Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1876 — Chimes of Bells. [ARTICLE]

Chimes of Bells.

“The Poetry of Steeples,” an article which appears in Harper’ t Magazine for January, has elicited some interesting in formation relative to Christ’s Church chimes in Philadelphia. It seems that the popular legend that the bells which hang in the belfry of Christ’s Church were a gift from Queen Anne of blessed memory is a fable. A part of the communion service in that church was a gift from her, and her name is inscribed thereon; but the bells were purchased with the proceeds of a lottery, in which Benjamin Franklin took an active interest, which was drawn in 1753. The steeple was finished in 1754, and the bells were purchased in England in the same year at a cost of £9OO. They were brought out in the ship Matilda, Capt. Budden, and were made by Lester & Pack, of London. Now, Queen Anne died in 1714, and it is not probable that she had left any legacy for the purchase of the bells, or if she did her executors were a long time in carrying out her will and paying off her legacies. When those chimes were new they created such wonder and excitement throughout the colony of Pennsylvania that there was a town regulation made Providing that on every Tuesday and Friay evening they should be rung for the benefit of the'country people, who should be in the city on those days with their produce for the next day’s market; and that regulation was in frill force twenty years ago, and probably is still. Any one can have the bells rung by paying thirty dollars, half of which goes to the ringers and the other half io the church. This is not an exorbitant price for that performance, if it is done in the old English style of peal ringing, which required a practiced ringer to each bell. From another source it is ascertained that the oldest, and perhaps the largest, set of chime bells on this continent are in the belfry of Old Christ Church, Salem stecet, Boston. They were placed there in 1744, in the reign of George 11, who, with his nobhmen, raised the money to pay for them Ly subscription, and sent them over to the colony of Massachusetts from England. .