounded by the post rider she traveled with part way to New York. (The Journal of Madam Knight, intro. Malcolm Freiberg [Boston: David R. Godine, 1972], p. 9.) The Rev. Hugh Adams of Dover, N.H., in 1724 earnestly believed that by having his two sons blow “two silver trumpets” as Jehovah had commanded before the Israelites went to war, he could evoke God’s protection of his family against the Indians. Although silver trumpets were inaccessible to Adams in the wilderness, he found “horns of cattle” to be as effective. To the sounding of the horns, he attributed the preservation of his family as well as Capt. Lovewell and the volunteer company during their first two Indian expeditions. (Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, iv, 330. See also Carleton Sprague Smith’s article in volume I of this book.)

91 Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 1st Ser., iv (1852), 12; Sewall, Diary, I, 152; “The Diary of John Marshall,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 2nd Ser., 1 (1884–1885), 153; Sewall, Diary, I, 380, 383; Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans (New York, 1971), p. 30; and the New-England Courant, November 30, 1724.

92 Raoul F. Camus, Military Music of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1976), p. 27, reported that “On 22 March 1693/94 John Mawgridge, His Majesty’s drum major general, issued a warrant ‘to presse or cause to be impressed from time to time such numbers of Drums, Fifes and Hoboyes as shall be necessary for His Majesty’s Service either by sea or land’.” Camus in his article in volume I of this book also states that in 1768 the 14th Regiment of Foot had black drummers “whom the colonel of the regiment had bought and trained for that duty while the regiment was stationed in the West Indies.” If this indeed was the case with Charles Blow, then that he was employed by three ship captains means that in fact he had been at some time owned by the three.

93 Sewall, Diary, I, 441–442; 1, 367; 1, 516; ii, 631. The levet or fanfare to herald the year 1710 was no doubt played on January 2nd because the 1st fell on a Sunday.

94 Sewall, Diary, ii, 694; ii, 915.

95 Roberts, Artillery Company, I, 139–140.

The only extant seventeenth-century drum from New England is that by an unknown maker, which descended to its donor to the Connecticut Historical Society from his ancestor Samuel Porter, who was one of the town drummers of Farmington, Connecticut, in 1708 and 1709. Decorating the exterior in brass nail heads are the initials “L D”, perhaps those of its original owner. See below, fig. 374, in this volume.

96 The grand procession of Free Masons was described in detail in the Boston Gazette for June 25, 1739.

97 Dictionary of American Biography; Winsor, Memorial History, ii, 54.

98 For a detailed study of violones and violoncellos see Stephen Bonta, “From Violone to Violoncello: A Question of Strings?” Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society, iii (1977), 64–99.

99 Sewall, Diary, I, 123–124. Although the instrument referred to in the quote is no doubt a bass viola da gamba, a family of bowed stringed instruments quite distinct from the violin or viola da braccio family, it is quoted here to suggest another use for Burnet’s “large bass Violine” outside that of chamber music.

100 Table i records the value of instruments from the harpsichord family. It will be noted that the harpsichord belonging to Increase Gatchell (d. 1729) was valued at £10. Burnet’s instrument is at least six times as expensive as any of the other keyboard instruments in the inventories.

101 “A large bass Violine” was written over an error which had been carefully erased.

102 Perhaps the term clepsicord derived from the word collapse, in the seventeenth century used to describe the state of being broken down (see OED); and the word used here referred to a “folding” harpsichord, or clavecin brisé. This instrument was invented in France by Jean Marius who took out a twenty-year patent on it in 1700. The instrument, made for traveling, was built in three independent sections hinged together, and folded into a long rectangular box convenient for transporting.

103 The manuscript diary of Benjamin Walker, Jr., 3 vols. (1726–1749), I, fol. 3 iv. Massachusetts Historical Society.

104 Lowens, Music and Musicians in Early America (New York, 1964), p. 18.

105 See volume marked cust 3/b, fols. 125–129v, in the Public Records Office, London. This and other custom records are classified as cust 3, volumes 1–8, and begin with the year 1697. For the tax on a variety of musical instruments being shipped in and out of England, see: Guy F. Oldham, “Import and Export Duties on Musical Instruments in 1660,” Galpin Society Journal, ix (1956), 97–98.

106 See Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness (New York: Oxford University Press paperback, 1971), pp. 188, 330–336, for further background information.

107 Made from sheep’s intestines, fiddle strings might have been produced domestically. The finest quality strings came from near Rome, however, where the intestines of sheep were the smoothest; hence the fascination with Italian strings which were advertised in newspapers throughout the eighteenth century. See David Boyden, The History of Violin Playing from Its Origins to 1761 (London, 1965), p. 111. New-England Corn ant, May 25, 1724.

108 Foote, Annals, I, 211–214.

109 BRC, xi, 222, 236; and ix, 2–3.

110 Foote, Annals, I, 269.

111 New-England Courant, December 2, 1723.

112 Boston Gazette, December 16, 1723.

113 New-England Courant, May 25, 1724.

114 Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, p. 464.

1 Recalled as an auction conducted by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lincoln Ketchum who operated an antiques shop in Old Saybrook at the time.

2 For the period spanning the late 1920s and early 1930s the eighteenth-century English conversation piece was promoted in this country and enjoyed a considerable vogue. Among the larger exhibits were those held at the Minneapolis Art Institute in 1930 and the New York Union League Club in 1933.

3 I am grateful to David McKibben of the Boston Athenaeum who alerted me to the situation at an early date. Subsequent material from the National Portrait Collection and the Metropolitan Museum provided further illumination. I am also grateful to Emanuel Winternitz of the Metropolitan Museum who confirmed the identification of the dulcimer, and to the many persons whose kindness in offering valuable time during one or more of the investigative steps has been of great assistance. They include: Lee Aukamp, Mary Black, Miles Chapel, Louisa Dresser, Gerald Finley, Henry Grunder, Virginius C. Hall, John H. Jennings, John Kerslake, Paul Kiehard, Sara Lichtenstein, Annette Merlis, Sir Oliver Millar, John C. Moon, Pinkney Near, William S. Powell, Jules Prown, Claudia Rummel, Harriet Stryker-Rodda, Edward J. Smits, John Sunderland, Margaret Watherston, the owners of paintings used for comparison, and the staffs of the New York Public Library, Frick Art Reference Library, Swem Library, Virginia Historical Society, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, National Maritime Museum, and the Guildhall Archives, London.

4 William T. Whitley, Artists and Their Friends in England, 1700–1799, 2 vols. (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968), I, 109.

5 Ellis Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 1530 to 1790 (Baltimore, 1953), p. 118.

6 George Vertue, ms notes, 6 vols. (London: Walpole Society, 1930–1947), iii, in Walpole Society, xxii (1934), 14.

7 Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England (London: Ward Lock: The World Library of Standard Books, [1879]), pp. 299, 348.

8 The English check was made by the Royal College of Music.

9 Reports of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, 39 vols. (Boston. Rockwell and Churchill, 1876–1909), xxviii, 53, 277. This series, containing town records, acts of the selectmen, vital statistics as well as miscellaneous papers, is cited henceforth as BRC. BRC, xxiv, 138, 193, 222; BRC, xvii, 203; BRC, xxx, 217.

10 American Marriage Records before 1699, ed. William M. Clemens (Pompton Lakes, N.J.: The Biblio Co., 1926), p. 83; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxiv (1870), 15; BRC, viii, 53; The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas, 2 vols. (New York, 1973), I, 181, 300, 328; The Notebook of John Smibert (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1969), p. 93; BRC, vii, 239.

11 George Groce and David Wallace, The New-York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564–1860 (New Haven, 1957), p. 356; Frederick W. Coburn, “The Johnstons of Boston,” Art in America, xxi, no. 1 (December 1932), 27–36, and xxi, no. 4 (October 1933), 132–138; William Arms Fisher, One Hundred Fifty Years of Music Publishing in the United States (Boston, 1933), p. 36.

12 See the study “Social Music, Musicians, and Their Musical Instruments in Colonial Boston” by Barbara Lambert in this volume, p. 422 ff.

13 Sewall, Diary, ii, 855.

14 The following is a more complete record of color: Rippingale’s once-green coat is trimmed with red, and he wears red hose. Elliston’s coat is a buff color, lined in red. Hale’s coat is light brown, and E. Low’s is blue with remnants of a salmon color for the trim. W. Low wears a rust-colored coat. Godbolt’s jacket, breeches, and hose are all dark grey. Jonathan Low’s coat is scarlet. The carpet is painted in strong tones of red against a blue field, with a few touches of yellow in the pattern. The design on the dulcimer soundboard is red.

15 Hugh Jones, The Present State of Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1956), p. 80.

16 Louis B. Wright, The Cultural Life of the American Colonies (New York, 1957), p. 13; John W. Molnar, “Art Music in Colonial Virginia,” Institute of Southern College Lectures 1960 (Farmville, Va.: Longwood College, 1961), pp. 66–68.

17 John W. Molnar, Songs from the Williamsburg Theatre (Charlottesville, 1972), p. viii (foreword by Carleton Sprague Smith).

18 Published as selection lviii, “Libraries in Colonial Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 1^st Ser., iii (1894–1895), 251–253.

19 The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover: 1709–1712, ed. Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling (Richmond, 1941), p. 85; p. 41n.

20 North Carolina Wills, 1663–1789, ed. J. Bryan Grimes, xix (North Carolina Secretary of State, 1912), 6; Primrose Watson Fisher, One Dozen Pre-Revolutionary War Families of Eastern North Carolina and Some of Their Descendants (New Bern, N.C., 1958), p. 126; North Carolina Historical and Genealogical Register, ii (1901), 153; i (1900), 58.

21 Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series: 1680–1720, ii (London: Public Record Office, 1910), 296; Lower Norfolk County Virginia Antiquary, ii (1897), 48; “Records of Hanover County Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 1st Ser., xxi (1912–1913), 58; Henings Statutes of Virginia: 1736–1763, vii (1820), 25, 197.

22 William Byrd of Virginia: The London Diary (1717–1721) and Other Writings, ed. Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling (New York, 1958), p. 455.

23 Jones, The Present State of Virginia, p. 221 (annotated note by Richard L. Morton); Louis Morton, Robert Carter of Nomini Hall (Williamsburg, 1945), p. 42n.

24 London and Its Environs Described, 6 vols. (London: printed for R. & J. Dodsley, 1761), vi, 99.

25 Mary Mann Page Stanard, Colonial Virginia: Its People and Customs (Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1970), p. 185.

26 Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, xxxiii (1925), 363.

27 The editors of Another Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1739–1741 (Richmond, 1942), Maude Woodfin and Marion Tinling, identify him as Charles City County merchant, ca. 1737–1751, Thomas Wendy; p. 13n.

28 By coincidence, perhaps, this portrait, given to Colonial Williamsburg in 1952 by Mrs. Pickney W. Snelling of Hartford, a descendant of the sitter, had found its way to Connecticut, the last provenance for A Musical Gathering. Moreover, the portrait of Dering’s Williamsburg acquaintance, Nathaniel Walthoe, with whom he visited William Byrd (Byrd, Diary, 1739–1741, p. 139) also came to Colonial Williamsburg (in 1956) via a Connecticut source, Thomas Williams, a dealer in Litchfield (Frick Art Reference Library records).

29 Byrd, Diary, 1739–1741, pp. 82–83, 131, 139, 140–149, 160, 166–167, 171–179; all refer to the years 1740 and 1741.

30 Louis B. Wright, The First Gentlemen of Virginia: Intellectual Qualities of the Early Colonial Ruling Class (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1940), p. 335.

31 References to indentured servants as musicians occur in the Virginia Gazette for January 13, 1738; May 19, 1738; September 26, 1745; August 21, 1752? October 20, 1752; and later. References to convict servants as musicians occur on July 4, 1751, and later in 1771 and 1772. References to slaves and musical instruments occur on May 5, 1738; March 27, 1746; and later. The subject is also treated in Molnar, “Art Music,” p. 69, and in Albert Stoutamire, Music of the Old South: Colony to Confederacy (Rutherford, Pa.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973), p. 27.

32 James Curtis Ballagh, “A History of Slavery in Virginia,” Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, xxiv (1895), 33–37.

33 Molnar, “Art Music,” p. 69.

34 Stanard, Colonial Virginia, p. 309.

35 Letters of Robert Carter 1720–1727: The Commercial Interests of a Virginia Gentleman (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970), pp. 22–23.

36 Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vi (1898), 3–4.

37 William Byrd London Diary, pp. 456–464.

38 Robert “King” Carter Day Book for October 7, 1722, at the University of Virginia Library.

39 Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, xxxiii (1924), 41–42.

40 At least some of these portraits were likely commissioned to be painted from earlier likenesses.

41 It is also of interest here, with regard to the fate of oversize colonial art, to note that the Last Supper had been sold at auction in a Maryland junkshop for $50 in 1840.

42 J. Hall Pleasants, “William Dering: A Mid-Eighteenth Century Williamsburg Portrait Painter,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, lx (1952), 60; Documents Collection, Virginia Historical Society.

43 J. Hall Pleasants, “Biographical Notes, 2858,” Frick Art Reference Library (1957). Dering’s move from Virginia and his South Carolina activities are expanded upon by Graham Hood in “Charles Bridges and William Dering: Two Virginia Painters, 1735–1750,” Antiques, cxii (1977), 935.

44 His name had previously appeared in Waldron P. Belknap, American Colonial Painting: Materials for a History (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 222–223. There is evidence here that he had a number of American sitters in the early eighteenth century, including Jonathan Belcher, Governor of New Jersey, and Samuel Mather, brother of Massachusetts clergyman Cotton Mather.

45 Thomas Wharton Jones, “The Pedigree of Alliston or Elliston of Essex and Kent and of Philipps of Chesham, Bucks., with that of Jones, in continuation thereof,” Herald and Genealogist, v (1870), 401–426.

46 Philip Morant, History and Antiquities of the County of Essex (London, 1768), pp. 126, 133.

47 Surtees Society, Publications, cxxxiii (1920), 104; Sir William Musgrave, “A General Nomenclator and Obituary,” Harleian Society, Publications, xlviii (1900), 146.

48 Painters and Stainers Guild, Journal entry for October 1, 1746, at the Guildhall Library, London.

1 The earliest usage of the word songster in connection with song anthologies I have been able to trace is in the alternate title of The Universal Musician; or, Songster’s Delight (London, 1737), later editions of which appeared in 1738 and 1750. Similar titles followed soon after: The Merry Companion; or, Universal Songster (London, 1739); The Ladies Delight; or, The Merry Songster (London, 1741); The Vocal Medley; or, Universal Songster (York, ?1749); Vocal Melody; or, The Songster’s Magazine (London, 1751) in three volumes; The Goldfinch; or, New Modern Songster (Glasgow, 1753); Melpomene; or, The Songster’s Merry Companion (Waltham, ?1753); The Vocal Companion; or, The Delightful and Merry Songster (London, ?1757). The first usage of the word as part of the regular rather than the alternate title appears to have been in The Polite Songster (London, 1758). The earliest-known similar use of the word on this side of the Atlantic occurs in The Mock Bird; or, New American Songster (New York, 1761). Although the exact meaning of songster as used in these titles is not quite clear, the word gradually came to refer to the collection itself rather than to the singer of the songs it contains.

1 Prior to 1790 most American tunebooks were printed from engraved copper plates. The swift increase in typographical printing which occurred in the 1790s and 1800s signaled the increasingly important role of professional printers in the field of sacred music. See Richard Crawford, “Connecticut Sacred Music Imprints, 1778–1810,” Notes, xxvii, nos. 3 & 4 (March & June 1971).

2 Statistics given here and elsewhere in the article are drawn from my unpublished index of sacred music published in America through 1810, and from the bibliography of sacred American music through 1810 which I have compiled in collaboration with Allen P. Britton and Irving Lowens, to be published by the American Antiquarian Society. The bibliography includes roughly 440 issues of sacred music: approximately 390 tunebooks (collections of 4 or more pieces) and about 50 occasional publications and pamphlets (items containing 3 or fewer pieces). More than 30 additional sacred music editions were published during the period, but copies have yet to be located.

3 The figures given here cover only English-language publications. As early as 1752 there appeared in Philadelphia a two-part work containing Lobwasser’s metrical version of the German psalter and a collection of 700 hymns, reprinted from the German publication Kern alter und neuer (Marburg: Johann Henrich Stock, 1746). Both parts contained monophonic tunes. The Philadelphia work, Neu-vermehrt- und vollständiges Gesang-Buch (Germantown, Pennsylvania: Christopher Saur, 1753; also 3 later editions), served a tradition which by culture, language, and geography was separate from the English-language tradition described here. After 1800 in Pennsylvania and Maryland some interaction between English- and German-language sacred music took place, but that issue is peripheral to this paper.

4 [Simeon Jocelin and Amos Doolittle], The Chorister’s Companion (New Haven: Jocelin and Doolittle, 1782), p. [1].

5 A similar study has recently been completed by Professor John W. Worst of Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan: “New England Psalmody 1760–1810: Analysis of an American Idiom” (University of Michigan, Ph.D. diss., 1974).

6 The tune Psalm 100 New is discussed by Irving Lowens in Music and Musicians in Early America (New York: Norton, 1964), pp. 53–55. It is also mentioned in Theodore Finney, “The Third Edition of Tufts’ Introduction to the Art of Singing Psalm-Tunes,” Journal of Research in Music Education, xiv, no. 3 (Fall 1966), p. 169. Professor Nicholas Temperley of the University of Illinois, who is compiling an index of British psalm tunes to 1750, reported early in 1974 that he had yet to find Psalm 100 New in a British source.

7 Law’s career is covered and all of his publications enumerated and indexed in Richard Crawford, Andrew Law, American Psalmodist (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968).

8 The Complete Works of William Billings is being edited for publication by Hans Nathan and Karl Kroeger under the sponsorship of the American Musicological Society and the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, making Billings the first American composer whose complete works will appear in a critical edition. Volume ii, the first volume to be published, was issued in 1977, followed by vol. I in 1981.

9 Lowens, Music and Musicians, p. 239.

10 At the beginning of this project I had some difficulty deciding what to tabulate, first choosing core repertory tunes on the basis of the number of different collections (i.e., titles) in which they appeared, and disregarding reprintings of the same tune in more than one edition of the same collection. The basis for that decision lay in the notion that one compiler’s inclusion of a tune in several editions of one tunebook should not count as heavily as several different compilers each including the tune in one edition of one tunebook. Gradually, however, this notion seemed more and more unsatisfactory, since, by appearing in several editions of a popular work, a tune probably achieved wider circulation than in single printings in several less successful works. Since the list was and is an attempt to measure popularity, however roughly, counting the total number of printings seemed preferable. (It might be noted in passing that the two methods produce remarkably similar lists.) An edition by Richard Crawford of the music in the core repertory is in preparation. It will be published by the Institute for Studies in American Music, Brooklyn College, in its Recent Researches in American Music series.

11 A statistical method which took into account the period of each tune’s popularity would have certain advantages over a mere tally of the printings of each tune and would certainly produce a different core repertory list. For example, tunes published in the Bay Psalm Book, 9th ed. (1698), Walter’s Grounds and Rules (1721), and Tufts’ Introduction, 3d ed. (1723), could achieve more than 20 printings from these 3 collections alone by 1765, since they were so often reprinted, usually with little or no change in the music. It might seem, then, that a tune popular early in the century could be included in the core repertory, even though it fell out of favor later on. Conversely, a tune appearing late but enjoying immediate popularity might replace on the core repertory list a tune with less spectacular but more persistent or enduring popularity because of the greater number of tunebooks published toward the end of the period covered here. As it happens, the present list contains one tune of the late-appearing type. Adeste Fidelis was not published in the United States until 1801; however, it enjoyed immediate and enormous popularity. There are no examples of the earlier situation, partly because musical reform after the turn of the century created a strong impetus toward reviving the earlier psalm tunes, and every tune on the core repertory list which was introduced between 1698 and 1725 either maintained consistent popularity through the whole period or regained a place in the repertory during the decade 1801–1810.

12 The compositions which most narrowly missed being chosen include 3 British items: Stephenson’s anthem “Behold I bring you glad tidings,” and the psalm tunes Castle Street and Islington; and 7 American tunes: Bethlehem by Billings, Complaint by Parmenter, Psalm 46 by Chandler, Symphony by Morgan, Victory by Read, Walpole by Wood, and Washington by Billings. None achieved more than 42 printings nor less than 40.

1 See chapter 3, “John Tufts’s An Introduction to The Singing of Psalm-Tunes (1721–1744),” in Irving Lowens, Music and Musicians in Early America (New York, 1964), pp. 39–57, for an explanation of dating the first edition of this work by Tufts.

2 Byron A. Wolverton, “Keyboard Music and Musicians in the Colonies and United States of America before 1830” (Indiana University, Ph.D. diss., 1966), pp. 146–150.

3 For a reproduction of Lewis Deblois’ trade card from which the musical stock is quoted, see this vol., fig. 434, and p. 104 of this writer’s article on Thomas Johnston in Boston Prints and Printmakers 1670–1775, ed. Sinclair Hitchings and Walter Muir Whitehill, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xlvi (1973).

4 As James Bishop Peabody pointed out in a letter to the author, Price was, rather than is, buried in Trinity, since the original burials were all dug up and scattered in the nineteenth century at about the time when the third and present edifice was erected.

5 For quotations referring to Price, see the chronology “William Price as Churchman” as well as the list of sources at the end of this article.

6 Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, 2 vols. (Boston, 1882), I, 269.

7 Wolverton, “Keyboard Music and Musicians,” p. 49.

8 Mary Kent Davey Babcock, Christ Church, Salem Street, Boston (Boston, 1947), pp. 132–134. Babcock’s book is the source of other information in this article on Christ Church’s organists.

9 Price was followed as organist by Stephen Deblois, Lewis Deblois, Timothy Buck, and from 1750 to 1753 by Johnston’s son William.

10 Reproductions of the Bonner and Burgis maps appear in John W. Reps, “Plans and Views of Colonial Boston,” Boston Prints and Printmakers 1670–1775, pp. 22–31, 40–41.

11 For a listing of sources, and a reproduction of Johnston’s trade card and other prints, see this writer’s “Thomas Johnston” in Boston Prints and Printmakers 1670–1775, pp. 128–131, 87, and passim.

12 A copy of this book which has the imprint “Boston: Printed by Benjamin Mecom at the New Printing-Office near the Town-House, for Thomas Johnston, in Brattle-Street” may date from 1760 and would establish Johnston as publisher of another edition of Walter.

13 Found in the Lemuel Shaw Papers, 1648–1923, a microfilm series published by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

14 Office of the Clerk of the Superior Court of Suffolk County, Superior Court Record No. 172920 (writ of attachment, 1765, against Abraham Stickney of Tewksbury, yeoman).

15 The Records of Trinity Church, Boston, 1728–1830, ed. Andrew Oliver and James Bishop Peabody, 2 vols. Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, lv, lvi (1980–1982) 1, 84.

16 Babcock, Christ Church, Salem, Street, p. 133.

17 Wolverton refers to the June 1763 advertisement of the organ made by Johnston which had been “formerly made use of in Concert-Hall,” and Talmage Whitman Dean, in “The Organ in Eighteenth Century English Colonial America” (University of Southern California, Ph.D. diss., 1960), p. 201, says that the Johnston organ in Concert Hall “was replaced by an imported English instrument.” The Deblois family sold Concert Hall in 1769 to William Turner, and additional information will be needed to test the hypothesis put forth above, that an organ was brought in for Flagg’s concert in 1772.

18 The letter is printed in Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham 1739–1776, published in Boston in 1914 by the Massachusetts Historical Society, and by Lila Parrish Lyman on pp. 73–76 of “William Johnston (1732–1772),” New-York Historical Society Quarterly, xxxix (January 1955).

19 Charles Evans, American Bibliography, 14 vols. (Chicago, 1903–1934; Worcester, 1956–1959), vi, no. 16205.

1 Originally imported around the beginning of the eighteenth century, it contains: stopt diapason 8′ (wood), principal 4′ (wood), fifteenth 2′ (metal), and sesquialtera ii (metal).

2 The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas (New York, 1973), p. 602.

3 Henry W. Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, 2 vols. (Boston, 1882 & 1896), i, 210. Foote cites as his source Essex Institute Proceedings, x, 96.

4 The organ can be seen and heard today in St. John’s Church (Episcopal), Portsmouth, N.H., formerly known as Queen’s Chapel.

5 Only the windchest and three of the four stops are original. The case and the other parts were made by an American builder around 1836. The fourth stop is a reconstruction of a missing original made at the time of the organ’s restoration in 1965 by Charles B. Fisk.

6 Records of the Brattle Square Church for July 24, 1713, quoted in Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, i, 209.

7 Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, i, 209.

8 Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, I, 210.

9 George E. Ellis, History of the First Church in Boston (Boston, 1881), p. 216.

10 There is a tradition that the organ was originally offered to, and refused by, the town of Berkeley, Mass., named after the bishop. However, Berkeley’s strong connections with the Newport church, and the fact that his namesake town was not set off from Taunton and incorporated until 1735 (and that the only church there was of the Puritan persuasion), would seem to place this tradition in the realm of unsubstantiated legend. Mr. William King Covell of Newport has painstakingly documented the history of this organ in “The Organs of Trinity Church, Newport,” The Organ, xiv, no. 56 (London, April 1935), 245–256, and is also of the opinion that the Berkeley, Mass., legend has no substance.

11 Covell, “The Organs of Trinity Church, Newport,” p. 247.

12 Covell, “The Organs of Trinity Church, Newport,” p. 248.

13 Mary K. D. Babcock, Organs and Organ Builders of Christ Church, Boston (Boston, 1946), p. 1.

14 Babcock, Organs and Organ Builders, pp. 1–2.

15 Babcock, Organs and Organ Builders, p. 3.

16 Babcock, Organs and Organ Builders, p. 3.

17 Albert L. Partridge, “William Claggett of Newport, R.I., Clockmaker,” Old-Time New England, xxvii, no. 3 (1937), 110.

18 Partridge, “William Claggett of Newport, R.I., Clockmaker,” p. 110.

19 Covell, “The Organs of Trinity Church, Newport,” p. 248.

20 The records of Trinity Church edited by James B. Peabody and Andrew Oliver have been published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Information concerning the Jordan organ, including the letter from Jordan, will be found in the first appendix.

21 “Extracts from Capt. Francis Goelet’s Journal, Relative to Boston, Salem and Marblehead &c., 1746–1750,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxiv, no. 1 (January 1870), 55.

22 The letter of P. A. van Hagen was printed in Dwight’s Journal of Music for October 13, 1860 (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1861), p. 232.

23 “Biographical Memoir of William M. Goodrich, Organ-builder,” The New-England Magazine (Boston, January 1834), p. 29.

24 “Biographical Memoir of William M. Goodrich,” p. 38.

25 From the author’s personal correspondence.

26 Harriet S. Tapley, St. Peter’s Church in Salem, Massachusetts (Salem, 1944), p. 27.

27 Joseph B. Felt, Annals of Salem (Salem, 1827), p. 425.

28 “Organ-Building in New-England,” The New-England Magazine (Boston, March 1834), p. 207.

29 Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, ii, 170.

30 Assuming the initials “P.F.” to be those of the subject, Nina Fletcher Little in her catalogue to the Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection (Williamsburg, 1957) identifies the subject of this painting as “Peter Farrington, said to have been a Boston organist.” Further attempts to identify positively such a person have thus far failed. A singing master identified only as “Farmington,” from Andover, is occasionally linked with Samuel Holyoke’s concerts around 1800, but nothing more is known of him.

The portrait would seem to be a personage of some importance, however, and were it not for the initials, which might as well refer to those of the painter, the subject could conceivably be William Selby, or George K. Jackson. At present this is mere speculation.

See also Sinclair Hitchings, “The Musical Pursuits of William Price and Thomas Johnston,” in this volume, p. 645.

31 For a detailed announcement of this concert, see the Massachusetts Gazette for January 2, 1786.

32 “Biographical Memoir of William M. Goodrich,” pp. 37–38.

33 Gardner M. Day, The Biography of a Church (Boston, 1951), p. 30. The pedalboard of this Snetzler organ is illustrated in figure 359.

34 The will with inventory of Addington Davenport iii was recorded in the Registry of Probate for Rockingham County, Exeter, New Hampshire, Liber 16, Folio 61. It was dated September 1, 1756; however, no location was given. It is probable that the will was made in England. According to the will of Davenport’s paternal grandmother, Elizabeth, which was dated September 15, 1756, Davenport was not in the country at the time her will was made. See New England Historical and Genealogical Register, iv, no. 1 (January 1850), 111–116, and iv, no. 4 (October 1850), 351.

35 The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, DD., LL.D., ed. F. B. Dexter, 3 vols. (New York, 1901), I, 57–58.

36 Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, iii, 162.

37 From uncatalogued manuscript at the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.

38 The “chicken wire” in the doors is for protection only. Otherwise the appearance of the organ is wholly original, and it stands as an excellent example of the type of unpretentious chamber organ found in many musical eighteenth-century homes such as that of Edward Wyer, also of Charlestown, who died in 1788.

39 This letter is quoted in full in Appendix C in the section on William Turner in this volume.

40 The photograph reproduced here is the only one known to exist of the Samuel Green organ of 1790 in the Brattle Square Church, Boston. It was probably taken shortly before the church was demolished in 1872.

41 Peter Thacher, Dr. Thacher’s Century Sermon. A Sermon Preached to the Church and Society in Brattle Street, Boston, Dec. 29, 1799 (Boston: Young and Minns, 1800), p. 16.

42 Samuel Kirkland Lothrop, A History of the Church in Brattle Street, Boston (Boston: Crosby and Nichols, 1851), pp. 147–148.

43 This drawing, in which only half of the organ is shown in complete detail, is one of a set, now the property of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, which was made shortly before the old building was razed.

44 Boston Post for July 31, 1871.

45 A contemporary mention of its removal from the Brattle Square Church can be found in: Boston Choir Register and Music Directory (Boston: William H. Gerrish, June 1872); in the author’s collection.

46 From an uncatalogued manuscript at the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.

47 From an uncatalogued manuscript at the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.

48 Thomas Prince, Panoplist, ii, no. 5 (October 1806), 194.

49 Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, iii, 192.

50 Joyce Ellen Mangier, “The Deblois Concert Hall Organ,” The Tracker, iii (October 1958), 1.

51 This stereoscopic view of the Johnston organ in Christ Church, Boston, was taken before 1884 when the present additions were made to the sides of the organ case. This view shows the case as originally built. Although now painted flat black, there is evidence that the pine case was originally grained in imitation of Santo Domingo mahogany.

52 Babcock, Organs and Organ Builders, p. 10.

53 “Organ-Building in New-England,” p. 206.

54 Babcock, Organs and Organ Builders, p. 11.

55 Babcock, Organs and Organ Builders, pp. 12–13.

56 “Organ-Building in New-England,” p. 207.

57 From the records of St. John’s Church, Portsmouth.

58 “Organ-Building in New-England,” p. 208.

59 “Organ-Building in New-England,” p. 208.

60 “Organ-Building in New-England,” p. 209.

61 “Organ-Building in New-England,” p. 209.

62 W. J. Bruce, “A Chapter on Church Organs,” The American Historical Record, iii, no. 28 (April 1874), 161–171.

63 Maria Pratt Smith, “Henry Pratt, Organ Builder,” The American Organist (October 1933).p. 514.

64 “Organ-Building in New-England,” p. 208.

65 “Organ-Building in New-England,” p. 209.

66 Smith, “Henry Pratt,” p. 514.

67 “Organ-Building in New-England,” p. 210.

68 “Organ-Building in New-England,” p. 210.

69 “Organ-Building in New-England,” p. 210.

70 Frances Hall Johnson, Musical Memories of Hartford (Hardford: Witkower’s 1931), p. 39.

1 Mourt’s Relation; or A Relation or Journall of the beginning and proceedings of the English Plantation settled at Plimoth in New England (London, 1622; repr. in facsimile, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, Inc., 1966), pp. 36–38.

2 Johnson’s Wonder-Working providence, 1628–1651, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1910), p. 135.

3 For Plymouth, see Percy Scholes, The Puritans and Music in England and New England (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), p. 23. For Manchester, see Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, 8 vols. (Salem: Essex Institute, 1911–1921), iii, 292.

4 Samuel Sewall, Diary 1674–1729, in Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 5th Ser., v–vii (1878–1882), v, 344, 444; vi, 27–28.

5 “William Adams, his book, Nov. 1670,” in F. M. Calkins, Memoir of the Rev. William Adams (Boston, 1849), p. 8.

6 John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, 17 vols. (Cambridge: Charles Wm. Sever; Harvard University Press; 1873–1975), iii, 281. Barbara Lambert brought both the Adams and Saltonstall references to my attention.

7 Mention of Benson cited by Eileen Southern in The Music of Black Americans (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), p. 30. The Burnet inventory in the Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Probate Registry, docket number 5849, is cited by Barbara Lambert in “The Musical Puritans,” Old-Time New England, lxii (Winter 1972), 71.

8 A bass viol bearing William Callender’s label reads: “Drums &c. sale at / William Callender’s / Music Shop / no. 62 Middle St.—Boston / Drums of all Sizes for the Artillery and Infantry, / small size d^o; Fifes of all tones & prices made / from the best Turkey Box—/ Wood and black Ebony—and with the above Drums are / warrented [sic] to purchasers for one year / ALSO / Trumpets and Bugle Horns for the Calvalry, / Rifle-men [torn] Clarionets; Hautboys; concert [torn and label pasted over] / KEWISE / Bass-viols: tenor-viols: Reeds, Books &c / with many other Articles [torn] urning and Gunnery Line—made from the best [paste over] auth [paste over] and Flutes or any other instruments purchased [paste over] repaired at short notice.” Barbara Lambert located this instrument in the collections at Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts.

9 Raoul F. Camus, “The Military Band in the United States prior to 1834” (New York University, Ph.D. diss., 1969), pp. 59–60. 379–383.

10 Kate Van Winkle Keller, ed., Giles Gibbs Fife Manuscript, 1777 (Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 1974). Robert Eliason pointed out the bugle horn by John Balthius Dash, and the Callender fife in “Early American Winds: Instruments, Makers, and Music,” an unpublished paper which he delivered at the 1972 annual meeting of the American Musicological Society. Barbara Lambert located the Crossman drum and the Willig fife tutor. See also Oscar George Theodore Sonneck and William Treat Upton, Bibliography of Early Secular American Music (Washington: Library of Congress, 1945), pp. 84–85.

11 Kate van Winkle Keller provided the information about the Benjamin Clark drum book; and Barbara Lambert that about the Lovering drum tutor. Camus, “Military Band,” pp. 258–260.

12 Daniel McCurtin, “Journal of the Times at the Siege of Boston Since our Arrival at Cambridge, Near Boston,” in Thomas Balch, Papers Relating Chiefly to the Maryland Line During the Revolution (Philadelphia: The Seventy-Six Society, 1857), pp. 20–21. For more detail on military music, see the Camus monograph in volume I.

13 Oscar George Theodore Sonneck, Report on “The Star-Spangled Banner” “Hail Columbia, America,” “Yankee Doodle” (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), pp. 140–142. See also index to volume I for references to other discussions of “Yankee Doodle” in this work.

14 From F. S. Drake, Life and Correspondence of Henry Knox (Boston: S. G. Drake, 1873), p. 70. See also Camus, “Military Band,” pp. 328, 341.

15 Diary kept at the siege of Louisburg March 11–August 2, 1745, ed. Samuel A. Green (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), p. 6. I have Barbara Lambert to thank for drawing to my attention this reference as well as the Tisdale engraving and Simeon Snow’s violin.

16 Margaret Dean-Smith in her introduction to Play ford’s English Dancing Master 1651: A Facsimile Reprint with an Introduction, Bibliography and Notes (London: Schott & Co. Ltd., 1957) points out that the first edition (1651) is scored for treble viol. By the second edition (1652) the newly fashionable treble violin is introduced. In the third edition (1665) Playford includes an engraving of the treble violin, says it is preferred to the viol as “more airee and brisk,” and includes lessons for it. In the ninth edition, part ii (1696), there is a piece for trumpet-marine. The fifteenth edition (1713) through the eighteenth (ca. 1728) list the availability of “Basses to all the Dances contained in this Volume.”

17 [Increase Mather and others], An Arrow Against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing, Drawn out of the Quiver of the Scriptures (Boston: Printed by Samuel Green and sold by Joseph Brunning, 1684 [sic; probably 1686]), pp. 24–25. Thomas James Holmes in Increase Mather: A Bibliography of His Works (Cleveland, 1931), pp. 20–26, states that the date 1684 on An Arrow’s title page was a misprint; he believes the pamphlet to have been published initially in 1686, based on Sewall’s contemporary Diary entry. For John Locke, see Alice Morse Earle, Child Life in Colonial Days (New York: Macmillan, 1899), pp. 24–26.

18 From The Hutchinson Papers in Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 2nd Ser., x (1823), 183–184.

19 A Treatise against Dicing, Dancing, &c., quoted by Scholes, The Puritans and Music, pp. 85–86.

20 Cited by Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), pp. 14–15. See Morton’s book, New English Canaan or New Canaan Containing an Abstract of New England (Amsterdam: Jacob Frederick Stam, 1637).

21 Sewall, Diary, v, 178–179.

22 Cotton referred to in An Arrow against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing, pp. 21–22. English wedding described in Dean-Smith, Playford’s English Dancing Master, p. xvii; ordinance in Nathaniel Shurtleff, ed„ Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 1628–1688, 6 vols. (Boston: William White, 1853–1854), iv, 41.

23 Mather, An Arrow, pp. 1, 29. For a further discussion of this tract by Joy Van Cleef, see vol. I of this book, pp. 6–8.

24 Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1960), pp. 117–118.

25 Sewall, Diary, v, 103–104, 112, 120–122, 145. For Sewall’s activity as a printer, see George Emery Littlefield, Early Boston Booksellers 1642–1711 (Boston: Club of Odd Volumes, 1900; repr. New York: Burt Franklin, 1969), pp. 111–116.

26 Mather’s sermon Corderius Americanus: An Essay upon the Good Education of Children (Boston, August 1708), p. 19 (Evans 1361). Cotton Mather Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681–1728, ed. Worthington C. Ford, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 7th Ser., vii–viii (1911–1912), 146.

27 For a reproduction of Enstone’s notice and another discussion of it see fig. 276 and p. 511 in Barbara Lambert’s contribution in this volume. Sewall, Diary, VII, 111; Norman Benson, “The Itinerant Dancing and Music Masters of Eighteenth Century America” (University of Minnesota, Ph.D. diss., 1963), pp. 334–339.

28 I am indebted to Barbara Lambert for locating Brownell’s bill and clarifying his itinerary. (See also Appendix C.) Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, intro, by Carl Van Doren (New York: Heritage Press, 1951), p. 10. For Brownell, see also Robert Francis Seybolt, The Private Schools of Colonial Boston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935; repr. by the Greenwood Press, 1970), pp. 12–14.

29 See Andrew Oliver, “Peter Pelham (c. 1697–1751): Sometime Printmaker of Boston,” in Boston Prints and Printmakers 1670–1775, ed. Sinclair Hitchings and Walter Muir Whitehill, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xlvi (1973), pp. 133–173.

30 The particular dance manual is ‘Wright’s Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances both Old and New (Printed for I. Johnson, Musical Instrument Maker at y^e Harp & Crown in Cheapside, London, ca. 1742), a copy now located in the Essex Institute, Salem. Barbara Lambert provided the information about the Turners, Holyokes, and their relationship to one another. Information about the Holyoke-Turner marriage is from George Francis Dow, ed., The Holyoke Diaries, 1709–1856 (Salem: Essex Institute, 1911), p. xvii. Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1955), p. 367, reports that the balls in New York were discontinued in 1768 when consorts of Gen. Gage and Governor Moore could not agree on who should stand first in a country dance.

31 For Richard Hall, see Earle, Child Life, pp. 87–88. Quote on dance from Elias Howe, Howe’s Complete Ball-Room Hand-Book (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1858), p. 23; John Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), I, 172.

32 John Griffiths, A Collection of the Newest Cotillions and Country Dances (Northampton, 1794). See also S. Foster Damon, “A History of Square-Dancing,” American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, New Ser., lxii (1952), 74–78.

33 Earle, Child Life, pp. 101–104. For Wentworth letter, see Louis Pichierri, Music in New Hampshire 1623–1800 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 56–57.

34 “Extracts from Captain Francis Goelet’s Journal,” England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxiv (1870), 57.

35 Carl Bridenbaugh, ed., The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton (Williamsburg: Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1948), p. 146.

36 Samuel Eliot Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, 1765–1848: The Urbane Federalist (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), pp. 42–48.

37 John Adams, Diary, ii, 46–47.

38 John Adams, Diary, i, 172–173.

39 The Whyer notice was brought to my attention by Barbara Lambert. “Goelet’s Journal,” p. 53. For Newport reference, see George Champlin Mason, Reminiscences of Newport (Newport: Charles E. Hammett, Jr., 1884), pp. 101–103. For the actual dances, see figs. 8–13 in “Selected American Country Dances and Their English Sources” by Joy Van Cleef and Kate Van Winkle Keller in volume I of this book.

40 Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, p. 48. Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, pp. 243, 366.

41 John Rowe, Letters and Diary of John Rowe, ed. Anne Rowe Cunningham (Boston: W. B. Clarke, 1903), p. 231. See also Malcolm Frieberg, Thomas Hutchinson of Milton (Milton: Milton Historical Society, 1971). Rowe also reported that Commencement Day, July 20, 1774, was not public because of the distressed situation of the town and province.

42 “Goelet’s Journal,” p. 53.

43 For Shirley Place, see W. W. Cordingley, “Shirley Place, Roxbury, Massachusetts, and Its Builder, Governor William Shirley,” Old-Time New England, xiii (1921), 51–63. The architectural drawings of the Shirley—Eustis House were kindly provided Barbara Lambert by Frederick C. Detwiller, architectural historian and executive director of the Shirley—Eustis House Association.

44 For Keeler Tavern, see Silvio A. Bedini, Ridgefield in Review (Ridgefield, Conn.: Ridgefield 250th Anniversary Committee, Inc., 1958), pp. 197–200. For sprung floors see John Mason and Virginia Palmer, “The Rise and Fall of the Spring Dance Floor,” Yankee Magazine, February (1973), pp. 124ff.

45 Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, pp. 167, 362.

46 Alice Morse Earle, Stage-coach and Tavern Days (New York: Macmillan, 1900), pp. 100–137. On page 116, a description of a minister’s ordination in New England in 1785 cites that 80 people had 30 bowls of punch before going to meeting in the morning, and 68 who at dinner drank 44 bowls of punch, 18 bottles of wine, 8 bowls of brandy, and a quantity of cherry rum.

47 Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, 39 vols. (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1876–1909), 11th Report, p. 49. This reference and Kendall’s inventory from Suffolk County Probate Registry, Boston, docket number 3293, was brought to my attention by Barbara Lambert. See also pp. 477–478 and Table I in her monograph in this volume for more information on Kendall.

48 Annie Haven Thwing, The Crooked & Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston 1630–1822 (Boston: Marshall Jones Co., 1920; repr. Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1970), pp. 79, 89. Georgia Bumgardner brought the drawing of the Green Dragon Tavern to my attention.

49 Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, iv, part ii, 100–101.

50 Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), I, 113–117, 124–130. Also, Morison, “The Reverend Seaborn Cotton’s Commonplace Book,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xxxii (1937), 320–352.

51 John G. Whittier, Leaves from Margaret Smith’s Journal in the Province of Massachusetts 1678–1679 (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Field, 1849), p. 186, pointed out by Barbara Lambert. For examples of hanging ballads and “moral fakements” or confessional ballads, see vol. I of this book, pp. 332–341, and figs. 178, 180, 213, 216, 218, 220, 222.

52 Cotton Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, 1709–1724, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 7th Ser. (1912), viii, 242. Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, p. 425.

53 “Goelet’s Journal,” pp. 53–61.

54 John Adams, Diary, I, 172.

55 John Adams, Diary, I, 341, quoted in full by Arthur Schrader on the first page of his study “Songs to Cultivate the Sensations of Freedom” in vol. I of this book. For the American prisoner, see George Carey, “Songs of Jack Tar in the Darbies,” Journal of American Folklore, lxxxv (April–June 1972), 167–180.

56 Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, p. 48. John Quincy Adams quoted in Life in a New England Town: 1787–1788 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1903), p. 79.

57 Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, The Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, trans. Theodore G. Tappert and John W. Doberstein (Philadelphia: Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania and Adjacent States and The Muhlenberg Press, 1942), I, 320.

58 Benjamin Franklin, The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. John Bigelow (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1887–1888), iii, 392. For a more detailed study of broadsides see the monographs by Carleton Sprague Smith and Arthur F. Schrader in vol. I of this work.

59 Rowe, Letters and Diary, pp. 171–172. For illustrations of a broadside of The Liberty Song, and Revere’s Liberty Bowl see the Smith monograph in vol. I of this book, figs. 169 and 170.

60 Sonneck and Upton, A Bibliography, pp. 227–228. For the advertisement and The Parody Parodized, see the Smith monograph in vol. I of this book, figs. 167 and 168, and for the Tory parody, see the Schrader monograph again in vol. I, fig. 110.

61 Swan’s portrait was given to the American Antiquarian Society in 1952 by descendants of Timothy Swan. Correspondence on file there between Nina Fletcher Little and Charles Bissell discusses these possible attributions for the painting. Barbara Lambert identified and provided the complete newspaper reference to Luther Allen.

62 For documents relating to dancing and music masters in Boston, see Appendix C. George Francis Dow, Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Boston, 1935; repr. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1965), pp. 136–137. For the Androus reference, see Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County Massachusetts, ii, 40. The 1673 reference is quoted by George Chalmers in Political Annals of the Present Colonies from their Settlement to the Peace of 1763 (London, 1780; repr. New York: Burt Franklin, 1968), pp. 434–435.

63 Rowe, Letters and Diary, p. 213. The watercolor was found in New Hampshire in 1949 when its purchasers were told that it represented a piano recital at Count Rumford’s, Concord, New Hampshire. In addition to the fact that the “piano” is a double manual spinet (probably a confused representation of a wing-shaped harpsichord), the water-color’s nationality is also questioned. Is it English as the fashions and the setting suggest, or is it American? If it is associated with Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753–1814), he had removed from Concord, New Hampshire, to London in 1775, never to return to America. The Count, however, was a painter (see his biography in the Dictionary of Artists in America [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957]). It is possible that he painted the watercolor in London, ca. 1800—thus explaining the English appearance yet naïve “American” feeling of the work—and his daughter who lived with him in England and Europe may have subsequently brought it with her when she returned to Concord in 1844 to live out her days. This information was extracted by Barbara Lambert from various correspondence dating from July 7, 1966, to March 21, 1973, in the watercolor’s dossier on file in the office of the curator of American painting at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Helen Hollis brought the watercolor to my attention.

64 David McKay, “William Selby, Musical Emigré in Colonial Boston,” Musical Quarterly, lvii (October 1971), 609–627.

65 H. Earle Johnson, Musical Interludes In Boston (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), von Hagens, pp. 270–271, 285, 161–162; Mallet, p. 286; Graupner, pp. 173–174, 179–181.

66 Oscar George Theodore Sonneck, Early Concert-Life in America 1731–1800 (Leipzig, 1907; repr. Wiesbaden: Dr. Martin Sandig oHG, 1969), pp. 264–265. Johnson, Musical Interludes, pp. 269–273.

67 The Greenwood information was kindly supplied by Barbara Lambert. Pichierri, Music in New Hampshire, p. 23.

68 Robert Eliason pointed out the New-York Journal reference to Dash in his unpublished paper “Early American Winds” delivered at the American Musicological Society annual meeting in 1972. He has in preparation a directory entitled Early American Makers of Woodwind and Brass Musical Instruments.

69 Johnson, Musical Interludes, pp. 269–270. Sheridan Germann, the owner of the piano by Meinke, Meyer & Meyer, and herself an expert on stringed keyboard instrument decoration, pointed out to the writer the partnership between the von Hagens and Crehore. In a forthcoming article Mrs. Germann will support her theory here advanced in the text that Crehore made her piano’s Hepplewhite stand in Boston upon the instrument’s arrival, just as it is generally accepted that the stand for John Harris’s Boston-made spinet discussed below was not made until the instrument arrived at its first home in Newport.

The earliest extant harpsichord made in North America is a spinet inscribed “Johannes Clemm Fecit Philadelphia 1739” now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (along with that by John Harris mentioned in the text).

For more information on the harpsichord builders in London with the surname of Harris, see Donald H. Boalch, Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord, 1440–1840, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 58–60. Barbara Lambert pointed out the Harris bill in the Massachusetts Historical Society.

70 Samples of wood from the anonymous New England primitive square piano were analyzed in 1973 by the United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, in Madison, Wisconsin, and determined to be New England in origin.

71 Mary Kent Davey Babcock, Christ Church, Salem Street, Boston (Boston: Thomas Todd, 1947), pp. 153–157; Barbara Owen, The Organs and Music of King’s Chapel (Boston: King’s Chapel, 1966), pp. 22–23.

72 Thwing, Crooked & Narrow Streets, pp. 162–164.

73 Peter Pelham would not be occupying the house, for advertisements in the Boston Gazette list him progressively on Summer Street (Feb. 19, 1728), Cornhill and William’s Court, now Pie Alley (Aug. 18, 1729), and the “House of the Late Doctor Noyes near the Sun Tavern, Dock Square” (Boston News-Letter, Dec. 16, 1731). Cited by Oliver, “Peter Pelham,” pp. 136–139. See also the article “February 18, 1729: A Neglected Date in Boston Concert Life,” by Henry Woodward which appeared in Notes, xxxiii, no. 2 (Dec. 1976), 243–252, after my monograph was typeset.

74 Sonneck, Early Concert-Life, pp. 252–253.

75 Travels Through the Middle Settlements in North America in the Years 1759 to 1760 (London: T. Payne, 1775), p. 133.

76 John Adams, Diary, I, 54. Rowe, Letters and Diary, pp. 200, 211, 215; Thwing, Crooked & Narrow Streets, p. 86. In regard to the size of the audience, the bill to Josiah Flagg from Rea and Johnston in Sinclair Hitchings, fig. 348, in this volume includes an entry for Feb. 23, 1771: “To Print^g 150 Concert Ticketts.”

77 “Goelet’s Journal,” pp. 54, 56.

78 Sonneck, Early Concert-Life, pp. 254–309.

79 See monograph by Sinclair Hitchings, p. 642 in this volume.

80 Sonneck, Early Concert-Life, pp. 261–264.

81 Sonneck, Early Concert-Life, pp. 257–259, 273–274.

82 For a list of the regimental bands with music, see footnote 32 on pp. 91–92 in Raoul Camus’s contribution in vol. I of this publication. Rowe, Letters and Diary, p. 179.

83 Rowe, Letters and Diary, pp. 180, 184.

84 Camus, “Military Band,” pp. 322, 160. John Andrews, “Letters of John Andrews, Esq. of Boston, 1772–1776,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 1st Ser., viii (1866), 323–332.

85 Rowe, Letters and Diary, pp. 291–304.

86 Thwing, Crooked & Narrow Streets, p. 86.

87 Sonneck, Early Concert-Life, pp. 274–284; David McKay, “William Selby,” p. 622. For an account of Washington’s entry into Boston, see the Boston Gazette for October 26, 1789.

88 Scholes, The Puritans and Music, p. 202.

89 The Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 21 vols. (Boston: Albert J. Wright, 1869–1922), iii, 500–501.

90 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England (New York: New York University Press, 1956), p. 13.

91 Account of the two young Englishmen in George R. Minot, Continuation of the History of the Province of Massachusetts, 2 vols. (Boston: Manning and Loring, 1798–1803), i, 142–143.

92 From Evelyn’s Diary, October 18, 1666, quoted by Scholes, The Puritans and Music, pp. 210–211.

93 Increase Mather, A Testimony Against several Prophane and Superstitious Customs (London, 1687); Sewall, Diary, v, 103–104; Mather, An Arrow, pp. 25–26.

94 Sewall, Diary, v, 152, 154, 159–162, 169. Mather, Testimony, preface.

95 Sewall, Diary, v, 196.

96 Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, ii, 464, 504–509, 547.

97 Sewall, Diary, vi, 167–168; Letter Book of Samuel Sewall, in Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 6th Ser., ii (1888), 29–30; Sewall, Diary, vi, 419–424.

98 Julius Herbert Tuttle, “Governor Burnet in the Diary of Benjamin Walker, Jr.,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xxxviii (1935), 243. Italics in the quotation have been added for emphasis.

99 Quoted from “James Ralph (c. 1699–1762) of Philadelphia and London” in Church Music and Musical Life in Pennsylvania in the Eighteenth Century, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Society of the Colonial Dames of America, 1938), iii, part i, 174–175.

100 New-England Weekly Journal, February 14, 1732. For An Act, see footnotes 88 and 89.

101 Oscar G. T. Sonneck, Early Opera in America (New York, 1912; repr. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1963), p. 133. Gardner citation from “Interleaved Almanac-Diary of 1759” (unpublished manuscript in the papers of Dr. Henry Wheatland at the Essex Institute, Salem), I, 10. This could have been a private reading by Salem citizens, for certainly later on in the century it is clear that Salem school children acted in plays for school exhibitions. William Pynchon records such an event in his diary on January 1, 1789: “I go to the scholar’s exhibition, under Master Harris, and am highly entertained with parts of the ‘Haunted House’, acted there . . . ,” The Diary of William Pynchon, ed. Fitch Edward Oliver (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1890), p. 326. Both are cited by Milton Gerald Hehr, in “Musical Activities in Salem, Massachusetts: 1783–1823” (Boston University, Ph.D. diss., 1963), pp. 42, 49. Ames quotes from Charles Warren, Jacobin and Junto or Early American Politics as Viewed in the Diary of Nathaniel Ames 1758–1822 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931), pp. 18ff. Harvard reference in Morison, Harvard in the Seventeenth Century, ii, 464, footnote 4. The full Harv ard College prohibition is found in “College Book” (bound manuscript in Harvard College Library Archives), vii (November 16, 1762), 101, and is quoted by Ruth Michael in “A History of the Professional Theatre in Boston from the Beginning to 1816” (Radcliffe College, Ph.D. diss., 1941), I, 4. For New Hampshire reference, see Pichierri, Music in New Hampshire, p. 81.

102 Samuel G. Drake, The History and Antiquities of Boston (Boston: Luther Stevens, 1856), pp. 622–623. The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle, vol. iii (August 1746), p. 356. According to Frank Luther Mott in A History of American Magazines, 3 vols. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1930), I, 78, this magazine was published from 1743 to 1746. The third magazine begun in America, it was edited by Jeremiah Gridley (Harvard, 1725). A large proportion of its contents was taken from British periodicals.

103 Minot, History of the Province, pp. 142–143; Sonneck, Early Opera, pp. 10, 14–19; George O. Seilhamer, History of the American Theatre, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1888; repr. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), I, 2–11. Sonneck cites evidence that George Washington saw this troupe in June 1752 during its Virginia tour.

104 Seilhamer, American Theatre, I, 122–128; Sonneck, Early Opera, pp. 31–33.

105 Pichierri, Music in New Hampshire, pp. 77–81; Hehr, “Musical Activities in Salem,” p. 93.

106 Oliver Morton Dickerson, comp., Boston under Military Rule (1768–1769) as revealed in the Journal of the Times (Boston, 1936; repr. New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), pp. 47, 55, 78; Drake, History and Antiquities of Boston, p. 756.

107 Rowe, Letters and Diary, pp. 200, 219, 221, 239–240, 264.

108 Pichierri, Music in New Hampshire, pp. 81–89.

109 William W. Clapp, Jr., A Record of the Boston Stage (Boston, 1853; repr. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968), pp. 3–4. Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 380–381.

110 Rowe, Letters and Diary, p. 298. Mrs. Warren (sister of James Otis, wife of James Warren, and close friend of John and Abigail Adams) had already published two earlier plays filled with political satire: The Adulateur (1773—Evans 13063), which pictured Thomas Hutchinson as a traitor, and The Group (1775—Evans 15213), which is directed against the Loyalist Party in Massachusetts. See Seilhamer, American Theatre, ii, 3–7. Mercy Otis Warren, The Blockheads (Boston, 1776) (Evans 15213).

111 Rowe, Letters and Diary, pp. 298–306.

112 Quoted by H. Earle Johnson, “The Adams Family and Good Listening,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, xi (Summer–Fall 1958), 167.

113 Sonneck, Early Opera, p. 134; Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, pp. 4–5; Ellen Susan Bulfinch, The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch, Architect (Boston, 1896), p. 77. Quoted by Harold and James Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston 1787—1817 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 56–57.

114 Benson, “Itinerant Dancing and Music Masters,” pp. 360–361.

115 Records of the Boston Selectmen: 1784–1796 (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1886), xxxi, 267–268; Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, pp. 5–6.

116 Philo Dramatis, The Rights of the Drama; or, an Inquiry into the Origin, Principles, and Consequences of Theatrical Entertainments (Boston: Printed for the Author, 1792), pp. 23, 43 (Evans 24691). William Haliburton, Effects of the Stage on the Manners (Boston: Young & Etheridge, 1792), p. 8 (Evans 24371).

117 Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, pp. 6–15; Horace Elisha Scudder, Recollections of Samuel Breck (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1877), p. 182; Frank Chouteau Brown, “The First Boston Theatre, on Federal Street,” Old-Time New England, xxxvi (July 1945), 1–7; William Dunlap, History of the American Theatre (New York, 1832; repr. New York: Burt Franklin, 1963), p. 247; Michael, “History of Professional Theatre,” 1, 26–40.

118 Columbian Centinel, September 8, 1792; Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, pp. 11–15; Michael, “History of Professional Theatre,” 1, 38–41. For more information about the specific productions of the seasons, see Seilhamer, American Theatre, iii, 20–22; Sonneck, Early Opera, pp. 135–137; and Michael, “History of Professional Theatre,” ii, 2–14.

119 Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, p. 19; Brown, “The First Boston Theatre,” pp. 2–4; John Alden, “A Season in Federal Street, J. B. Williamson and the Boston Theatre 1796–1797,” American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, lxv (1955), 10–12.

120 A full description by Bulfinch of the theater is incorporated in Thomas Pemberton’s “A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, iii (1794), 255–256; Alden, “A Season,” pp. 11–12.

121 Kirker and Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, pp. 60–62, 282; Alden, “A Season,” p. 12.

122 Kirker and Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, pp. 61–62; Dunlap, History of American Theatre, pp. 252–258. Dunlap quotes Paine’s entire prologue (pp. 253–256). Paine, who in 1798 wrote the words to the song “Adams and Liberty,” later changed his name to that of his father: Robert Treat Paine.

123 Seilhamer, American Theatre, ii, 65–66; iii, 235–237.

124 Columbian Centinel, December 8, 1792; Benson, “Itinerant Dancing and Music Masters,” pp. 367–368; Sonneck, Early Opera, p. 137. The law officially expired on November 1, 1799.

125 Columbian Centinel, January 22, 1794. Julian Mates, The American Musical Stage before 1800 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1962), pp. 188–189. Fiske, English Theatre Music, p. 258. Royall Tyler, engaged briefly to John Adams’ daughter Abigail, was a lawyer who later became chief justice of the Supreme Court of Vermont.

126 The Journal of an Excursion to the United States of North America in the Summer of 1794 (Salisbury: J. Easton, 1796; repr. with an introduction by Peter A. Fritzell, New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1969), pp. 42–43.

127 Hehr, “Musical Activities in Salem,” p. 380. For a discussion of the political factions in theater audiences and the favorite tunes of each, see Irving Lowens, “Benjamin Carr’s Federal Overture (1794)” in his Music and Musicians in Early America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964), pp. 89–114.

128 Seilhamer, American Theatre, ii, 228–243, gives a complete list of the performances and the casts for the first season. Sonneck, Early Opera, lists all of the musical presentations for the Federal Street seasons from 1794 to 1800 on Table D between pp. 144 and 145.

129 For more information about the specific productions of the first season (1794) of the Boston Theatre on Federal Street under the management of Charles Stuart Powell, see Seilhamer, American Theatre, iii, 228–231; Sonneck, Early Opera, Table D between pp. 144 and 145; and Michael, “History of Professional Theatre,” ii, 15–26.

130 Johnson, Musical Interludes in Boston, pp. 169–171. For more information about the specific performances of the second season (1794–1795) under the management of Charles Stuart Powell, see Seilhamer, American Theatre, iii, 243–247; Sonneck, Early Opera, Table D between pp. 144 and 145; and Michael, “History of Professional Theatre,” ii, 27–38.

131 For more information about the specific performances of the third season (1795–1796) of the Boston Theatre, see Seilhamer, American Theatre, iii, 271–273; Sonneck, Early Opera, Table D between pp. 144 and 145; and Michael, “History of Professional Theatre,” ii, 39–64.

132 Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, pp. 42, 36.

133 John Alden, “A Season,” pp. 12–13, 22; Johnson, Musical Interludes, pp. 172–175. For more information about the specific performances of the fourth season (1796–1797) of the Boston Theatre under the management of John Brown Williamson, see Seilhamer, American Theatre, iii, 332–353; Sonneck, Early Opera, Table D between pp. 144 and 145; Michael, “History of Professional Theatre,” ii, 64–91; and Alden, “A Season,” pp. 55–74.

134 For more information about the specific performances of the first season (1796–1797) of Haymarket Theatre under the management of Charles Stuart Powell, see Seilhamer, American Theatre, iii, 354–370; Sonneck, Early Opera, Table E between pp. 148 and 149; and Michael, “History of Professional Theatre,” ii, 485–500. Priest quote is from his Travels in the United States of America Commencing in the Year 1793, and Ending in 1797 (London: J. Johnson, 1802), pp. 165–166.

135 Sonneck, Early Opera, p. 147; Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, pp. 56–57; Brown, “The First Boston Theatre,” pp. 4–8; Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, p. 79.

136 Alden, “A Season,” pp. 32–35; Mates, The American Musical Stage, p. 77; Fiske, English Theatre Music, pp. 280–281. For Table x Graupner’s pay is calculated at half of the $30 paid to Mr. and Mrs. Graupner weekly.

137 Columbian Centinel, February 22, 1794; Philo Dramatis, The Rights of the Drama, p. 37.

1 See Sir Fernando Gorges, Wonder-Working Providence of Sion’s Savior in New-England (London, 1658), p. 103.

2 Arthur Perry was long known as town drummer. Among his duties were “drumming to the Company” and training younger drummers for the town. Perry owned a valuable estate in School St., between the corners of Washington and Common Sts. (now, Tremont) and died October 9, 1652. See Table II in Barbara Lambert’s contribution to this volume, and Z. G. Whitman, The History of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company [Boston, 1842], p. 77.

His son Seth joined The Company in 1662 and was also a drummer from 1662 to 1667. Seth’s name appears on a petition of handy-craftsmen presented to the town council in 1677. See Table II in Barbara Lambert’s contribution to this volume, Samuel G. Drake, The History and Antiquities of Boston (Boston, 1856), p. 427.

3 The Military Company was a voluntary association established in 1638 for the defense of the colony. It later became known as the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. The Company performed its training exercises once a month on the Boston Common until 1657. Thereafter the number of field days per month was reduced to five and later to two (Whitman, p. 445).

4 Thomas Fitch rose to the rank of regimental colonel in Boston and was a justice of the peace. Fitch is connected with another musical personality in Boston, Murat the trumpeter. See page 495 in Barbara Lambert’s study in this volume, or The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas, 2 vols. (New York, 1973), II, 694.

5 The proclamation promised a reward for information leading to the capture of the ring-leaders of the riot and a pardon for any participants who would divulge such information. Lt. Gov. Phips took these measures in the absence of Gov. Belcher who was in New Hampshire at the time.

6 This letter was one of several which was circulated about town in defiance of the proclamation by Lt. Gov. Phips (see above).

7 Extracted from Governor Pownall’s speech before the Council Chamber, June 1, 1759. Before leaving for “Penobscot Country” to establish the site for a fort along the Penobscot River, Governor Pownall had given orders to raise troops for the expedition against Canada.

8 Previous to the “false report,” the city had been alarmed by a great number of men from the frontier marching under arms. The insurrection was aborted and the marchers left the city peacefully, leaving two emissaries behind to present their petition to the Governor.

9 See also “Bells,” Sept. 28, 1668. Joseph Gridley also served as hogreeve and wood-corder from 1678 to 1680 and scavenger and inspector of brickmaking in 1686.

10 Hill was also appointed watchman on May 5, 1736.

11 The word “meeting house” was first used in England to refer to the place of worship of dissenters from the Church of England. To the New England colonies the word was used less discriminately to refer to any public house of worship.

12 Elbridge H. Goss, Early Bells in Massachusetts (Boston, 1874), pp. 11 and 20–21.

13 Goss, Early Bells, p. 15.

14 The Memorial History of Boston, ed. Justin Winsor, 4 vols. (Boston, 1880), II, 482.

15 John Josselyn, Voyage to New-England (London, 1674), p. 162. This same passage, incidentally, is cited in the O.E.D. (1933, VI, 177) as a literary example of the term “marmalet,” i.e., “marmalade-madam,” which is defined therein as strumpet.

16 This passage has been cited as evidence that Boston’s First Church, rebuilt in 1639, had a bell tower. Caleb H. Snow, History of Boston (Boston, 1828), p. 91.

17 Crumwell, a gentleman pirate commissioned by the Earl of Warwick, shared his Spanish booty with Bostonians. In his will of 1649 “he gave six bells to the town, doubtless some of his plunder.” Editorial note in Winsor, Memorial History, I, 509.

18 These Bostonians were granted incorporation in order to build a conduit to provide their neighborhood with water for drinking and for use in case of fire.

19 The Bellman’s watch supplemented the constable or militia watch. Bellmen were elected in September, to patrol from October through April, the winter months when people were most likely to keep fires for heat, thereby increasing the threat of fire in town. The bellman’s principal duty was to watch for fire and alarm the inhabitants thereof (see below, folio 11 in BRC, 7th Report, p. 11, October 27, 1662).

20 Capt. Davenport had been appointed commander of the fort at Castle Island in 1645, at which time plans were made to rebuild the fort. In 1651 “the armament and military property of the fort consisted of six murtherers [cannon-like weapons], two boats and a drum, and a suitable number of pikes for each soldier . . . In October, 1654, a committee reported that one of the boats had been lost and the drum spoiled, but not owing to the neglect of the captain. On the twenty-eighth of January, 1655–6, the town of Boston lent the captain of the Castle a great bell, probably the mate to the one lent to the undertakers of the conduit in Union Street, the same having been given to the town by Captain Crumwell. This looks a little as though things were improving at the Castle, and the idea is confirmed by the record that another attempt to finish and equip the Castle was made the next May” Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston [Boston, 1891], p. 489.

21 Richard Taylor was serving as timekeeper for the watch. Robert F. Seybolt, The Town Officials of Colonial Boston 1634–1775, (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), p. 36, n. 88.

22 The following two verses from an old “New-England Ballad” could have been written during this time:

Now this cites New Dorchester as they told unto me,

A Town very famous in all that Country;

They said ’twas new Buildings, I grant it is true,

Yet methinks Old Dorchester’s as fine as the New.

Well, that night I slept till near Prayer time,

Next morning I wonder’d to hear no Bells chime;

At which I did ask, and the Reason I found,

’Twas because they had n’er a Bell in the Town.

—from Wit and Mirth; or, Pills to Purge Melancholy, ed. T. D’Urfey, 4 vols. (London, 1719), iv.

23 These extra measures were probably adopted as a result of the Great Fire of 1676.

24 Samuel Sewall noted in Diary (1:411) that Robert Williams “the Bell-Ringer, Publisher and Gravedigger died this morn [Aug. 25, 1695].”

25 Mrs. Margery Williams probably succeeded her husband, Robert Williams in 1695 as bellringer at Old South. Her son James was appointed to help his mother as gravedigger there in 1701. RRC, 11th Report, pp. 3–4.

26 The measures were taken as a result of the small-pox epidemic of 1721. In Charlestown the Selectmen ordered “that the Sexton do not on any account whatsoever, without order from them, toll above three bells in one day for the burial of any persons, it being represented to them a discouragement to those persons sick of the small-pox.” Winsor, Memorial History, II, 317.

27 Chambers also held the positions of clock keeper, watchman, and gravedigger at various times. He was paid as bellringer for September 1, 1773–March 1, 1742/43. Seybolt, Town Officials, p. 208.

28 Pierce was also appointed clockkeeper, gravedigger and watchman. Seybolt, Town Officials, 186, 195.

29 This was essentially a vote against the three markets which had been established the previous year by a slight majority. The strong opposition to public marketplaces finally closed the markets in 1738. The town nearly refused to accept the gift of Peter Faneuil in 1740, and in fact Faneuil Flail was temporarily abandoned five years after it opened in 1742. Samuel G. Drake, The History and Antiquities of Boston (Boston, 1856), pp. 596 and 611.

30 Sendall Williams had been appointed gravedigger in 1734. He was paid as bellringer for June 1, 1734–September 1, 1736 and as a clock keeper for June 1, 1734–June 1, 1735. He later held the positions of constable and caller of staves. Seybolt, Town Officials, 204.

31 Andrew Coffin was paid as bellringer for September 1, 1737–December 1, 1740. He also worked as watchman between June 1, 1738 and May 1, 1740, and was dismissed from this office for negligence in 1740. Seybolt, Town Officials, pp. 208, 211, 217.

32 West Church, founded in 1737, was the ninth Congregational church in Boston. Its first minister the Rev. Hooper, joined the Church of England some years later and became minister of Trinity Church, Boston.

33 Thomas Moulin had been appointed watchman in 1723, gravedigger in 1734. He rang bells for the town intermittently between 1734 and 1744. Seybolt, Town Officials, passim.

34 Nathaniel Band also served as hogreeve in 1740, as watchman from 1740 to 1745, and hayward from 1745 to 1750. Seybolt, Town Officials, passim.

35 Faneuil Hall was completed in September, 1742 and Mr. Thomas Jackson was appointed clerk at that time. The allotment of sixty pounds would have covered his salary and expenses, i.e., bell ringer for half a year.

36 Goss in Early Bells, pp. 16–17 writes: “In 1744, Christ’s Church was furnished with a ‘Peal of eight Bells,’ the first chime in America.”

fn. 1. “The aggregate weight of these bells is 7272 pounds; the smallest weighing 620 pounds, the largest 1545, and they cost £560 in England. Each one has an inscription, containing its own and much contemporary history, as follows:—

1st Bell. ‘This peal of eight bells is the gift of a number of generous persons to Christ Church, in Boston, N.E. Anno 1744. A.R.’

2nd Bell. ‘This Church was founded in the year 1723. Timothy Cutler, D.D., the first Rector. A.R. 1723.’

3rd Bell. ‘We are the first ring of bells cast for the British Empire in North America. A.R. 1744’

4th Bell. ‘God preserve the Church of England. 1744.’

5th Bell. ‘William Shirley, Esq., Governor of the Massachusetts Bay, in New-England. Anno 1744.’

6th Bell. ‘The subscription for these bells was begun by Iohn Hammock and Robert Temple, Church Wardens, Anno 1743; completed by Robert Ienkins and Iohn Gould, Church Wardens, Anno 1744.’

7th Bell. ‘Since generosity has opened our mouths, our tongues shall ring aloud its praise. 1744.’

8th Bell. ‘Abel Rundall, of Gloucester, cast us all, Anno 1744.’”

37 The Victory at Louisbourg was first celebrated in Boston when the news reached the town in July. The Victory was celebrated again with even more extravagance upon the return of Gov. Shirley and his Lady who had been at the scene of action.

“About twelve o’clock they landed at the end of Long Wharf, amidst a crowd of people, who gave repeated shouts of acclamations. Here they were received by his Majesty’s Council, the Speaker of the House, Magistrates, Gentlemen and Merchants of the Town. The regiment of militia under Col. Jacob Wendell, with a foot company belonging to Chelsea, were drawn up . . . as were also the Troop of Guards, with another Troop of the regiment of Horse under Col. Estes Hatch, and the Company of Cadets under Col. Benjamin Pollard, who paid the proper salutes. The new set of bells, with all the other bells in the Town, continued ringing the greater part of the day.’” Drake, Boston, p. 621.

38 In 1765 the Marquis of Rockingham succeeded Grenville as prime minister of England, a change which facilitated the Repeal of the Stamp Act supported by William Pitt.

39 It was Aaron Hobart who taught Paul Revere how to mould and cast bells in 1792. Edward and Evelyn Stickney, The Bells of Paul Revere, his Sons & Grandsons, rev. ed. ([Bedford, Massachusetts], 1976), p. 4.

40 On certain mournful occasions, it was the custom to cover the clapper of a bell with leather to reduce or “muffle” its sound.

41 Gov. Thomas Hutchinson had obtained tea consignments from the East India Company for his sons, Elisha and Thomas in 1773. It was this shipment of tea which was thrown into Boston harbor under the instigation of Samuel Adams, an event which is now referred to as “The Boston Tea Party.”

1 This appendix and that which precedes it are dedicated to the devoted efforts of a force of assistants and volunteers who helped me systematically search and collect, from the early Boston newspapers cited below and the Reports of the Boston Record Commissioners., all references to musical sounds. They include: Karen Baseman, Robert Blanchard, Deborah Crimmins, Ellen Cornell, Diane DiSalvo, Marjory Frankel, Rebecca Greenleaf, Naomi Harris, Elaine Greenstein, Laura Hodge, Virginia Hooper, Pamela Howell, Genevieve Jennings, Cathy Kent, Christie Kenyon, Elizabeth Layton, Sarah Lehrman, Ruth Levitsky, Jennifer McGregor, Jean Moreno, Roberta Oppenheim, Betty Press, Barbara Russell, Kathy Schwarts, Edith Schmidt, Lindsay Davidson Shea, and Stephanie Welch.

Those to whom special thanks are due for their extensive efforts are: Carole Greenleaf, Frances Knight, Ruth Piken, Juliette Rogers, and most especially M. Sue Ladr.

1 There possibly were two other dancing instructors in the seventeenth-century Boston area. The first is cited by Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 117: “A dancing school, opened in Boston in 1672, was shortly suppressed by the authorities, and we know that in 1676 there were no musicians by trade.” The compiler of this Appendix searched Mr. Bridenbaugh’s references and read the microfilm of the Boston Town Records in ms at the Boston Public Library, but could locate no primary source for this school.

The second was Margery Hoar Flynt (d. 1687) of Braintree. For details, see p. 465 of Barbara Lambert’s contribution to this volume.

2 NYG, July 12, 1731

The Noble Science of Fencing with Small Sword is taught by Charles Malone at his School-House in Smith-Street next door to the Three Pideons [sic] in New York, at the usual Prices given to neighbouring Professors.

His Hours during the Sultry-Season are from Five to Six in the Morning and likewise in the Evening.

3 Perhaps George Brownell, who had earlier established a good reputation in Boston, returned briefly after an absence of fourteen years, in order to pave the way for Thomas Brownell (? his son) to follow in his footsteps. See also the section on Thomas Brownell in this Appendix.

4 Sewall Diary, ii, 840:

Dec^r 24 [1716] . . . . heard of a Ship from England Confirming the Death of Mr. David Jeffries, Mr. Banister, Redknap, and all his Company saving Beard, the 2^d Mate, who swam ashore; the others lost out of the Boat. . . .

Note: “The Amity had been driven aground on the Kent coast, and the passengers and crew took to the longboat which was upset.”

5 The house of Sir Charles Hobby (d. 1715) stood on the north corner of Rawson’s Lane (now Bromfield Street) and Marlborough (now Washington Street).

6 After regular hours, some of the more spacious schoolrooms were sometimes used as the location for dancing classes taught by approved masters with the tacit approbation of the selectmen.

7 According to Seybolt, Private Schools, p. 190, Grainger’s was the earliest evening school in Boston.

8 Thomas Grainger was in the Harvard College class of 1737, but left in January of 1734 because of the death of his father. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, x, 185–186.

9 Andrew LeMercier was minister of the French Protestant Church in Boston.

10 As a boy Benjamin Franklin lived at the Sign of the Ball, on the south-east corner of Union and Hanover Streets.

11 One of the most valuable sources to date for information on Peter Pelham is Oliver, “Peter Pelham,” cited in the introduction to this Appendix.

12 Oliver, “Peter Pelham,” p. 135. This print “bears the distinction of being the first mezzotint known to have been made in America.” It is American in feeling because it does not flatter, but rather is simply a good likeness of the sitter.

13 Dr. or Capt. Oliver Noyes (d. 1721), a Selectman in 1708, 1711, 1719–1720 and a citizen of prominence, conceived of and built Long Wharf in 1710, a major development for Boston. Long Wharf extended King or State Street 1000 feet or more into the sea, and when one side was built up with shops and warehouses it had the effect of a continuous street. Noyes’ house was located on the corner of Pierce’s Lane which was on the opposite side of Dock Square from Wing’s Lane where Deblois held his concerts. Justin Winsor. The Memorial History of Boston, including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630–1880, 4 vols. (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1880–1881), II: xx, 502, 535.

14 Dumaresq’s house was located on the east corner of the present Hawley and Summer Streets. (Seybolt, Private Schools, p. 26.) Oliver, “Peter Pelham,” p. 149 said: “Dumaresq the merchant, vestryman of Trinity Church of which Pelham was a member . . . was doubtless delighted not only to aid Pelham, but to open his house to the ladies and gentlemen of Boston for such gaiety and social intercourse as Pelham’s talents promised.” Philip Dumaresq’s enjoyment of the polite social arts was conveyed to his granddaughter Ann, who in 1667 married the dancing master and impresario William Turner, Sr.

15 Oliver, “Peter Pelham,” p. 159. “It was early in 1750 or at the end of 1749 that John Greenwood painted the Rev. Thomas Prince, pastor of the Old South Church and well-known historian. Prince was an obvious subject for a mezzotint and subscriptions must have been come by readily. Pelham set to work and by May 24, 1750 the News-Letter could advise [of its availability]. In all likelihood [it was] a second venture between Pelham and [James] Buck [a Boston printseller].”

16 Oliver, “Peter Pelham,” p. 165. “Pelham’s painting of Moorhead from which the print was taken is lost, but it may well have been influenced by that done by Greenwood which is signed and dated 1749 and is not unlike the print. The Rev. Mr. Moorhead was the minister of what was known as the ‘Church of Presbyterian Strangers at Boston in New-England’.”

17 Arthur W. H. Eaton. The DeBlois Family (repr. from: New England Historical and Genealogical Register, LXVII, January, 1913).

18 In 1720 Edward Enstone moved to a “Large House in King-Street, Boston” where he taught dancing and other polite arts (BG, September 12, 1720). Enstone sold this house two years later, in December of 1723 (BG, December 2, 16, 1723). Was this the same property from which Stephen Deblois first offered dancing instruction?

19 The concert location in Wing’s Lane had to be large enough for an audience. Already by 1687 Samuel Sewell noted in his Diary that the evening of December 4 he and some friends.

. . . . Treat with Brother Wing about his Letting a Room in his House for a man to shew Tricks in. He saith, seeing ’tis offensive, he will remedy it. It seems the Room is fitted with Seats. I read what Dr. Ames saith of Callings, and Spake as I could, from this Principle, That the Man’s Practice was unlawfull, and therefore Capt. Wing could not lawfully give him an accomodation for it. Sung the 90^th Ps. from the 12^th v. to the end. Broke up.

Annie Haven Thwing. The Crooked & Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston (1630–1822), id ed. (Boston: Charles E. Lauriat Co., 1925), p. 129, said of Wing’s Lane: “There were several taverns near the Dock. The Castle was on the west corner of Elm Street. In the Book of Possessions, William Hudson, Jr., inkeeper, is credited with a house and garden here. In 1674 he conveyed to John Wing his house and buildings commonly called “Castle Tavern”. The estate was mortgaged and forfeited, and came into the possession of Benjamin Pemberton in 1694, “a mansion hitherto called Castle Tavern, then George Tavern.” Exactly when it ceased to be a tavern is difficult to say.

20 Stephen Deblois tuned the Christ Church organ, by an unknown maker, possibly William Claggett of Newport, Rhode Island, 1736, before this first public recital on it probably by William Price. The recital raised a total of forty-eight pounds towards the purchase of this organ. Mary Kent Davey Babcock, “Organs and Organ Builders of Christ Church, Boston, 1726–1945,” Historical Magazine of the Episcopal Church, XIV, 247.

21 Sonneck. Early Concert Life in America, pp. 260, 174, 75, suggests the possibility that if the 29th Regiment were militia, the civilian Mr. McLean, watchmaker, from whom tickets could be purchased to the concert in Boston on March 16, 1769, might be identical with the fife-major featured. On January 24, 1771, in New York, and later in the same year on December 5 in Philadelphia, a John M Lean or McLane, a fife-major and German flute player gave two concerts. However back in Boston a “McLane, Watchmaker” sold tickets to a concert for the benefit of William S. Morgan originally scheduled for January 25, 1771 but postponed to February 8 (BWNL, January 17, 1771; BPB, January 28, 1771. For the complete quotes, see these two sources in the section on William Sampson Morgan in this Appendix). Nothing more with regard to music is heard of McLean, Watchmaker, in Boston after this date. A possible explanation for assuming Sonneck correct might be that John M Lean or McLane, fife-major and German flute player, and the Boston Watchmaker McLean or McLane were related with the same surname, giving the latter reason for helping the former. Perhaps, though, the association is nothing more than military. W. S. Morgan had ties to the Navy.

22 Charleston County Wills, 1747–1752, Book VI, pp. 402–403. The spinet was valued at ten pounds, the clavichord at four pounds.

23 There are some interesting family connections in relation to the succession of Ephraim Turner to Thomas Brownell’s dancing school. Marriage intentions between Thomas Brownell’s widow Hannah and William Sheafe were published in 1738 (BRC, XXVIII, 230). William Sheafe (1706–1771) was a prominent musical figure in the city. He was a member of the “Consort”, a musical ensemble of gentlemen performers, and its spokesman when the group petitioned the Selectmen in 1744 and 1747 for the use of Faneuil Hall for the purpose of presenting two concerts (BRC, XVII, 89, 90, 159–160; for the full citations, see these sources in the section on Stephen Deblois in this Appendix). In 1750 William Sheafe is mentioned in the Diary of Capt. Francis Goelet, a mariner from New York, as one who invited Goelet to attend the “Consort of which he was a Member. . . . it Consisted on One Indifrent, Small Oargon, One Base Violin, One German Flute and Four small Violins” (New England Historical and Genealogical Society Register, XXIV (1870), 54). It is not known whether the couple actually married; on October 1, 1752, Sheafe married Susanna Child (Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, VII: 254). However, Sheafe’s first wife was Elizabeth Foye, daughter of John and Sarah (Belcher Lynde) Foye. Ephraim Turner in 1748/1749 took Dorothy Foye as his wife.

24 Ebenezer Swan was licensed to teach business subjects, and, as the advertisement stated, taught them during the “usual School Hours,” August 16, 1738 (BRC, XV, 129). Ephraim Turner could have occupied the same premises after hours. The head of Queen (now Court Street) was at the intersection of Hanover and Tremont, which jutted off at an accute angle to Queen. Swan’s ad identifies the location as the head of Queen Street, while the Selectmen specify Tremont as the same former address for Thomas Brownell. The building was therefore probably in the island where Queen and Tremont met, or possibly on the north-west side of the intersection. Concert Hall, opened in 1754 was on the east corner of Queen and Hanover Streets.

25 Norman A. Benson, Itinerant Dancing and Music Masters, pp. 82–94; and Maurer Maurer, “Peter Pelham,” pp. 6–13.

26 Seybolt, Public Schools, p. 54; Nash, American Writing Masters, pp. 15, 19. References to Holbrook not quoted in full here and which exclusively pertain to his work in the public school are: BRC, XV, 292, 349; BRC, XIV, 16, 26, 33–34, 39, 46, 51, 62, 65, 76, 77, 82, 177–178, 195–196, 199, 212, 230–231, 233–234, 243, 255, 256, 259–260, 274, 290, 307; BRC, XVII, 176, 186, 240, 292, 299; BRC, XVI, 11–12, 24, 42, 53, 59, 75, 94. 116, 141–142, 146, 185, 186, 207, 211–213, 216, 245–246, 247. Seybolt, Public Schools, pp. 22n, 23n, 24, 26, 27n, 32n, 47n, 48, 56n, 80, 82, 85, 86.

27 BRC, XIV, 26, 36–37. Deshon served the town in various offices.

28 Rowe’s Lane is now Bedford Street.

29 It would appear from this and similar instances (including those of William Turner, Sr. and Jr.) that there was an unwritten code of ethics which regulated the rights and succession of family trades.

30 Whitmore, “Early Painters and Engravers of New England,” pp. 206–208, 204.

31 Raoul F. Camus. Military Music of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, [1976]), p. 48. “The musicians may have been from the 29th Foot or from the band of the 64th Regiment, as Flagg later gave many concerts with their assistance. The men in one or both cases may even have been local musicians who were attempting to form a musical organization, for Flagg in an advertisement of 1773 claimed that he was the ‘First Founder, and had at great Expense of Time, Trouble, etc., instructed a Band of Music to perform before the Regiment of Militia in this Town.’

“Information about this first militia band has not yet surfaced, other than Flagg’s statement, but the concert of 1769 may have been performed by this band. Flagg had seen the example of the British regimental bands and wished to organize the same for his own militia regiment. The band may not have been very large at first, or may not have had a permanent organization but could still have been called a band.”

32 Flagg’s duet partner could either be James Joan (see fn. 45 below) who most recently to Flagg’s June 7, 1770 concert had “sung and read” on May 28, 1770 (see BEP, March 26, 1770 in the section on James Joan in this Appendix); or a Mr. Asby who advertised in the BWNL, March 29, 1770:

“For the Benefit of Mr. Asby, on Friday the 6th of April, Will be performed at Concert-Hall, A Grand Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Music, to which will be added a Cantata, called Cymon and siphigenia [in BG, April 2, 1770 the latter is spelled iphigenia], in the character of a Clown, by Mr. Asby.——Tickets (at Half-a-Dollar each) to be had of the Printers, Messirs. cox & berry’s opposite the Post Office, Mr. sharwin, Saddler in King-street, and of Mr. Asby in King-street. N.B. To begin at 7 o’Clock P.M.”

BG, April 9, 16, 1770 repeated this ad with the change of performance date to April 20. Either it was postponed or it was so successful it had to be repeated.

33 The performer of the organ concerto, “a Gentleman lately arrived from London, Organist of the Chapel”, was William Selby. See the section on William Selby in this Appendix.

34 Rowe Diary, p. 246. “June 4 [1773]. King’s Birthday aged 35. Colo. Hancock & Company of Cadets, Major Paddock & Artillery, Colo. Erving & the Regiment, Colo. Phipps & Company all made their appearance in the Common—Such a Quantity or Rather Multitude of People as Spectators I never saw before, they behaved very well.

35 Earlier on October 21, 1773, the day originally planned for the Flagg benefit with his “Band of Music” which performed “before the Regiment of Militia in this Town”, Levi Ames was made an example of and hanged for burglery. See Rowe Diary, p. 257 and the section on five “moral fakement” ballads ostensibly by Levi Ames in the article by Carlton Sprague Smith in this book, vol. I, 330–341.

36 David P. McKay, “William Selby,” 613. The writer/compiler of this Appendix has not yet systematically searched the Newport newspapers and primary city documents for evidence of Flagg and music in that area.

37 Participating in the “Vocal entertainment of June 13, 1770,” the last night of the run, could have been James Joan, Mr. Asby (see fn. 32 above), or possibly David Douglass, an actor from New York and Philadelphia who had been in New England (Newport and Providence) in 1761, and had placed the following advertisement in MG (BWNL, for August 3, 1769:

to-morrow (being Friday 4th of August mr. DOUGLASS Will deliver his lecture on heads &c. &c. [To begin at Eight o’Clock.]

Mr Wardwell, an itinerant English actor, was in Salem in 1769 and is thought to have presented an entertainment which consisted of recitations from the ballad opera of Damon and Phillida with songs from the opera of Artaxerxes between the acts (EG, October 3, 1769; Milton Gerald Hehr, “Musical Activities in Salem, Massachusetts, 1783–1823,” Boston University, PhD. diss., 1963, p. 93).

British soldiers provide yet another possibility. In March of 1769 they had advertised their intentions of presenting plays in Boston, which they succeeded in doing throughout the first half of the 1770s. The following quotes illuminate the heated discussions about plays which ensued the announcement.

BWNL, March 16, 1769

Mr. draper,

Please to insert the following, and you’ll oblige Your’s, &c.

I am credibly inform’d, and it is with no small surprise, that a number of the soldiers now here, intend shortly to exhibit a Play in this town, in open violation of an act of the province for preventing stage plays and other theatrical entertainments. I would take the freedom to acquaint these subverters, rather than supporters of peace and good order, that should they, at any time, have the presumption to act in the capacity of Commedians in any part of this government, proper and legal measures will undoubtedly be taken by the civil power to prosecute the offenders.—’Tis to be hoped, that if this friendly hint, should not prove an effectual warning to prevent their intended exhibition, that the gentlemen officers will forbid their acting, till such time as entertainment of this kind, become more acceptable to the inhabitants of the town, than they are at present.

BEP, March 20, 1769

Boston, March 16, 1769.

Messrs, fleets.

Please to insert the following in your impartial Paper and you’ll oblige your constant Reader.

A Writer in last Thursday’s Paper says that he is “credibly informed and with no small surprize, that a number of the Soldiers now here intend shortly to exhibit a Play in this Town, in open violation of an Act of this Province for preventing Stage Plays and other Theatrical Entertainments.” I would inform this Writer and all other intermedledlers, that there is an Act of Parliament licensing Theatrical Performances throughout the King’s dominions, which I take upon me to say (and no one can contradict) intirely supercedes the Act of this Province for preventing the same : And besides, according to the little knowledge I have of the constitution of this Province, the Assembly are restricted to the making Laws not contrary to the Laws of England, and if so, certainly the Act of this Province abovementioned can be of no force.—That Plays are disagreable, as no person is obliged to attend that has not leisure, ability &c inclination, there cannot be any reasonable objection in that respect. I am told that a few years ago some Bunglers, as the means of making assignations, took upon themselves to exhibit Plays at unseasonable hours, which highly incensed the sober part of the Town, as well it might; but as the present Performers have very different and strictly upright motives, it is to be hoped, and may really be expected, they will meet with the approbation of the public, instead of a prosecution, which this Writer’s ignorance of the Law led him to insinuate would take place—which is the sincere wish of one that purposes in the intended Exhibition to be a spectator.

MG (BWNL), March 23, 1769

Mr. DRAPER,

boston, March 21. 1769.

Please to publish the following in your next, and you’l oblige your’s &c.

An Advocate for Theatrical Entertainments has made his appearance in last Monday’s Evening-Post, who endeavours to invalidate the good Effects my publication in your last, relative to Plays, was calculated to propose.—He asserts that, “there is an Act of Parliament licensing Theatrical performances throughout the King’s Dominions, which entirely supercedes the Act of this Province for preventing the same If there is such an Act in being, I readily agree with him that it does; however I know of none, neither did I ever hear, till now, that there was such an Act of Parliament extant; ’tis a matter of doubt to me whether he can produce it, if he can, it will undoubtedly be a satisfaction to the public to be made acquainted with it, as ’tis requisite they should know of it in order to prevent any prosecutions consequent upon a Breach of the Act of this Province for preventing such Entertainments.—His “knowledge of the Constitution of this Province,” as he himself observes, is but “little” for it seems he is entirely ignorant with regard to the ratification of all provincial Laws.—I will enlighten his Understanding in this respect,—and inform him that all Acts of this, as well as other Governments are transmitted, home for the Royal Approbation, and most certainly had there been an Act of Parliament “licensing Theatrical performances through the King’s Dominions,” the Act of this Province prohibiting the same, would have been disallowed of by his Majesty, and therefore been expung’d the Province Laws—“That Plays are disagreeable to the Inhabitants of this Town” is too evident to be with any color of truth contradicted, as manifestly appears by the strenuous efforts made a few Years since, to prosecute the performers of a Play, who were Natives of the Town, nothwithstanding the Expence to the Spectators was but trifling in comparison with what is now exacted.—“No Person,” he says, “is obliged to attend that has not leisure, ability and inclination,” very true,—and it is a melancholy truth, that some Persons, if they have but Forty Shillings in their Pockets, will appropriate it to purchase a Play Ticket, and absolutely deprive themselves and Family of the necessities of Life, only for the sake of gratifying their own foolish Curiosity.—What “Motives the present Performers” go upon, I know not, but I am well assured, they will not “meet with the Approbation of the public,” unless the public are disposed to encourage Persons in the Violation of the good and wholsome Laws of this Government.

For the Selectmen’s later directives to William Turner, Sr., owner of Concert-Hall where theatrical performances took place, see BRC, XIII, pp. 168–169 for March 24, 1773 in the section on William Turner, Sr., in this Appendix.

38 Daniel Rea, Jr., was a painter, decorator, and singer of some repute. He sang solos for several years at the anniversary dinners of the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company, Boston. In 1764 he married Rachel Johnston (?1746–1801), daughter of Thomas Johnston, the organ builder. He and Johnston became business partners; and he wrote down Johnston’s brief nuncupative will in 1767. Sinclair Hitchings, “Thomas Johnston,” Boston Prints and Printmakers, 1670–1775, eds. Sinclair Hitchings and Walter Muir Whitehill, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, XLVI (1973). 121.

39 For Turner’s writs of attachment against William Sampson Morgan, see: Boston. Sessions of the Peace, docket 91657, March 25, 1773, in the section on Morgan in this Appendix.

40 Was Turner also involved in a concert on Harvard College commencement day a year earlier at the Court House, Cambridge, on the Wednesday next [July 15] after the BWNL issue of July 9 1772, (also in BG, July 13, 1772) for the benefit of Mr. Coleman? The ad read as follows:

On Wednesday next, (Being the Commencement at Cambridge) Will be performed A concert of Vocal and Instrumental music, For the Benefit of Mr. colman. In the Court-House there. To begin at 8 o’Clock, P.M.

TICKETS may be had at Mr. howe’s in Cambridge, at Half a Dollar each.

41 Sonneck, Early Concert Life in America, p. 258, believed that W. S. Morgan was the conductor of this concert series “. . . otherwise it would not have rested with the managers to appoint Feb. 2d for a ‘grand’ concert of vocal and instrumental music for Mr. Morgan’s benefit (see BEP, January 30, 1775, in the section on W. S. Morgan in this Appendix). On the other hand it is not quite clear whether the managers raised enough additional stock to carry on the concerts during March and April, and if Morgan, regardless of the signs of approaching war, on April 3d announced ‘his first evening’s entertainment’ in the Boston Evening Post, the form of his announcement almost leads one to infer that the contemplated series was an enterprise of his own. . . .”

42 Judith Holyoke (b. 1769) became William Turner, Jr.’s wife in 1795. William Jr., the son of William Turner, Sr. who held this dance, followed in his father’s footsteps and also became a dancing master.

43 The Green Dragon Tavern was on the west side of Union Street near Hanover. For a drawing of it, see fig. 403 in Cynthia Adams Hoover’s contribution to this volume.

44 Grateful thanks is owed Sally Gant from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for her generous contribution of valuable sources documenting Juhan and his activities as a builder of musical instruments in the South, and for permitting their inclusion in the section on this most interesting of eighteenth-century American musical figures.

Mrs. Gant has been an active researcher in the exemplary archival program to document early Southern American arts and to locate and trace the objects. Because this program is chiefly concerned with objects, there may still be newspaper notices which record Juhan’s activities as a performer that remain to be collected in the early Southern newspapers. One always hopes that more highly-organized efforts like the MESDA program will develop in other areas of the country to help trace Juhan as well as other musical itinerants.

45 Although James Juhan or Joan was “last from Halifax” (Boston. Sessions of the Peace, docket 88654, had a French name and offered to teach the French language in Boston (BWNL, October 20, 1768), he may have spent some time in London.

John Rowe in his diary entry for March 23, 1770 (p. 202), identified Juhan as the unnamed individual who advertised himself in the newspapers in 1769 and 1770 as “a Person who has Read and Sung in most of the great Towns in America”.

46 The two main violinists who have been identified during this period were James Juhan, documented in Boston by October 1, 1768, and William Sampson Morgan, “just arrived from England” (BWNL, December 7, 1770).

47 After the announcement of James Juhan’s son Alexander Juhan, as “Master of Music” in Philadelphia (PP, December 23, 1783), it is difficult to discern which Juhan is active in that city’s concerts. Both James and Alexander lived at Mrs. Perry’s in 1783, the address given for Mr. Juhan, the performer, in 1784. In January of 1786 the Juhan address changed to that of Mr. Brunot. The following two advertisements are certainly those of Alexander, however, because by April 19, 1786, James had taken up residence in Portsmouth, Virginia. The ads for performances by Alexander in Philadelphia are here given in full to record all the compiler knows of the Juhan family to date.

PP, April 22, 1786

concert. At Mr. Duplessis’s New Room, in Church alley, on Tuesday next, will be performed a concert of instrumental music, for the benefit of Mr. Juhan. The Concert will consist of the most favorite Music, viz.

First Part. Simphonie, Stamitz. Double Concerto flute & violin, Davsun, Quarteto, Gambini, Concerto forte piano, Smith.

Sec. Part. Simphonia, Vanhal, Concerto flute, Brown, Duetto forte piano, Smith, Concerto violin, Borghi.

Tickets, at 7/6 each, to be had of Mr. Juhan, at Mr. Brunot’s, the corner of Walnut and Second streets; at Mr. Rice’s Book-store; at the New Coffee-house, and at Mr. Duplessis’s.

April 19.

PP, April 27, 1786

Philadelphia, April 27, 1786.

a grand concert

sacred music,

For the benefit of the Pennsylvania Hospital; Philadelphia Dispensary, and the Poor, for which there has, hitherto, been no regular provision made.——will be performed, at the Reformed German Church, in Race-street, on Thursday, the 4th of May. The doors will be opened at half an hour after nine o’clock, in the morning, but not sooner, and the Music will begin precisely, at eleven o’clock, after which no person can be admitted.——

Order of the Music to be performed.

I. Martini’s celebrated Overture.
II. An Anthem from the 150th Psalm.
III. An Anthem from the 18th Psalm, by the Rev. James Lyon.
IV. Flute Concerto, by Mr. Brown.
V. The voices of time.
VI. An anthem from the 97th Psalm; by Mr. Tuckey.
VII. A violin concerto, by Mr. Juhan.
VIII. An anthem from the izzd Psalm, by A. Williams.
IX. An anthem from the id of Solomon’s Song: by W. Billings.
X. Handel’s celebrated Hallelujah Chorus, in the Messiah.

Tickets at five shillings each; are to be had of Mr. Young, at the southwest corner of Second and Chestnut streets, and of all the managers. To prevent confusion, care has been taken that the number of tickets struck off, should not exceed the number of persons who, by estimating, can be accommodated at the place proposed. Correspondent to this idea, all who apply for tickets will have a right to be supplied, till the who number prepared is exhausted, after which it will be out of the power of the managers to furnish more. And upon the same principle, on the morning of the exhibition, [those] persons supplied with tickets, as they successively offer themselves, will be introduced to their seats, indeed, it is the desire, and will be the endeavour, of the managers, to have the whole of this business conducted with that decency and dignity, which its nature and design seem to require.

To administer some relief to him whose hope is like a shadow, to raise up him who is bowed down with sorrow, and to show that the Fine Arts may and and ought to subserve the purposes of humanity, are we believe the with which the performers have, voluntarily awnsered their service on this occasion. Under a full conviction of their motives being such, and as the highest proof of our approbation, we have, cheerfully, complied with their request, and agreet to act as

managers,

William White, Henry Helmet, Casper Weinberg, Francis Hopkinson, George Nelson, Azariah Horton, Joseph Ker, Reynold Keen, Nathaniel Falconer, William Hall, Henry Hill, Samuel Miles, Joseph Snowden, Daniel Smith, Jacob Baker, William Will, Jacob L. Swyler, John Baker.

48 Hans Nathan, William Billings: Data and Documents, p. 15; David P. McKay and Richard Crawford, William Billings of Boston, Eighteenth-Century Composer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 67.

49 Mr. Hartley was George Harland Hartley, an organist and performer in Boston who flourished there from 1763 to 1771. Hartley came to Boston in 1763 as organist to King’s Chapel, succeeding, after a two-year vacancy, Thomas Dipper. He retained this position until at least 1768. He also gave at least eight Boston concerts. For another reference to Hartley, see BG, December 18, 25, 1769, in the section on James Juhan in this Appendix. Because Hartley is not known to have offered any kind of musical instruction while in Boston, a section on him has not been included in this Appendix.

50 “Colo Dalrymple” was from the 14th Regiment, according to John Rowe in his Diary, p. 209, with whom Dalrymple dined on October 19, 1770.

51 Sonneck, Early Concert Life in America, p. 269, pointed out that the list of wind instruments indicates that this concert included a full orchestra of the period.

52 Propert’s “Expectation soon of the Arrival of a Capital Performer” was thought to be the return of W. S. Morgan. Morgan first appeared in Boston late in 1770 and stayed at least through September of 1771. From 1771 to 1773 he lived and worked in both Newport, Rhode Island and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Propert stated in his ad in BEP, January 25, 1773, that “The Performer he expected is come . . .”. Propert sided with Morgan against William Turner, Sr., in presenting competing concerts. As was seen earlier, in the section on William Turner, Sr., in this Appendix, Turner had legitimate cause to be displeased with Morgan; Turner was the cause of the Selectmen’s warning of Morgan from Boston on March 25, 1773, which documents with certainty Morgan’s presence in Boston. Because Propert and Morgan continued to present concerts in Boston after this warning, Propert probably gave security to the Selectmen to indemnify the town from further problems arising from the difficult Morgan.

53 For a more complete description of William Selby’s career and a list of his compositions, see the excellent article by McKay, “William Selby,” pp. 609–627. See also Sonneck, Early Concert Life in America, pp. 263, 268–287, 293–295, 313, 317. Foote, in Annals, II, 403, said of Selby: “There is reason to believe that great care was taken from the time of the reopening of the Chapel that the musical service should be not only thoroughly devotional, but level with the taste and science of the time. There are not wanting indications that William Selby, who was organist from 1782 to 1804 [sic: 1798], was at the head of his profession, we can hardly say as an organist, for there cannot have been organs enough in Boston to justify a comparison, but as a musical performer. His salary was £66. 13s.4d. . . .”

54 The Post incorrectly identified Selby as John rather than William.

55 Sonneck, Early Concert Life in America, p.283, states that this fact was not correct, “as ‘Jonah, an oratorio, composed by S. Felsted’ was performed at New York on June 11, 1788.”

56 McKay, “William Selby,” p. 622, states unequivocally that Selby was the conductor of this concert.

57 Bromfield’s Lane, also called Rawson’s Lane is now named Bromfield Street. In 1779–1780 Vandale was instructor of French at Harvard College. Seybolt, Private Schools, p. 77.

58 Bradford Adams Whittemore. Memorials of the Society of the Cincinnati (Boston, 1964), p. 646.

59 Griffith published two dance manuals. They are:

John Griffith. A Collection of the Newest Country Dances and Cotillions. (Providence, [Rhode Island, 1788]). Evans 21122. For details, see fig. 29 in vol. I of this book.

John Griffiths. A Collection of the Newest Cotillions and Country Dances. (Northampton, [Massachusetts, 1794]). Evans 21121. For details, see figs. 7, 31, 31 in vol. I of this book.

60 Mrs. West is Susannah Holyoke, sister of Margaret Holyoke and Judith Turner.

61 The “new Assembly rooms” were in Hamilton Hall, built in 1805 and named in honor of Alexander Hamilton.

62 “Wm. Turner” could either have been William Jr. or his son William Henry who would have been fifteen years old in 1813.

1 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Founding of Harvard College (Cambridge, 1935), pp. 135–136; Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1936), II, 580–582.

2 Holyoke Diaries, ed. George Dow (Salem, Mass., 1911), p. 39.

3 Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, I, 159.

4 Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, II, 161.

5 Wilbur Samuel Howell, Eighteenth Century British Logic and Rhetoric (Princeton, 1971), pp. 341–342.

6 Sibley’s Harvard Graduates; 17 vols. (Cambridge, 1933–1975), v, 452.

7 Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, vi, 481–482.

8 The Testimony of the President, Professors, Tutors and Hebrew Instructor of Harvard College in Cambridge, Against the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield, And his Conduct (Boston, 1744), pp. 4–8.

9 Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, XXXIII, xxxi.

10 Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, XXXIII, 170.