Books › Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937 › scan 216
Scan 216
Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937
16 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 190. See the scan on archive.org.
11873—Grace Church Parish, Newton 18—
2consisting of 9 bells, "E," largest 2150 pounds, smallest 295 pounds, total 8296, costing $4,400 a gift of Mrs. Elizabeth Trull Eldridge.
41874—St. Mary's (Catholic) Church, Lawrence 19—
5the tenth in Massachusetts, consisting of 16 bells, largest "D" 3161 pounds, smallest "A" 132 pounds, aggregate weight 14,635 pounds, cost about $8,000. The article states "These bells were cast by the well-known bell-founders Wm. Blake & Co. of this city, are sixteen in number and form one of the finest peals that have ever,
6 'Low at times, and loud at times,
7 And changing like a poet's rhymes
8 Rang the beautiful wild chimes.'"
10William Blake & Co. as bronze bell founders manufactured church, fire alarm, factory, steamboat, locomotive and plantation bells. The preface of their business pamphlet stated, "We have cast some thousands of bells now in use on this continent, and in other parts of the world, varying in weight from one hundred to twenty-two thousand pounds each." They also claimed that the largest and most perfect chimes in the United States (either imported or made by other bell-founders), consisting of sixteen bells each, were made by them for Grace Episcopal Church, Providence, Rhode Island; Arlington Street Church, Boston; and the First Parish Church, Charlestown. Attention was called to their apparatus for tolling by using the tongue, so constructed as to make it impossible to break the bell. The mountings were made to fit each bell to its hangings. They also pointed out that "Our bells are made of copper and tin alone; cast in moulding-cases of iron lined with loam (a method first introduced by ourselves in 1848, 20 but which has since been copied by other makers, who claim it as their own); and all bells over five hundred pounds in weight have springs attached to prevent the tongue from striking a double blow, or resting on the bell, thereby destroying the vibration of the same. . . . We have invariably, at all public exhibitions at which we have entered bells, taken the first premium—either gold or silver medals or diploma—over all competitors." 21
1218 New England Historical and Genealogical Register. "Early Bells of Massachusetts" by Elbridge H. Goss of Melrose Vol. 28 pp. 282 & 283.
1319 Ibid. Addenda Vol. 37 pp. 50 & 51.
1420 This would have been by H. N. Hooper & Co.
1521 Facts Regarding the Bell Foundry of Blake Bell Co., a booklet, p. 6.
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