Thomas H. Anderson, 86, of North Easton, Massachusetts, died December 30, 2023. Born May 25, 1937, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he met his late wife Susan in Belfast, where they grew up on the same street.
Editor’s note: much of the information in this article was delivered as a lecture for the Ernest M. Skinner Sesquicentennial Conference on April 25, 2016, in Evanston, Illinois. The conference was sponsored by the Chicago, North Shore, and Fox Valley Chapters of the American Guild of Organists, the Chicago-Midwest Chapter of the Organ Historical Society, the Music Institute of Chicago, and The Diapason.
The First Presbyterian Church holds the distinction of having the longest history of service of any religious organization in the city of Chicago. The first home for the fledgling church was within Fort Dearborn, the location of which today can be found marked within the sidewalks of Michigan Avenue near the Chicago River. The first century of the history of First Presbyterian Church reveals that the congregation was a leader in the city, a distinction that extended to the congregation’s music and its pipe organs.
