According to the official museum record, the organ was the gift of the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, where Melville Smith was a professor. The Andover/Fisk/Byers restoration of 1959 was well done for the time and left the organ in reliable historical condition except for a few unfortunate changes typical for the time, one of which is reversible, the other is only as a guess: the invasive addition of an electric blower, and the invasive shortening of the metal pipes for the addition of slide tuners, thus obliterating any evidence of the original pitch or temperament. The top and bottom fronts are currently an inappropriate pleated cloth with a high synthetic fiber content and unfortunate non-period color. The wind system is a single wedge feeding a single wedge reservoir (in contrast to two other extant Eben Goodrich organs which use a double rise wedge for the main reservoir, raising the question whether the single fold here is original, or if one fold was removed when the blower was added in '59, a common treatment of antique organ double-rise reservoirs well into the 1980s.

While the organ has been in storage now for several decades, it is perfectly functional, a testament both to the original quality and the care of the restoration. When on display in the Salem Towne House, it was in the second-floor ballroom, also once used as a Masonic meeting room, for which an organ such as this would have been a totally appropriate interpretation. Due to the value of the organ and the lack of climate control in any of the campus buildings except the Meetinghouse, it may be some time, if ever, before the organ comes out of storage again. The organ currently is in the climate-controlled underground storage facility on the Village grounds.

This organ is a rare and valuable survivor of both the early Boston school and the pre-War parlor organ culture. Including this instrument, there are currently only five authenticated Goodrich parlor organs: Smithsonian, Sturbridge Village, Wahl organbuilders. The fourth instrument at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey was savagely, incompetently, and irreversibly altered/ruined in 1985 by a local hack in a failed attempt to turn it into a baroque organ. The fifth is from the early and short-lived Goodrich & Appleton partnership and its whereabouts are currently unknown.

A compact chamber organ built by Ebenezer Goodrich of Boston, Mass., and purchased by Rev. Abiel Abbot of Beverly, Mass., December 1, 1817; given to Old Sturbridge Village by Melville Smith and restored by the Andover Organ Co., Methuen, Mass. , 1959. -- 1968 OHS Handbook

From June 13, 2019 email correspondence with Richard Schulze of Sturbridge Village, the Goodrich was not being used regularly, and the Salem Towne House was not climate controlled. Concerns over possible deterioration prompted moving the organ to a climate-controlled Collections storage building.

Property of Melville Smith. Was in Shutesbury. Restored by the Andover Organ Co. in 1959.