Hands on History

HANDS ON HISTORY

M.P Moller's Pipe Organ

TheRural Heritage Museum and Rural Village represent the transformation and economic development that occurred in Hagerstown during its major growth period from the 1870s through 1940.

It began when a Danish immigrant born in 1854 by the name of Mathias Peter Moller set sail to America in 1872 at the age of 16 in pursuit of the American Dream. He didn't know it at the time, but he was destined to play a major role in the development of the city of Hagerstown and have a major impact on the lives of those who worked in his factories and the community at-large.

Moller first found work as a skilled cabinet maker in Warren Pennsylvania where his brother lived. One year later he moved to Erie Pennsylvania where he learned the organ pipe making trade and started a organ business of his own - The M.P. Moller Organ Works. The factory building still stands on North Prospect Street (bounded by the Cumberland Valley Rail Yard). At its peak, the Moller Organ Works was the largest reed and pipe organ manufacturer in the world and produced 35% of all organs sold in the United States. At one point, the Factory employed 350 workers.
Organ manufacturing came to a sudden halt in 1942 when the factory was dedicated entirely to war production. In collaboration with Hagerstown's Fairchild Aircraft Company, Moller produced parts for Fairchild's PT-I9 Training Plane.

With the advent of electronic organs in the 1950s and 60s, the pipe organs made by Moller were less and less in demand. Though the workers tried to buy out the business the company finally went bankrupt in the early 1990s. In 1992, the Moller name, pipes,trademarks and records were purchased by the Allen Organ Company of Macungie, Pa the world largest manufacturer of digital computer church organs.

Major structures still stand in Hagerstown and remind us of of M.P. Moller's iconic past - like the Dagmar Hotel, named after his eldest daughter at 50 Summit Avenue. "A Story of Hagerstown", published in Maryland Illustrated, summer 1911 described the Dagmar as "Hagerstown's newest and finest hotel which is absolutely fire proof and six stories high"(Two more stories were added several years later).
Moller is an outstanding example of how a young immigrant was able to come to our region in pursuit of the American Dream and make that dream come true with vision, persistence and hard work. These traits not only propelled him into becoming a pillar of the Hagerstown economy, but also a player in our national history.

M.P Moller Cars, Taxi's & Hotel

In 1902, two Hagerstown Brothers (Robert S. and George Crawford), who made their fortune in manufacturing bicycles prior to 1900, saw the bicycle phase peak and in 1902 (when Theodore Roosevelt was President), decide to sell their company and use the proceeds from the sale into experimenting with a 4 wheeled motorized buggy and try to capitalize on the young and flourishing automobile industry. To put this into perspective, The Crawford brothers began building their first car, one year before Henry Ford manufactured his first car.

The Crawford brothers decide to assemble a group of businessmen to invest in their company, and Moller is one of them. Fast forward 2 years, and the first production Crawford automobiles go on sale in 1904. Moller buys out the company in 1908 and assumes financial control. Under Moller, production of Crawford cars grows from two cars produced in 1904 to 275 cars in 1910.
While for the most part the Crawford was an unremarkable car even though three Crawford Specials raced in the 1916 Indianapolis 500 (finishing 8th,9th and one dropping out) the next Moller built vehicle was just the opposite.

In 1922 Moller personally supervises the design of a luxury sports car which he names the Dagmar. What set the Dagmar apart from its competitors were its sharp angels which gave it a distinctive look - straight-line military fenders and brass trim (Its competitors had rounded fenders and nickel trim). For the most part, Dagmar’s were sold and serviced out of the firm’s office in the Dagmar Hotel in downtown Hagerstown.

While production of the Dagmar’s grow, Moller not letting any grass grow under his feet, in 1923, enters into negotiations with a Manhanttan based taxi cab company to supply them with 300 Crawford based taxis planning to manufacture the taxis out of the old Summit Avenue Plant in Hagerstown. Realizing that the boilers in the plant will not last the winter, Moller purchases the Pope-Tribune plant and moves the operations over the Christmas holiday. (Subsequently, the vacant Summit Avenue plant is converted into an apartment building which still is in use today, known as the Moller Apartments, and currently listed on the Maryland Inventory of Historical Properties).

One year later Moller receives an order for 500 cabs from the Astor Cab Sales Corp. of New York City. Then in 1925, the Hagerstown Daily mail reports that Moller received an order of 3,000 taxicabs. 1,500 of the Taxi’s would go to the Checker Cab Company of Chicago with the remainder dispersed to various cities in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. It's a great example of how a local historical figure had economic impact on regions in America well past the boundaries of Hagerstown.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Stereoscope

The idea of a looking at the world from a 3-D perspective started about 180 years ago, when an Englishman patented the idea. That idea came to be known as the stereoscope, which is an optical device that allows you to create an illusion of depth from 2 flat images photographed at slightly different angles.

Several year later in 1861, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (the poet) not to be confused with his son, Oliver Wendel Holmes Jr. (Supreme Court Justice) deliberately published (not patented) a design so everyone could use it. It was a simple, easy to use hand-held device that used a paper card or “stereograph “. Up until this point, stereoscopes used mirrors, were expensive and the images were made of glass images.

Stereographs covered a wide range of subjects, the most popular being views of landscapes and monuments. Steroscopes and their picture cards enabled both adults and children to travel around the world without leaving their parlor.

The stereoscope was the forerunner of the “View Master” originally introduced at the 1939 New York World’s Fair and then produced for mass market in the 1960’s and again in the 1990's by Fisher Price for Twentieth Century Disney.
It’s a great example of how each “generation of scientists builds upon the discoveries and inventions of those that have come before and reimagines them for new and improved uses”.

More about Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894) Writer, doctor, and educator, he earned a BA at Harvard University in 1829 and an MD from Harvard Medical School in 1836. He was part of a group of New England-based writers called the Fireside Poets, which included William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowe and John Greenleaf Whittier.

Famous Quote: "I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving".

More about his son, Oliver Wendel Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) Of his many accomplishments, he served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court from 1902-1932, and served in the Civil War from 1861-1865 with the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Holmes wrote some of the most significant free speech decisions ever handed down by the Court. In the process he attempted to identify the fine line between protected and unprotected speech with his Clear and Present Danger test in which he used the now classic example of an individual falsely shouting “Fire” in a theater as an example of speech that was “substantively evil."