How a Civil War-era organ played music again

By Steve Young, for Pigeon605

The call came out of the blue and was completely unexpected, and David Walder paused for a moment as the voice on the other end asked him about something called the “Walder Organ.”

The Walder what, he thought, as the question went back and forth in his head.

Before long, he was traveling back in time, transported by a vision of a memory he had not visited for decades. Suddenly, David Walder was no longer 81 years old, but 4, maybe 5, sitting on the floor of the old farmhouse on the Walder property northeast of Hayti in the late 1940s, listening to his Aunt Emily coax beautiful music from the reeds of a small organ.

It turned out to be an Estey Flat Top Cottage Organ made just after the Civil War – 153 years ago this year, to be precise, by the Estey Organ Co. in Brattleboro, Vermont. The same organ that has been spreading its songs across the Dakota plains for the past 142 years.

This Walder organ.

“So what do you want to do with it?” asked Danny Olsen, a farmer from the Hayti area whose family now owned the former Walder property and who, through his connections to the Walder family, was in possession of this old, dilapidated shell of wood and ivory.

The simple answer, as with most things that have lost their usefulness over time, would have been to banish it to the organ scrap heap, because it no longer seemed capable of speaking the language of music.

But Estey, as Walder now calls the keyboard instrument, still had a voice for him – a voice that echoed the melodies of family history, of family memories that, by their very existence, connected at least six generations of the Walder family.

Estey had come to Dakota Territory on an immigrant train from Baraboo, Wisconsin, and arrived near present-day Watertown when there were still signs of large herds of buffalo roaming the prairies. When isolated bands of tribal people still roamed the land. When agriculture still depended on heavy plows, teams of horses or oxen, and the determination to survive plagues of locusts and droughts.

Estey played his music when the Dakota Territory became South Dakota. It played through the centuries, as dirt roads became highways and then interstates. As America went to war twice in Europe, and then in Japan, Korea and Vietnam. As mankind flew to the moon and back. Estey was there for every Walder birthday celebration, every tear shed over an open Walder grave, and every meaningful gathering in between.

And after David Walder consulted with cousins ​​and relatives to find an answer to Olsen’s question, it was decided: They would bring Estey back to life and preserve her.

“That was important to me,” Walder said. “It was important to my cousins, too, when I visited them. I’m known for capturing things. And this, this was an organ that I listened to once. And that was enough for me.”

This organ embodies Dakota history. Walder’s great-grandparents, Godfrey and Anna Walder, received it as a wedding gift from their parents when they married in the fall of 1871.

A few years earlier, Godfrey had walked 150 miles from his home in southern Wisconsin to Chicago to join the Union Army during the Civil War, but was rejected because he was 4 feet 7 inches tall. Fate led him to Anna Trautman instead, and there were no height restrictions for working on the land. So they farmed in Sauk County, Wisconsin, for ten years with moderate success. Then, in the fall of 1881, 39-year-old Godfrey Walder caught Dakota fever after hearing that hardworking German neighbors were succeeding in the Dakota Territory, and so he set a new course for his future.

In the fall of 1881, Godfrey and Anna purchased the Frank Bradley Farm, 2 3/4 miles south of Watertown, for $6,000. The following spring, they took the immigrant train from Wisconsin—a 450-mile journey—and brought wagons, machinery, horses, cows, chickens, and white turkeys to their new home.

And of course the Walder organ.

David Walder’s great-grandmother Anna came from an educated background, was well-versed in literature and music, and certainly played Estey. Godfrey and Anna’s daughter Emily – one of the family’s five children – was also an accomplished organist.

In the late 19th century, the organ was the only instrument of its kind in the prairie area stretching from Watertown to Hayti, and was used for various musical events and the occasional dance. The neighbors, the Mungers, were even allowed to hoist it up into the hayloft with a hay rope for barn dances.

Walder can only speculate what music Estey played. Perhaps patriotic songs. Although the Walders were not an overly religious family, they may have played hymns on it. There are also old sheet music and books that have survived the decades, with titles like “Rubber Plant Rag,” “Salome Waltzes,” “Take Me Back to Dear Old Dixie” and “Serenade” by Schubert.

Estey lived with the Walders on their farm south of Watertown from 1882 to 1888. When financial difficulties forced them to lose their farm, they moved north of Watertown, where Godfrey worked for a rancher named Emil Schlieker until he saved enough money to try farming on his own again.

So it was that in 1893 the Walders bought a property one mile east and two miles north of present-day Hayti. And there, in that farmhouse, Estey remained for most of the next 129 years.

David Walder, who taught middle school English at Brookings High School for 35 years before retiring, grew up on a farm a quarter mile west and maybe a quarter mile north of his great-grandparents’ home. By the time his memories really began to take shape, Godfrey and Anna had passed away, and their son Alex was living on the Walder property with his wife, Sadie, and Alex’s sister, Emily.

As a young boy, David Walder would hike up the hill to Alex and Sadie’s house, where he knew a plate of brownies and a glass of Kool-Aid might be waiting for him. Aunt Emily lived upstairs, and Sadie called her down when the boy came to visit. Emily had a set of lead soldiers that Walder loved to play with. And on at least one occasion, she played the organ for him downstairs, although the organ occasionally stayed upstairs with Emily.

“I don’t even remember what song it was,” Walder said. “But the memory is very clear to me.”

In the years that followed, the organ remained upstairs with Emily on the property. When she died in 1975, Estey remained in the house. Sadie, who was known as Olsen before she married Alex, sold the Walder property to her nephew Dale Olsen in the mid-1970s. For the next 40-plus years, the Olsens cared for the organ. Dale Olsen’s wife, Deanna, played it regularly, and Estey became known as the Walder-Olsen organ.

David Walder is not entirely sure who else might have played it. Apparently the music died down over time. The finer details of the old organ no longer worked – age had overtaken its parts and its function.

This also applies to the call from Dale Olsen’s son Danny to Walder in spring 2022.

What should be done with Estey? Walder’s wish was to preserve the work and perhaps house it in a museum in Hayti or Watertown. Perhaps the National Music Museum in Vermillion would be interested.

Although none of those options came to pass, there was a consensus among Walder’s relatives that Estey should not go to the scrap yard. A cousin in North Carolina treasured the old organ, Walder said. So did a cousin who was a rancher near Vivian and had played the church organ there for many years. And other relatives wanted to keep the organ as well.

“When I started asking the cousins, I immediately realized that rebuilding was what we all wanted,” Walder said.

That decision and a few more phone calls led Walder to Marty Larsen and Marty’s Services in Hurley. Larsen was a machinist by trade and had worked for JF Nordlie’s organ building company in Sioux Falls for 20 years. When that job ended, he spent a short time looking for various work opportunities before deciding to open his own organ repair and rebuilding business in Hurley in about 2004.

Although he has revived many organs over the years, Larsen said the Walder-Olsen Estey is one of the oldest pump organs he has ever seen. He worked on an organ that is in a museum in Freeman and was reportedly built in 1865. He has also tried his hand at repairing pipe organs, including the historic reconstruction of an organ built in southern Bavaria around 1785 that is now in a museum in Viborg.

In reality, Larsen says, rebuilding or repairing pump organs is not usually undertaken unless there is a long family history.

“It has to be like a family heirloom,” he said. “If you go out and find one that needs restoration, they’re usually not worth much. You might pay $50 to $100 for it, or you might get it for free. But it costs several times that to restore them and get them back to their original condition, which is basically brand new. For most people who don’t have any history with it, it’s not worth it.”

Although the Walder-Olsen organ is worth only a few hundred dollars at most, Walder had no trouble getting donations from relatives to finance Estey’s renovation. It wasn’t cheap. Larsen said he had to restore the organ from the ground up. He replaced the leather on the bellows and the reservoir for the foot pumps. He re-bushed the keys. He replaced the gaskets.

There aren’t many people repairing organs these days, Larsen said. “It’s not complicated,” he said, adding, “but it has to be done right. A harmonium has to be sealed properly because it’s different from a pipe organ. A pipe organ is wind pressure, and a harmonium like David’s is a vacuum machine. It actually sucks air through. They were designed for salons and small chapels because instead of blowing air out to make a sound, which would make more sound, they suck air in through the reeds.”

The refurbished Estey was delivered to Larsen in Sioux Falls on Oct. 23, 2022, Walder said. Walder and another cousin, Kenny Everson, picked up the restored organ on Aug. 3, 2023. It now resides at Everson’s just outside Hayti – its future is still uncertain, even if its music will be heard again.

There has been talk of a family reunion this summer, with relatives coming from near and far to take turns playing the restored organ. There has also been talk of leaving it at Everson for now, and offering passing relatives and friends the opportunity to stop by and spend time with the beloved organ whenever they want.

The latter is probably not the final answer, Walder admits. But now the 153-year-old family heirloom is reborn and has a new home. It speaks the language of music again. And its very existence remains a constant reminder to the Walders and the Olsens and all their relatives of how far they have come on the Dakota prairie.

This partially answers Danny Olsen’s question to David Walder. Walder is convinced that at some point in the long run they will figure out what to do with it.

“I’ve kind of hit a wall with my ideas, but I know there’s a solution out there,” he said. “We’ll come up with it. For now, we’re content to let the old lady rest with Kenny Everson until we get a little wiser.”