Pictured above is Kevin Shaffer at the organ, 2024. You may have read the article by Carina Montoya about how the organ was brought to life by Kevin. Insert, Arundell Adobe on Pole Creek, 1895. Photo credit Fillmore Historical Museum.

Pictured above is Edith Moore Jarrett at the organ, circa 1977. In 1971 Edith announced the new Fillmore Historical Museum had been created and was looking for items of historical significance. Inset, the front page of the Estey Organ Catalog, 1886. Photo credit Fillmore Historical Museum.

Courtesy Fillmore Historical Museum

You may be tired of hearing about the playing of the “Arundell” organ but here’s one more story with some background on how the organ came to occupy space at the Fillmore Historical Museum.
What I’m relating may be a partially “urban myth” but it’s the story we’ve been told. If anyone has corrections, please let us know.

The Arundell family home was an adobe on Pole Creek. In the late 19th Century an Estey “Cottage” organ sat in the parlor of the adobe. The Cottage Organ was produced by the organ company starting in the late 1870s through the early 1900s. The company was founded in 1852 in Brattleboro, Vermont and was in business until 1962. They made all types of organs, but the “Cottage” was one of their most popular. We’ve looked through many of their catalogs from the period and haven’t found the same one illustrated in the catalogs, but there were many similar ones, and a purchaser could make modifications in the cabinets.

We aren’t sure when the Arundell family purchased their organ, but we do know several similar ones were purchased about the same time by area locals.

Fast forward 50 years or so--the family moved from the adobe. The organ weighed a lot and was difficult to move so it was left behind. In 1972, Edith Moore Jarrett put out the word that the new Fillmore Historical Museum had been created and was looking for items of historical significance.

The Arundell’s were one the first of the local families to respond and donated the organ. This is the first, if only object that if the Museum were to close, it would be returned to a member of the Arundell family. There may have been doubt in 1972 that the museum would last a few years, let alone the 50 years plus it has.

We are not sure when the Arundell family moved from the adobe on Pole Creek, but we do know the organ was left behind – perhaps no one had room for it, or perhaps no one wanted it. Organs like this were going out of fashion while Hammond B3’s were all the rage. A crew went up Pole Creek with two mules. The organ was taken in four pieces; two were loaded on each of the mules and brought into Fillmore. It was taken to the museum, which was then in the Masonic Building on Sespe and Central, and put back together. Probably the most amazing part of this is that the organ still played. We have a photo of Edith Moore Jarrett playing it (see above), but we had no record of how it sounded.
The years passed and the museum moved from the Masonic Building to the Southern Pacific depot which was by the City Fire Station on Main Street. After the 1994 earthquake the organ was moved to its current location in the Hinckley House on the museum grounds

A few weeks ago, you may have read the article by Carina Montoya about how the organ was brought to life by Kevin Shaffer who had a passion for reed organs. We are still trying figure out how we can share this more widely, but for now, here is the complete recording from Kevin that evening. https://youtube/BbEcrZHfxkk

Special thanks for Kevin and his wife, Kimberly, but also to Tony Recendez and his daughter, Andrea, for capturing all for posterity.