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This is a historically important organ part of the foundation of the Seventh Day Advent Church. This organ started out as a 15 stop Farrand & Votey, Circa 1898Charles must by recognized for the organ builder and genius that he was.
Taking a simple 15 stop organ and building it up to a very respectable 27 stop instrument.
William Miller's home farm and Chapel is located in the Adirondack Mountains near Hampton, New York. Because of its religious significance it is now a Historic Site. The site includes the cemetery where William and Lucy Miller are buried.
Charles K. Beaman /(Beeman)
Built this organ from a 15 stop single manual
to a 27 stop double manual
Age: 59 Year: 1930
Birthplace: New York
Roll: T626_1636
Race: White
State: New York
County: Otsego
Township: Morris
Relationship: Head
Source
1930 United States Federal Census
Charles K. Beaman appears in the 1925 Oneonta, NY city directory. The listing is as such:
Beaman Charles K
piano tuner
Business: 15 Elm St.,
Home: 245 Main St.
(Thank you
Mary Harris Librarian
Huntington Memorial Library)
Wifes name: Alta
Thank you
Otsego County Historian
Mrs. Nancy Milavec
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Oneonta Star, 1946
(Charles Kenyon Beaman, organ builder)
Boyhood Dream Finally Comes True
Photo caption says: Charles K. Beaman, Otego, is shown beside chimes which he sought from the age of 6 and achieved in old age. They are made of crowbars and drive shafts and are installed in the church with amplifying system.
In the impressionable years of youth, a simple event may mould the course of a lifetime, so the psychologists say. This is a story of such an event.
It began when Charles K. Beaman was eight years old. With his parents he left his home in Otsdawa to visit New York City. There, on a beautiful day in June, 1879, they attended Trinity church.
Afterwards, as they stood in the churchyard admiring the mammoth structure, the chimes played “Rock of Ages”. Young Charles was “thrilled” through and through.
Until then he had not cared much for music, but the chimes at once filled him with a consuming desire for music and later, in maturity, with a great longing for “a little county chapel with a set of chimes”.
Indelible Impression
When he returned to the farm, he spent many sleepless nights wondering how he could get a set of chimes. Constantly, in his mind, he heard those clear, beautiful notes. Often impelled by that indelible impression, he strung horseshoes on wires and played crude tunes on them.
At 12, he played a melodeon in an Otsdawa church. He “picked up music by ear”. Then he took piano lessons from Miss Kitty Hurd in Gilbertsville. He moved to Otego and when he was 20 he went to Brooklyn and took and organ course from Professor Whitley at historic Plymouth church made famous in Civil War days by Henry Ward Beecher.
For more than half a century that followed he was a piano tuner. Often he played the organ. Never did he forget his desire. Now at the age of 75, he is completely happy. He has his chimes “in a little country chapel”.
In the Seventh-Day Adventist church at Otego, close by which he resides, he has improvised a set of chimes. It took him most o his life, and it required ingenuity, but he succeeded.
Crowbars Now Chimes
Beside a small reed organ which he rebuilt are a set of 15 chimes made from two crowbars and 13 drive shafts. The A-flat chime is his father’s old crowbar with which he helped to build fences more than 50 years ago. The shafts were obtained from William Hotaling’s garage and from Timothy Place’s old blacksmith shop in Otego.
Laboriously he cut them with hacksaws until he got the length that would give off the desired note. For each cutting he used two blades, and often he made four or five cuttings.
Mr. Beaman wanted a church bell. For this he obtained a drive shaft from and old Brockway truck. It produces a sound between D and E-flat. From yellow pine he whittled ornamental pipes which he coated with aluminum paint to “make the organ look better”. For a modern touch he devised an amplifying system connected with a loudspeaker in the church belfry. Thus, when he strikes the old Brockway shaft, the resonant sound of a church bell is carried for miles about the village.
In his work as a piano tuner he picked up a set of Deagan bells once used in a theater. They are placed beside the chimes. Inside the organ, worked by a stop are 30 Campanella bells taken from an ancient Shoninger organ, given to him by Miles Dales, Oneonta, when Mr. Dales had a music store on Elm St.
Has Amplifying System
When the amplifier is on, coughs can be heard outside on Main Street. For that reason, Mr. Beaman, who has been church organist for years, posted a sign advising the congregation to be quiet when the loudspeaker is on. In the center of the sign is a panel with movable “on” and “off ‘ warnings much like a radio control booth.
People in Otego like to listen to the amplified music coming from the church tower. When services are under way on Saturday afternoons the church’s Sabbath motorists pause to listen. Unwittingly they pay tribute to an old man’s achievement.
Mr. Beaman is philosophical. Whatever there is to life, he ways it’s joy in accomplishment of a purpose. A merchant builds a prospering business, a woman bears children, a clergyman seeks God and the brotherhood of man, and a conquer cries for power.
Mr. Beaman never acquired much in worldly goods. He draws an old age pension. But in the tranquil years of life he is satisfied.
Special Thanks to Jill Walch......Charles great great niece
Charley is buried in Morris. a tiny town located north of Otego, NY.
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