St. Salvator Lutheran Church
Pipe Organ
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Pipes of Religion by Grover Brinkman (The Nashville News Wednesday, March 20, 1991)
This journalist has had the privilege to visit several area churches recently, and one thing stands out as a beneficent asset - the size and quality of the pipe organs. Many churches do not have this facility. Many of the smaller churches in southern Illinois depend on a piano or a small electronic organ for their music. But at Waterloo and Columbia the pipe organs come into vibrant beauty, at least in the churches visited. This gives rise to a dual thought of appreciation, the size of the organ and the ability of the person on the keyboard. Often these organs burst forth in a thunderous resonance of sound that literally tickles the earwax of the listener. On can easily imagine being in Dr. Schuller's Crystal Cathedral in California listening to the male organist roaming the seven keyboard giant.
Many of the fine pipe organs in southern Illinois churches are manufactured in the veteran institution at Highland, the Wicks Pipe Organ Company, one of the foremost in the field. It's nice to I know that this cultural giant is alive in southern Illinois. The Pipe organ is an integral part of our religious music, dramatizing it to the utmost. Supplant it with a piano or a small electronic organ, and the thunderous background is gone.
This is no criticism of the small congregation who cannnot afford an expensive pipe organ. Pipe organs cost money, as one will readily see, visiting the manufacturing plants where they are made. Remember there are hundreds of pipes in these organs, each tuned to a certain frequency.
And once in a blue moon (or perhaps within a century) one of these organs comes into front page focus, like the restored organ at the St. Salvator Lutheran Church at Venedy in Washington County. The congregation of this church came near to junking their ancient organ before they realized its value as a rare heirloom.
To appreciate the longevity of the pipe organ in the Venedy church, one must realize the age of this rural congregation, now approaching its 140th year. Actually, this congregation predates the founding of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, an amazing statistic. Yet this is only one facet of the story.
In the choir loft of the Venedy church is a pipe organ that come to America in a sailing ship, when the Saxons Immigrated to Altenberg, Missouri. In 1837, Delving into the records of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, it was found that this ancient organ was accompanied by four church bells of different size and three bolts of dark cloth to be used as vestments.
The destination of the organ was the Trinity Lutheran Church on Fourth Street, just off the St. Louis levee. The church today is gone, but the site is very near the Gateway Arch. When a new, larger Trinity lutheran Church was erected at Grand and Soulard, it was found that the old organ was much too small, so it was put up for sale.
The St. Salvator Lutheran Church at rural Venedy purchased the organ through the efforts of its late pastor, Dr. C. F. W. Walther, prominent clergyman in the Missouri synod. Now a problem: how to get it to Venedy?
Six Venedy farmers, all members of the Venedy congregation, volunteered to bring the organ from St. Louis to Venedy, a distance of about 55 miles over the single dirt road that existed at that time. The day was 1865, and America was in the final days of - the Civil War. Carpetbaggers and other outlaws made traveling hazardous. The old St. Louis Trace crossed the Kaskaskia River at the only ferry in existence, located near the present hamlet of New Memphis Station. Once over the Cox's ferry here, the road was west through Mascoutah, Belleville, and on to St. Louis. The route was little more than a trail, rutted, muddy and little used. The roundtrip involved more than a week with several stops at inns on the road. Remember, this was before Ead's bridge spanned the Mississippi. So a second ferry crossing was made here. There were several minor mishaps, but eventually the organ reached Venedy.
Ever since, its chimes have been a part of the services at St. Salvator. Of course there was a slow but insidious deterioration in its music as the years added to the organ's age.
In 1963, the congregation voted to scrap it. Pipes were off-key; several were so clogged they emitted no sound at all. The organist finally made an ultimatum: no more. The fact remained that the instrument had not been serviced since World War I.
"If we can't sell it," one of the board members said, "we'll junk it and buy one of those new-fangled electronic things."
Then a young musician and organ specialist named Richard Hosier, heard about the Venedy organ and came to see this relic ready to be junked. He took one look and told the elders they had a treasure in the instrument, but only if it was fully restored. Each one of the pipes must be taken down, cleaned and returned, he insisted. Hosier named a sum, and got the job.
"Junking this organ would be like putting the axe to some artifacts in the Smithsonian!" Hosier said.
After taking down the organ to the very floor. Hosier found four dead birds, several skeletal mice, and innumerable insects all imprisoned in a layer of white dust, the patina of time. After the long work schedule to restore the organ, Hosier set its value at $20,000 or more. When he sat down and ran the scale at different sound levels, the elders were amazed at the quality of the organ they almost junked.
Since Hosier rebuilt the organ, it has been in regular use at St. Salvator. Various visiting organists have 
played it, and all have the reaction - a quality instrument, with tonal quality unsurpassed.
This should end the story, but there is one fact of interest still untold. At Altenberg, Missouri, site of the first inroad of Lutherans from Saxony, a museum house many of the early artifacts of the Lutheran synod. You've guessed it. They would like very much to have the Venedy organ as part of the early Concordia movement in Missouri. The organ would have a fitting place in this museum. But the Venedy church board days no, very emphatically. They worked hard to get the organ, back in the days when it was as discard on the market, and they intend to keep it, a museum piece in this rural church. So they say no to all pleas from across the river.
St. Paul at Waterloo is one of the three churches in the U.S. that has its tall spire topped by a copper rooster, a legendary religious artifact that had its birth in Europe, and Venedy has an organ that came across the Atlantic in a sailing ship. At this Easter season, the story comes into sharp focus.
Marilyn Going is the Organist.
Updated
April 28, 2007
