Walter Waters: Professional Musician

Walter Nathan Waters was born above his father’s store in West Sutton in 1869, the eldest son of Samuel and Emma Waters. Much of his childhood was spent in West Newton, Massachusetts. When he was 22 and she was 17, he married Ada Belle Valentine. Together they had a daughter, Dorothea, and a son Jean Paul, who died of complications from appendicitis when he was just six years old. The Walter Waters family made their home in New York but spent summers in West Sutton at Waters Farm.

Walter inherited the Waters family musical ability. His first position was as organist of the First Baptist Church in South Boston in 1886. He was a professional musician, a composer and music teacher, studying at the New England Conservatory of Music and the National Conservatory in New York. He was professor of Gregorian chant at Cathedral College and teacher of harmony and organ at the National Conservatory for ten years. From 1905 until 1935 Walter Waters published nearly thirty liturgical compositions including “Alleluia” for mixed voices and “Tantum Ergo” written for use at a public choral demonstration of the Newark, New Jersey Diocesan Church Music Guild in May of 1935. According to his diary, “Between 1915 and 1917 J. Fischer & Brother, music publisher of New York, sold 1,374 copies of my “O Salutaris” in F for mixed voices.” He also served as the organist at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City from 1918 to 1922 and was chosen to play the “Peace Chimes” and organ there in November of 1918 to commemorate Armistice Day. For more than fifty years he played in churches of various denominations: Baptist, Congregational, Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and Jewish Synagogue. For two summers he ran Camp Wampus at Waters Farm, a summer camp for boys on the shore of Lake Manchaug.

The importance of Walter to the farm cannot be underestimated. Not only did he buy the property from his father rather than allowing it to go on the market, but he also spent much of the remainder of his life finding furniture and other items that had been sold or given away and bringing them back to the farm. His records and diaries are essential to our knowledge.
Walter died of a heart attack in Brooklyn, New York in 1945 at the age of 75.