In my continued quest for more specific information on the bells we found in Sichuan and for more general information on church bells in China, I’ve been doing some research on the Buckeye Bell Foundry in Cincinnati. Apparantly, the foundry was owned by the E.W. Van Duzen Company, another name that we also found engraved on the bell.
On a site called Brosamer’s Bells, I ran across a couple of interesting articles. One is from a Van Duzen Bell catalog published sometime in the1920’s. It is titled “Just a Little Bell History.” It gives the history of bells and some information on Van Duzen bells in particular.
This section caught my eye:
We have furnished over 60,000 bells used in churches, schools, and public buildings. We have bells in some of the most remote corners of the world, in Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, Mexico, and a great number in Canada, and in nearly every city, town, and hamlet in the United States.
I wonder if they knew that one of their bells was hanging in a church in a remote corner of Sichuan Province.
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I cannot get enough of the bells!
60,000 bells! I can see how a few may have slipped by and into China! Yet the Kansas connection is intriguing to me. Also Nowata, OK was mentioned concerning Mr. Upham. Nowata is where my step father-in-law is from and I think I read that Mr. Upham was connected to Nowata in some way… very interesting “small world” connections!!
The bell in my church,Annuncation Catholic Church in Bogalusa, LA is engraved
“The Ava Maria Bell “ and the date 1912 is engraved in it also.