Census ID	CHD1910
Location	Chengdu, West China Union University
Builder	Unknown
Specs	"Baby organ" (possibly a small unit organ)
Action	Unknown

At West China Union University, established in Chengdu in 1910, a 1914 report notes that “several of the boys are taking lessons on the organ”. The instrument, described as a “baby organ” (this term was often used for harmoniums) appears to have been a small unit organ, the gift of a New Jersey philanthropist, J. Ackerman Coles (1843-1926). It was installed in the Scattergood Memorial Chapel at the middle school attached to the University. By the early 1930s there were two organ teachers at the school, a Mrs. E.C. Wilford, and a Miss Sara Downer.

Further information  about the university is available here: www.beechchinawest.com. Whether a pipe organ was available for the ‘Cathedral of Western China’, completed on the university’s campus in 1944, is not known. Today the campus is occupied by the West China Center of Medical Sciences, Sichuan University.

(The photograph of the university’s main gate has the following attribution: By Unknown – http://cc.scu.edu.cn/G2S/Template/View.aspx?courseId=1879&topMenuId=164905&action=view&type=&name=&menuType=1&curfolid=214312, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45980782)