York Liberty Bell, York, York County

Welcome to April, and the grass has turned green in my yard! In my last email, I made an allusion to an announcement coming this month, and indeed I'm making one. I'm looking at the project I have created for myself with this blog, and realizing that even though I double up some of the markers when appropriate, there are a lot more of them than I had ever imagined (over 2,000 and counting), and I've barely made a dent in the last three years.

Wow, it's been three years? Already? Huh.

Anyway, the big news is that... I'm increasing the frequency of posts. Instead of every other Wednesday, I'm going to see how it goes with posting every Wednesday, so I can fit more markers into each calendar year. It's an experiment - if I feel too overwhelmed I'll drop it back to the every other week plan - but I have hopes that it will succeed. I've already sketched out my schedule of planned posts leading into the first week of June, because I have that much material handy, so we'll see what comes of it.

For today, I'm sharing the first fruits of my labor from last month's road trip. My best friend Andrea and I, as I wrote a few weeks ago, spent her birthday visiting York County and collected several markers in its county seat. It had been a long time since I crossed the Susquehanna River - I forgot how wide it is! Today's quest is a trek back to colonial times to learn about a liberty bell which, until that day, I never knew existed.

The marker stands on the street
directly in front of the church

On a quiet, shady side street in York sits the lovely St. John's Episcopal Church. The great City of York, or Yorktown as it was known in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was founded in 1741 by settlers from Philadelphia; it was a frontier community predominantly inhabited by German immigrants, despite the English name. However, by 1747, Rev. Richard Locke had arrived as a missionary from London and established English church services in what became, in 1755, the congregation of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist. In 1769, thanks to a grant of 315 pounds from the Provincial Assembly, the church building was erected on what is today Beaver Street, and some of the original walls can still be seen.

A few years later, that little skirmish known as the American Revolution started. The church's own website notes with pride that three of their congregants were well-known patriots - James Smith, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and Colonel Thomas Hartley and Major John Clark, personal friends of George Washington. Smith and Hartley both have their own markers in York; Smith is actually buried in the cemetery of a different church, but Hartley is buried by the chapel altar at St. John's and Clark is buried in front of the church. St. John's had an uneasy time during the Revolution, since the building was used as an arsenal and one of the pastors, Daniel Batwell, was a Tory who preached loyalty to the Crown. Some of the town's patriots actually threw him into the Codorus River!

Now, about the bell - it arrived at St. John's in 1774, and was probably sent from London by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The name "Queen Caroline" is inscribed on the bell someplace. It's unconfirmed, but this is believed to indicate that the bell was a gift from (or at least commissioned by or in honor of) Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark and youngest sister of King George III. Nobody has any idea why she would give such a thing to a city in Pennsylvania, but she was the only Queen Caroline in the world at the time. The church had no bell tower in those days, so the bell was instead displayed on the sidewalk in the town square. If tradition is accurate, it was James Smith and a handful of others who hoisted the bell up to the cupola of the courthouse when word came of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the bell was rung for the first time to bring the public's attention to the signing of the document. 

St. John's Episcopal Church, as viewed from the marker

The City of York likes to style itself as the "first capital of the United States." There's some disagreement about that from what I've read, since Philadelphia also claims the title. York derives its claim from the fact that the Articles of Confederation were written there, and that it's the first place where the phrase "the United States of America" was spoken. Your mileage on the subject may vary. It's undeniable, in any case, that York served as the capital of the Continental Congress from September 30, 1777, to June 27, 1778. During that time, the bell was rung to summon the members of Congress to attend sessions.

The original courthouse where the bell was housed no longer stands; it was razed in 1841, at which time the bell was returned to the church. A reproduction of the courthouse occupies the same spot today, and will appear in a later blog post. The bell, meanwhile, occupies a place of honor inside St. John's. I was unable to see it, since the church was closed at the time of my visit, but it stands inside the vestibule. It still gets rung on certain occasions, including the church's annual Fourth of July church service, when it rings thirteen times - once for each of the original colonies. They ring it very carefully, with a rubber mallet; it's been cracked since 1901, when it was rung for the death of President William McKinley, and they don't take chances on it being damaged further.

In 2005, St. John's celebrated its 250th anniversary. The bell's own 250th anniversary is coming up in 2024, and I can't wait to see what they have planned for it.

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Sources and Further Reading:

Official website of St. John's Episcopal Church

Boeckel, Teresa Ann. "Ringing endorsement: York's own Liberty Bell pealed at a service in honor of the nation's founders." York, PA Daily Record, July 5, 2007.

Official website of the City of York

Official website of the York County History Center

York Liberty Bell at the Historical Marker Database

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Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.