BRATTLEBORO-The September episode of the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast told the story of how Jacob Estey and the Estey Organ Company put Brattleboro on the map and helped shape American popular culture in the second half of the 19th Century. The podcast is available for free on all podcast platforms at bit.ly/783-estey.
The podcast release coincided with the Sept. 26–30 EsteyFest 24. This national reed organ conference attracted hundreds to Brattleboro, "site of the longest-lived and largest reed organ company in the world," say organizers, where the Estey Organ Company and the Estey family who ran it turned out more than half a million musical instruments that traveled the globe with their prominent "Made in Brattleboro, Vermont" stamp.
The podcast story, narrated by Jon Potter of Latchis Arts, tells of Estey's success and his outlook, which was ahead of its time. Additionally, it addresses the company's rise and fall and the development of the Estey Organ Museum at the iconographic row of slate buildings that comprise the company complex just a short walk from the center of downtown.
Estey was an early master of advertising - joining images and words together to sell his product. Estey's designs for these were "remarkably colorful and appealing," say organizers, depicting sumptuous parlors with fine carpets and draperies and elegantly dressed people gathered around their reed organ - memorabilia that is actively traded today.
Estey left an indelible impression on Brattleboro as a true progressive. He underwrote construction for Estey Hall, a women's dormitory built in 1874 at Shaw University in North Carolina. It was the first building in the U.S. for the higher education of black women. It is the oldest building on campus and is still used today.
The podcast also includes information about Estey Company 30-year vice president Levi Fuller, who would eventually serve as Vermont's governor. He patented over 100 inventions, including international standard pitch, an innovation that was adopted by manufacturers of musical instruments throughout the world, one of the most important events in musical history.
Fuller is buried with his wife Abby, Jacob's daughter, under the largest memorial in Morningside Cemetery. Jacob and the rest of the family are buried at the apex of Prospect Hill Cemetery, both located near downtown.
The voices of Dennis Waring - a Brattleboro area musician and author whose book Manufacturing the Muse: Estey Organs and Consumer Culture in Victorian America is essential reading for understanding Estey's unique role in the rise of American popular culture - and a Museum founder, Barbara George, are highlighted in the podcast.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.