LITURGY: SATURDAY 4:00 PM | During LENT: Every Tuesday @ 4 p.m.
Revolutionary War Artifacts
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Our Revere Bell
Mount Lemmon has a working Paul Revere Bell located at the Shrine to Mary Undoer of Knots. Some Mount Lemmon residents have lived in towns or villages where a bell was part of life and many have traveled abroad and experienced the daily ringing of church bells throughout the world. In this article, I would like to describe the exciting possibilities this unique bell brings to the Mount Lemmon community. This is a bell that tolled at the passing of many of our great American presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and even JFK. The bell rang out with great joy at the close of the American Civil War in 1865, WWI in 1918, and WWII for VE and VJ days in 1945!
ORIGIN OF THE SHRINE'S REVERE BELL
According to the Massachusetts Historical Society The First Congregational Church of Chicopee, Massachusetts, purchased our 831 pound bell from the Revere Company and it proudly hung in its church from 1833 until 1971 when it was given to the Methodist Church of Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. In 2013 the bell was removed from the belfry of the Methodist Church and given to the Methodist Church of Ludlow, Massachusetts. It was placed in a parishioner's garage for two years before being sold to a bell buyer in Michigan and then subsequently sold in 2016 to Mary Undoer of Knots Shrine Foundation. In a conversation with an elder of St. Paul's Ludlow Church he stated that according to the Church's secretary the bell was purchased in 1833 by the Congregational Church but that it had been cast in 1826. Further research showed that this was possible as the Revere Company did stockpile bells for sale to churches, schools, public buildings etc.
The First Congregational Church of Chicopee, Massachusetts, was the first settled church in what would eventually grow into the booming industrial, farming, and mill city of Chicopee. Two hundred fifty years ago, forty-nine Chicopee men petitioned the First Congregational Church of Springfield, proposing the establishment of a separate church in Chicopee as a Fifth Parish of Springfield. When their petition was denied, they took the case to the Massachusetts General Court, which granted them the right to build.
In 1751, forty men entered the woods and cut the timber required to build Chicopee's very first meeting house. The first minister was Rev. John McKinstry, who was ordained in 1752 and died Nov. 9 1813.
As the church grew, on May 12, 1824, the cornerstone of our present building was laid. The work was completed in 1826, and a grand celebration was held on January 4th of that year. The new and present building is a beautiful, typical New England white Congregational Church, with a balcony above the narthex, choir lofts on the first floor, to the left and right of the pulpit, and a steeple flanked by a huge fish-shaped weathervane.
Some say that this new meetinghouse was part of the underground railway that ran through Chicopee during the days of the Civil War. Rev. Asa Wright Mellinger was a Pastor at this Church from the 1940s to 1976.
Steve Marshall Interview
The Mount Lemmon bronze bell is an original, authentic Paul Revere Bell. Cast—according to church secretary records—in 1826 by Paul Revere’s partner and son, Joseph Warren Revere and—according to public records—purchased in 1833 by the Universal Congregationalist Church in Chicopee Falls, MA. The Chicopee Falls United Methodist-New Hope Church subsequently acquired it. Unfortunately, this church was demolished due to structural problems on October 11, 2007. It was given to and stored by the Ludlow United Methodist Church in one of their member's garage. The Mary Undoer of Knots Foundation acquired the bell in April of 2016.
The Bell in Chicopee Falls, MA prepared for shipment to AZ.
The Congregational Church of
Chicopee Falls, MA 1950s
A history of bells
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Bells of course have throughout history provided the time of day for the populace. Historically, the use of the bell by churches was written in England about as early as the end of the 7th century by Bede the Venerable, and in the 10th century, St. Dunstan, considered by many as the most famous of all the Anglo-Saxon saints, hung bells in most of the churches in England.
Historically among nations, Russia has always been in contention for the largest bells, and the greatest number of them. “A bell in Moscow is 19 feet high, 63 feet 11 inches round its margin, and weighs in at 443,772 pounds. ….One of the largest bells in the United States is the alarm bell on the city-hall of New-York, which weighs 23,000 pounds. The “Old Liberty Bell,” in Philadelphia, which was used to “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof,” though not a large bell, has a worldwide reputation. It was imported from England in 1752 (at White Chapel Foundry), but broken upon its first trial. It was then recast in Philadelphia, and again broken. A second time recast, it was placed in position in June 1753, and this bell was used until “on Monday, the 8th day of July, 1776, at 12 o’clock at noon, this very Bell rang out to the citizens of Philadelphia, the glad tidings, that a new nation had a few days before sprung into existence, proclaiming in language understood by every ear, All Men are Born Free and Equal. When the American forces left Philadelphia, in 1777, this bell was removed to Allentown PA, to keep it out of the hands of the British army. It was afterwards returned and used for fifty years, when it cracked.” And it remains so today.
Bell Articles
"Ring Out in Honor of Brave Paul Revere"
by Karen Allen 1997
"Revere Reverberations"
by Edward and Evelyn Stickney 1998
"The Bell's Own Story"
By Edward Abbot 1901
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MHS Early Bells of Massachusetts
"The Rule of the Mother of God"
by Saint Seraphim of Sarov
"Revere Bells"
by
Edward and Evelyn Stickney 1956
"The BELLS of PAUL REVERE, his sons & Grandsons by Edward and Evelyn Stickney 1976
I heard the Bell on Christmas Day!
