Cannon Memorial Chapel interior in 1931 (The Web)

When the Henry Mansfield Cannon Memorial Chapel was officially dedicated, less than a week before the devastating Stock Market Crash of 1929, it did not yet have an organ.  During the hard times that followed, wealthy donors were scarce, so in 1933 the sophomore class of Westhampton College took matters into their own hands.  With the proceeds from dances and benefit performances, the students’ Organ Fund eventually grew to $600; a pipe organ, however, would have cost more than ten times that amount.  In April 1936, Music Department chair F. Flaxington Harker gave the first documented organ performance in the Chapel, playing a Hammond electronic organ borrowed from the Walter D. Moses Company in downtown Richmond.  Two years later, the University purchased a similar Hammond organ, which served for the next twenty-odd years.

The Chapel’s current pipe organ