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I’ve done a little research on the history of the M. P. Moller Pipe Organ Company which manufactured our instrument, the only pipe organ in Hood County.
Mathias Moller was born in Denmark and immigrated to the United States in 1872. Moller worked in Warren, Pennsylvania as a woodworker for a furniture manufacturing firm. In Erie, Pa., he got a job with organ builders, Derrick & Felgemaker. Moller returned to Warren, where he built his own pipe organ in 1875. A year later, he went to Philadelphia, where he manufactured and sold four pipe organs before moving his operation to Greencastle, Pa., in 1877. Moller placed an organ in the Reformed Church in Greencastle on trial.
When Moller was unsuccessful at securing financing from the Greencastle banks to expand his business, the city of Hagerstown, Maryland took notice of Moller’s early successes and induced him to move his business to Hagerstown in April 1881 to help make Hagerstown a viable business center in Western Maryland. The result was M. P. Moller, Inc. The company remained in business until 1992, with a production of over 11,000 instruments. Each instrument was assigned an Opus number. Our organ is Opus 5232, made in 1928. Moller thought that anyone who wanted a pipe organ should be able to buy one. So, prior to World War II, Moller mass-produced smaller pipe organs with fewer pipes for churches, restaurants, and private homes.
After the WWII, Moller switched to making largely custom organs. Their instruments are in some of the largest churches around the world. The company did not keep up with changing technology and after several attempts to revive the business failed, the company went bankrupt in 1992.
(More to follow ...)
1 comment:
That's pretty interesting -- seriously! I like researching and reading about that kind of stuff myself. It's a little bit like working on genealogy or local history. For example, I have a book about 19th and early 20th century piano manufacturers in the U.S.
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