Fr. Haley purchased the current organ at St. Mary’s in 1978. It was built by the Hutchings-Votey Organ Company in 1906 for St. Mary’s Church in Southbridge. The people of Southbridge disposed of it in the early 1970s and it was found in a barn at the Laws Organ Company in Wenham, Massachusetts, where it was covered with dirt and in scattered pieces. It was then transferred to a barn at St. Mary’s where it sat while Fr. Haley negotiated with various organ builders, finally selecting Kinsey-Angestein Organ Company of Wrentham, Massachusetts, for a complete rebuild of the instrument. This company went over every part of the organ, refurbishing and replacing where necessary. The whole instrument was assembled in their shop at Wrentham, and was then brought to St. Mary’s. The lovely wood case is the original 1906 wood, which was stripped, glued, and refinished.
The rebuilt Hutchings-Votey instrument is an encased mechanical action (tracker) pipe organ with two key-boards of 61 notes each and pedal with 30 notes. Both the key-playing action and the stop draw mechanism are mechanically operated. The organ has 17 stops, or registers of pipes, and a total of 21 ranks. There are 1,165 pipes in total, ranging from 16 feet tall to 1/16″ in length. Some of the pipes are of made of pinewood, although most of them are made of metal. The dimensions of the organ case are approximately 15 feet wide by 9 feet deep by 15 feet tall.
The organ was dedicated on Friday, September 8, 1979 at 8:00 p.m. on the Feast of the Nativity of Mary.
Listen to St. Mary’s Hutchings-Votey Pipe Organ here:
Organ Stoplist
| Great (I) | Swll (II, expr.) | Pedal |
| 8′ Open Diapason
8′ Spire Flute 4′ Principal 2′ Fifteenth IV Mixture 8′ Trumpet |
8′ Stopped Diapason
8′ Erzahler 8′ Celeste 4′ Chimney Flute 2′ Principal* II Cornet ** III Cymbel 8′ Hautbois |
16′ Sub Bass
8′ Octave Bass 4′ Choral Bass 16′ Trombone |
Couplers: I/Ped.
II/Ped.
II/I
Mechanical Action
Swell Tremolo
Manual: 61 notes
Pedal: 30 notes
*2′ Principal is engaged by the same drawknob as the III Cymbel (half-draw).
** The 2 2/3 rank in the II Cornet can be engaged by itself by drawing the knob halfway.