EDMUND GIESEKE
A GERMAN ORGANBUILDER IN EVANSVILLE, INDIANA
A GERMAN ORGANBUILDER IN EVANSVILLE, INDIANA
Edmund Gieseke was born in 1845.
He came to the United States from the university town of Goettingen, Germany in the 1860s, accompanying his father, who was carrying out an order of a St. Louis church to erect an organ the Gieseckes had built in their Goettingen shops.
Young Edmund Giesecke decided to stay in America, and after a short say in St. Louis he came to Evansville around 1868 and engaged in organ building here. Many churches throughout the Tri-state installed organs built by Mr. Giesecke, who followed the trade that had been in the Giesecke family in Germany for many generations. Two of the organs he built remain in use in the area, those at St. Boniface Catholic Church in Fulda Indiana near St. Meinrad, and at St. Francis Catholic Church in Poseyville Indiana.
He stopped building organs in 1918 when failing eyesight caused him to retire. Total blindness came to the veteran organ builder around 1925. He died at his home at 320 Read St.
in
Evansville in 1928 of influenza. He is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Evansville.
-Information from the following Obiturary in the Evansville Press,
December 26, 1928.
-Burial information found by Robert Nichols at: www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=130045079 (Accessed 6-25-2016)
Links to the three remaining Evansville area Gieseke organs:
St. Boniface in Fulda, Indiana
St. Francis Xavier in Poseyville, Indiana
Evansville AGO's Giesecke Organ Restored in Memory of Hellen Skuggedal Reed
Other Giesecke organs:
- 1880. Austinville, IA, Austinville Christian Reformed. 2 manuals. 10 stops.
- ca. 1880. Cedar Grove, IN, Holy Guardian Angels R. C.. 2 manuals. 10 stops.
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