For Whom the Bell Tolls

What do a Spanish Monastery, Napoleon, and a Yankee sea captain have in common? They all have reported historic ties to the bell that rings out at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church on Main Street in East Haddam.

The bell proudly hanging in the tower above the stone facade of St. Stephen's is considered to be the oldest bell in the New World. According to Karl Stofko, Municipal Historian for East Haddam, however, "there has always been questions about the bell."

"People have questioned whether it is an original bell or a re-cast", Stofko says. "It has always been assumed that the bell is original" to its rich story, but "no one has studied it recently to confirm that."

As the story goes, the bell was initially cast in the year 815 A.D. for a Spanish monastery. Gerry Piccola, Co-Warden of St. Stephen's, offers insight into the originality of the bell:  "while it is somewhat controversial that our bell is the oldest bell in the western hemisphere, there is a date [marked] on the bell of 815 A.D."

The church at the monastery was subsequently destroyed when Napoleon invaded Spain in the early 1800's and the bell was left amongst the rubble.

From here, there are multiple versions of the voyage of the bell. In the first and most commonly re-told, a Yankee sea captain loaded the bell on his ship in 1834. The bell was part of a collection of scrap metal for ballast, used to enhance stability of the ship, on the voyage home. 

Once in the new world, the bell was discovered intact by a ship chandler in the port of New York City. The ship chandler then sent the bell to his wife's hometown of East Haddam, Connecticut, where it hangs today. There is no confirmed historical documentation of what happened to the bell between the time of Napoleon's invasion and the Yankee sea captain of 1834. Some versions of the story, however, mention the bell in Florida before making its way to Connecticut via New York.

In another version of the story, the bell was one of three bells that had been sent from Spain to be sold on consignment in the New World.

Once in East Haddam, the bell originally hung in front of a blacksmith shop (a.k.a. the Gelston House) before making its way to the original St. Stephen's church building.  In the late 1800's, the current church was built without a bell tower.

The bell sat on a stone wall next to the church until a committee was formed and the bell tower was built. The bell rang out for the first time in its current housing on September 11th in the year 1904. 

The bell  is 32 inches in height and 33 inches in diameter. It is currently used today for funerals, services, and other special occassions.

For additional information on the history of the bell, Charles Farrow, Director of the East Haddam Historical Society Museum, "recommends visiting the Rathburn Library's clippings files of the historical collections, located on the second floor." 

There is also a history of the bell on St. Stephen's Church's website: www.ststeves.org.

Source information for this article includes the files at Rathburn and  St. Stephen's website at www.ststeves.org.