Back when Farmer Gary and I announced our engagement (just-in-time-for-Christmas, 1981), so many of my relatives and college friends chimed in, “My grandparents were farmers!” or “My great-uncle grew up on a farm!” Suddenly, the world was one big farm.

I’m experiencing the same with Gary’s family tree. Every ten years, the census report announces this ancestor or that was a farmer. Their children were “farm laborers.” Farmers everywhere!

It took a half-second longer than it should have for me to recognize that not all that long ago, we were an agrarian nation. Nearly everyone grew up on a farm.

But still, it was interesting to discover that Gary’s first cousin, three times removed was a musician, a composer, a pipe organ picker-outer, and a priest.

John Wagner wasn’t from a farm family.

His father, F. William Wagner, was a merchant. After emigrating from Bavaria in 1850, William ran a general store in Ferdinand, Indiana, and later in nearby Mariah Hill.

William married Barbara Wigger, whose older brother Joseph is Gary’s great-great grandfather, on August 11, 1856. They had eight children, three of whom died when still youngsters. First-born Frederick William Wagner Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps as a merchant. The two younger brothers became priests and the younger sisters entered the Ferdinand convent.

Fourth-born child, John, had a gift for music. He was born on November 14, 1865, exactly seven months after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

After six years of study at the Abbey, John professed his first vows as a monk on July 18, 1885, and became Father Vincent Wagner, OSB. According to his obituary many years later, he was ordained on September 29, 1888, in Saint Louis by Archbishop Kenrick.

For the next 25 years, Fr. Vincent taught English, Latin, music, and Chant in the seminary. He was the Abbey’s Choir Master, and in April of 1891 traveled to Beuron, Germany, to study Gregorian chant.

Can’t resist this sidebar:

Before traveling to Europe, of course, Fr. Vincent needed a passport.

Back in 1891, one didn’t have a camera available at a moment’s notice to snap a headshot and text it to the government. Instead, a more detailed description of the applicant was required:

Before we move on from the Gregorian chant, here’s a news clip from 1911. This was before neighboring communities took competitive swipes at each other through basketball and football. Back then, apparently, it was the ability to sing the Gregorian chant:

In 1907, construction of the Abbey’s church was finally complete. It had taken eight years and there was one final component that would arrive in the early days of 1908: the pipe organ.

Fr. Vincent traveled from Indiana to Vermont to help design and finalize plans for the magnificent instrument.

Here’s an article from the December 29, 1907 edition of The Evansville Journal:

Can you imagine? Four train cars full of parts for the Abbey’s new organ. And 40 teams of horses pulling wagons from Dale – right past our farm – to St. Meinrad. What a sight that must have been!

A retired professor later wrote:

The monks themselves built the 78 choir stalls and pews from white oak and finished them in gold antique. 

On March 21, 1907, the monks entered Our Lady of Einsiedeln in procession for the first time. The new church was solemnly blessed by Abbot Athanasius. The day was the feast of St. Benedict.

Perhaps the building’s pièce de resistance was the “two manual sanctuary organs” of 3015 pipes. This state-of-the-art instrument, built by the Estey Company of Brattleboro, Vermont, was custom-made for Saint Meinrad (and thus noted in Estey advertisements). The “two monastery organs . . . occup[ied] the arches of the north and south transepts [above the monks’ choirs] … The console was so constructed that “in addition to the sanctuary organ, it is possible for the organist to play the festival organ in the opposite transept gallery.” It was played for the first time on March 21, 1908, once again the feast of St. Benedict and the first anniversary of the completed church.

After searching on YouTube, hoping to find a video featuring Saint Meinrad’s pipe organ, I came across this episode of The Joy of Music with Diane Bish. Internationally renowned classical organist Diane Bish visited Saint Meinrad to record an episode of her television show in 2018. She played multiple pieces of religious music masterfully on that same pipe organ.

Here is that episode:

Described as having “never enjoyed robust health,” Fr. Vincent moved to Evansville in 1914 where, for 30 years, he served as Chaplain to the Little Sisters of the Poor.

In 1938, Fr. Vincent took a second trip to Europe, where he had an audience with Pope Pius XI and the future Pope Pius XII.

At the time of his death, Father Vincent was 85 years old. He was in the 67th year of his monastic profession, and the 63rd year of priesthood. In the last few years of his life, he fractured a hip and later fell a second time, earning the dubious distinction of being the first patient at the new Jasper Memorial Hospital.

A virtuoso of the pipe organ, Fr. Vincent composed many pieces of religious music, but apparently never had them published. Even after his death in 1951, his music continued to be mentioned in area newspaper articles detailing music played at weddings.

“He would compose, then get disgusted with the works and destroy them,” Fr. Stephen Thuis, OSB told an Evansville reporter. “His works were marked by being both melodic and breathing a deep sense of prayerfulness.”

In a sense, Father Vincent was at our wedding in 1982.

Gary and I remember finding an outstanding organist, Larry Knabel, and urging him to “blow the roof off the place.” (Okay, that wasn’t Gary. He’d never say something like that.) We now know the pipe organ at Saint Ferdinand Church was designed by our distant relative. It’s such a great feeling knowing Fr. Vincent had touched the same keys decades earlier. I think he smiled down on Larry and us as our organist filled the church with the Finale from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (the “Ode to Joy,” sung in German for the processional and in English for the recessional). Glorious!

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