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THE CARNEGIE family emigrated from Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1848. Andrew was twelve years old and immediately went to work as a bobbin boy in a local textile factory, and then as a telegram boy. He rose to be in charge of a private telegraph service for the Pennsylvania Railroad and by the age of 24 was superintendent of all the railroad's operations in western Pennsylvania. He invested his savings in the growing railroad and telegraph companies and, as his fortune grew, focused on the steel industry. Carnegie bought up steel mills around Pittsburgh, the mines that provided the iron ore, and the railroads that transported the ore and the finished steel. By the age of 60, in the mid-1890s, he was so wealthy that he decided to begin giving his money away, this after he had just broken the most famous strike in American history.1
Carnegie had been attracted to the organ from his childhood when he attended church with his parents. In 1873, he was approached for a contribution to a Swedenborg church that was being built. Saying that he would be less responsible for what the preacher might say than for the influence of music in a church,2 he donated an organ built by John Roberts of Philadelphia.3 When other congregations heard of his beneficence, he was overwhelmed with requests for organs, eventually as many as 2,250 a year. Soon it became necessary to standardize the organ gifts, requiring the congregation to raise half the cost of the organ with Carnegie providing matching grants. Eventually, the Carnegie Corporation of New York was set up to distribute funds. A frequently revised questionnaire was provided that sought to determine how large an instrument was actually needed, how much the church would be justified to spend, and whether a subsidy should be given. Thus, Carnegie provided 7,689 organs at a cost of more than $6.25 million: 4,092 in the United States, over 2,119 in England, 1,005 in Scotland, and hundreds more in other Englishspeaking nations and colonies.4 The accompanying graphic depicts organs donated by Carnegie in the state of Pennsylvania.
From the late 1860s, Andrew Carnegie, along with his mother, lived at the St. Nicholas Hotel in New York City. In 1874, he moved, again...