First Parish Meetinghouse, Shirley Center, Mass.

I sketched this from a narrow perch atop a large memorial rock. Bill Coe, who I'd met at Wachusett Meadow, stopped to talk briefly as he walked by with a friend. His brother did the drawings for a Golden Guide on birds. He mentioned being taken up into the bell tower by Melvin Longley who did a lot of restoration work on the meetinghouse. You can read about Melvin's restoration effort in Yankee Magazine's story of The Man Who Loves Grass.

The Meetinghouse is an historic site with no regular congregation. It was built in 1773 in the center of the Common and moved by oxen to its present location in 1851. Some time ago, as I was apprised by Helen Obermeyer Simmons at a lecture to the Shirley Historical Society on March 13, 1998, apparently people were more prone to move buildings than tear them down. I remember hearing about 10 years ago about the Amish in Michigan moving a house from one place to another. They had to pay to have a power line in the path cut.

The Meetinghouse shelters the Stevens Tracker Organ which was installed in 1847. It is of English design. It has a wider keyboard which somewhat compensates for the lack of notes on the floor compared with German designs. Its plaque reads:

In addition to the organ, there is an Emerson baby grand piano which was purchased soon after this drawing was made. This is on the main floor at the opposite end of the hall from the organ. Upstairs in the parlor is a square piano. When I first saw it, it and the parlor were in a sad state of repair, but now (2007) both look very attractive. The old Victrola's governor doesn't seem to work which gives an unusual sound to the old 78s. I haven't heard any serious playing on the square piano. I'm glad it didn't get caught in Harry Edward Freund's great square-piano bonfire of May 24, 1904, in Atlantic City.