Rare Hand Pumped J G Pfeffer Organ at St. Patrick’s Old Rock Church / A National Treasure

By Pauline Masson – 

Sometimes things are as famous as the people who treasure them.

St. Patrick’s Old Rock Church in Catawissa is known regionally for its annual August homecoming picnic, and, at the Catholic Archdiocese in St Louis, for its legendary blending of Catholic and Protestant followers. But to a group of musicians across a wide swath of the country, a national treasure is housed in this remote former church – now a community landmark – its 1890 J G Pfeffer pipe organ – one of only a handful of organs worldwide that are still pumped by hand.

CORRECTION:

Monday May 26 Mass is at 11:00 am. not 9:00 am as originally posted.

Between 1894 and 1925, when St. Patrick’s was closed as a parish, the organ was played weekly. The beautiful instrument still works and still gets played at St. Patrick’s Day, Memorial Day, Homecoming Picnic Mass, and occasional weddings and funerals. It will be heard next Monday, May 26, when St. Louis Archbishop Mitchell T. Rozanski celebrates the 11:00 am Mass. St. Bridget of Kildare music director Ryan Murphy will play the organ.

St. Patrick’s organ was built on Marian Street in St. Louis by Johann Georg Pfeffer in 1890.  It was installed at St. Patrick’’s in 1894 at a cost of $320, a princely sum for a small frontier parish.

The late Billy Murphy, perennial president of the St. Patrick’s Preservation Society, loved to tell the story of the Catawissa lady who – long before his time – decided to wear her raggedy shoes for one more year so she could donate the two dollars she saved for new shoes toward the purchase of the organ.

“We agreed to always keep the organ the way it was when it was built,” Mr. Murphy said. “So many churches have made their organs play electrically but we decided to keep the organ the way it was when it was built.”

The “we” Mr. Murphy was referring to was himself and the late Virginia Brummett. Ms. Brummett was, for a brief moment, the original modern preservation society president but after a few weeks she asked Mr. Murphy, society vice president to swap positions with her and serve as president, an assignment he filled for the next 54 years.

Ms. Brummett was a stickler for historic preservation, vetoing any talk of adding modern amenities like restrooms, heating, air-conditioning or electrical pumping for the organ to the stone church. She retained her role as organist for 35 years until her death in 1999.

“On each Memorial Day and annual picnic day, the Battle Hymn of the Republic reverberated through St. Patrick’s at the hand of organist Virginia Brummett,” author Ellen Meara Dolan said in her history of St. Patrick’s Church. “It was the ultimate surround-sound, the kind of booming resonance that can be felt throughout your body,” 

The booming resonance is attributed to the cavernous interior of the stone church and the sea of soft pine that covers its ceiling, according to Father Jeremy Secrist, who is in charge of the inventory and location of Missouri’s church organs. He visited St. Patrick’s last year and participated in a YouTube video on the church’s famous organ. (More on that later.)

St. Patrick’s organ stands 15 feet high and contains 245 pipes arranged in five sets, or ranks. Four ranks are controlled by the keyboard and a single rank of pipes is played with a pedal board. Parishioners seated in the pews toward the front of the church can turn and see the beautiful facade of the organ in the choir loft.

Everybody in the organ universe knows where all the significant church organs are located – the huge, the historic and the remaining few hand-pumped.

In 1979 when the Organ Historical Society Conference met in St. Louis, some members made a day trip to Catawissa to see and hear St. Patrick’s, by then rare, J G Pfeffer Victorian-era pipe organ.

Nationally acclaimed organist, the late John Ditto played St. Patrick’s organ for Society members. I interviewed him by phone in January 2004 when he was serving as Associate Professor of Music at the University of Missouri – Kansas City Conservatory of Music and he joyfully recalled the event.

“I am the organist who played the J G Pfeffer organ at St. Patrick’s in Catawissa. I enjoyed playing there very much. I particularly remember the 8-foot flute on the great manual as being particularly beautiful,” he said. You could hear the smile in his voice. “The caretaker Jim Warner was so enthusiastic about being there when I practiced. He pumped the organ, which is quite a job because the pumper must maintain steady wind pressure whenever the organ is being played. He did such an admirable job.”

Mr. Warner, an organ and piano restorationist in New York, came to Catawissa to restore the organ. He was allowed to stay in the rectory while he completely restored the organ, 89 years old at the time 

For several decades Washington organist Marybell Buescher took a personal interest in St. Patrick’s pipe organ. She delivered Mr. Warner back to Catawissa to tune the organ before important dates and often played it herself. Like Mr. Ditto, Ms. Buescher remarked on the wonderful sound that St. Patrick’s organ made.

In 2007, when the Preservation Society was more flush, thanks to the success of its annual picnics, they contracted organ master Phil Hoenig of Ft. Madison, Iowa, to again restore the aging organ. Mr. Hoenig dismantled the organ and transported its inner workings to his repair barn in Iowa. He took everything, 58 keys on the keyboard, 25 pedal keys, 116 squares, 58 horizontal squares, 58 vertical squares, 50 pedal squares and all the wood pipes. Only the case and metal pipes remained in the St. Patrick’s choir loft.

Acclaimed among organ enthusiasts, this unique original organ, is considered to be a masterpiece, both in history and in the unique sound it produces.

In 2013 Archbishop (later Cardinal) Raymond Burke climbed the stairs to see the storied organ and asked to meet the organist, Connie Flynn. It was the first time in 60 years that an archbishop had visited the mission church. Archbishop (later Cardinal) Joseph Ritter brought a retinue of visiting priests to St. Patrick’s in 1948 to celebrate the centennial of the first log church built on the bank of the Meramec River 100 years earlier. Auxiliary Bishop Robert Carlson, Auxiliary Bishop Robert Hermann, and Auxiliary Bishop Edward Rice have all celebrated Mass at St. Patrick’s. 

In 2014 a large crowd arrived early for the Irish sing-along as Connie Flynn played the organ, with her husband Don Flynn providing the power. Ms. Flynn was the regular organist for the several years. 

Among the 2014 singers were representatives of the McNamee family of Little Ireland, whose grandfather, Joseph McNamee, was the church choir leader and the first individual to play the 1890 Pfeffer organ when it was acquired. 

When I telephoned David Murphy, Billy Murphy’s grandson and current preservation society president, to confirm that the organ would be heard at the Memorial Day Mass next Monday, he confirmed that it would and then told me about the visit from two organ masters and the YouTube video they made featuring St. Patrick’s organ.

In October 2023 organist Brent Johnson and organ specialist Father Jeremy Secrist came to St. Patrick’s to visit and play the organ.

Mr. Johnson is the organist at Third Baptist Church in St. Louis where he plays the 72-rank Kilgen/Moller pipe organ. He is a founding member of the non-profit Organ Media Foundation and visits organs throughout the midwest, which he records on videos for YouTube. 

The organ, he said, is “the oldest stereo instrument, one that is able to fill a space.”

Father Secrist, pastor of St. Peter’s parish in Jefferson City was appointed in 2019 to serve as the archbishop’s delegate for care and promotion of Missouri pipe organs.

An organ enthusiast of the first water, Father Secrist has a special affinity for J G Pfeffer organs. He identified two other Pfeffer organs in Missouri that are still hand pumped, one is at the Jesuit Museum and the other at St. Louis University.

“The sound produced by a pipe organ has the capacity to surround and fill the space with a volume and complexity of tone that no other instrument can match,” he said.

In the fifteen minute video, Mr. Johnson played the organ as Father Secrist hand pumped air into the bellows

Father secrist climbed inside and spied hand written note where organ master Hoenig had signed and dated his restoration. He also spied the 1894 note on the original wooden case that the organ was to be delivered to Father Edward Berry in Catawissa.

You can see the video on YouTube under the title “Late 19th Century J G Pfeffer Organ – St. Patrick’s Rock Church – Catawissa, Missouri.”

The life of St.Patrick’s famous organ is just one note in a symphony of community collaboration that  – through work and story telling – turned an abandoned country parish into a thriving community landmark.

Reminds me of that (maybe Andy Warhol) claim that everybody should enjoy fifteen minutes of fame.