For two and a half centuries Boston has been a city of organs and organ-builders. When Thomas Brattle’s little chamber organ arrived from London in 1708 it was quite a novelty; the Reverend Joseph Green of Salem noted in his diary that he had been to Brattle’s house and “heard ye organ and saw strange things in a microscope.” (1) In those days an organ in a home was a delight, but an organ in a church was an abomination. When Brattle died and willed the instrument to the Brattle Square Church it was summarily refused, so it went to King’s Chapel. There the congregation did not refuse it, but they were exceedingly ambivalent. Cotton Mather and other dignitaries bitterly denounced the “box of whistles” and the organ remained outside the church in a crate on the porch. For seven months one of organ music’s longer debates dragged on; finally, in 1714, the Brattle Organ became the first church pipe organ in the Colonies.