Media Rings the Lowell Bell
Posted by PaulM on 25 Nov 2009 at 07:03 am | Tagged as: History, Lowell, Lowell-2009
Today’s Globe includes an article about the dedication ceremony for the Lowell bell installed in front of Eastern Bank at the intersection of Central, Prescott, and Market streets. Our co-writer Marie is quoted prominently in the report, as is Jack Herlihy of the National Park Service. Read the article here. I haven’t seen the Sun this morning, but I’m sure the paper has an excellent report and photographs by senior staff members Dave Perry and Dave Brow. We can post the link later. Three TV stations covered the ceremony: Fox 25, NECN, and WHDH-7.
Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe (c)
I missed the Fox story but just found the clip here:
http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/local/one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old-mystery-bell-found-in-lowell
Thanks to Steve Stowell for the link to Greg Whalen’s NECN story - starts after the brief ad:
http://www.necn.com/Boston/New-England/2009/11/24/Eastern-Bank-unveils-mystery/1259099749.html
Here’s the link to Dave Perry’s very good story on the bell:
http://www.lowellsun.com/local/ci_13864410
I love a good Bell Story. Oddly enough one of the greatest Lowell bell moments occured 150 years ago Wednesday December 2, 1859 when it tolled for Abolitionist John Brown.
Here is a somewhat stuffy 1888 account of it from the “History of Pawtucket Church and Society: with Reminiscences of Pastors and Founders, Sketches of Congregational Churches in Lowell and Brief Outline of Congregationalism” by A.C. Varnum Lowell Mass. Morning Mail Print, 18 Jackson Street 1888
Page 77: “A New Bell”
In 1859 the old meeting-house at Middlesex Village (built 1822), which had been out of use for some years, was sold and removed to North Chelmsford; but the bell, a very fine-toned one, was purchased by this Society, and their bell of smaller size (purchased in 1820) was sold to Horatio G.F. Corliss for some small society in Maine.
When the old village church bell was transported to its new headquarters, quite a sensation was made in Lowell and Dracut, and it happened in this wise: John Brown had seized the national armory buildings at Harper’s Ferry, Va., with and army of seventeen white men and five negroes, and so frightened the Old Dominion that he was hung with so little ceremony that a good deal of sympathy was created all over the country for poor old Brown; and it so happened that the day on which the bell was to be removed was the same day on which Brown was executed - the second day of December, 1859. William McFarlin, being chairman of the committee on the part of the Society to take charge of the bell, took some large wheels, hung the bell underneath, had the name “John Brown” painted upon it, procured a band of music, marched through the principal streets, followed by a procession of spectators, while the bell slowly and solemnly tolled the knell of the brave but deluded old hero of Harper’s Ferry scare. The procession finally halted at Pawtucket Square, and as was afterward expressed by some apt rhymester,
“They delivered the bell to Josiah Sawtell:
Who hung it in his steeple-
A wonderful sight, which gave great delight
To crowds of gazing people.”
This bell was cast in 1822, in the foundry established by Paul Revere, of Revolutionary fame. There is an inscription on it, as follows: “Revere - Boston—1822.” It will be remembered that Paul Revere, during the Revolutionary war, established a foundry for the casting of cannon and church-bells, and also erected extensive works for rolling copper, at Canton, Ma., which are still maintained by his successors as the Revere Copper Company.