Ring a bell?

Listen, my children, and you shall hear, of the bronze bell cast by Paul Revere!

Well, cast by his son, to tell the truth. 

We all learned about Paul in school. On the 18th of April in 1775, he got on his horse and rode from Boston to Lexington, telling the colonial militia members that the British were coming.  He had planned to light one or two lanterns in the steeple of the Boston's Old North Church to tell everyone in what form the invasion was taking place...

"One if by land, and two if by sea..." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

That made him an early American hero, and after the Revolutionary War (spoiler alert: we won!) he was credited with launching the American copper industry.  You've probably got some Paul Revere cookware in the kitchen somewhere.

Keeping the family business alive, Paul's son Joseph Warren Revere took over the foundry in 1804, and made a 1,000-pound bell in 1834 which is just now coming home, if you will.

At first, it was taken from Massachusetts to Ohio via oxcart. Can you just imagine that trip, in the days before interstate highways and rest areas?

For years, the bell pealed from the belfry of the First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland before it wound up in a church in Vermilion, Oh. The church was sold in  1984, and the real estate agent who handled the transaction, Jeannene Shanks, wound up owning the bell when the fitness center that bought the church didn't want a bell around.

They should have sold it to Taco Bell!

Mrs Shanks gave a thousand dollars to the church, and when she and her husband Robert retired in Chino Hills, California, they dragged the big bell out there with them. 

Amy Miller, a psychologist in Chino Hills, is the Shanks's daughter, and she recalls, “It became the joke of the family.  They'd open the doors to the garage and ring the bell every Fourth of July. People would look at it and say, ‘What the heck is that?’”

After the deaths of Mr and Mrs Shank, Robert Jr and Amy moved the bell into Amy's garage, where it sat for years. 

After their parents' deaths, Miller and her 69-year-old brother, retired Ford Motor Co. executive Robert L. Shanks Jr. of Miami, moved the bell to Miller's garage, where it sat since 2009. A collector from Texas offered them $50,000 for the bell, but he mentioned that he might just melt it down if he couldn't resell it, and the brother and sister decided to send it on home. 

Ms Miller checked things out online and found there is a museum that would make a better place for the bell than any other, and so...

“I don’t need a bell in my garage, and this bell has a story of its own,” she said. “It represents what our history and our country are all about. I wanted it to go beyond us — to go back to where it started. We're the keepers of our history.”

So from Massachusetts to Ohio to California and back to the Bay State, the bell is home and on display, says Kiley Nichols, a spokesperson for the Paul Revere Heritage Site in Canton, just south of Boston. 

History still draws us all in. For instance, we know that people disposed of their trash by throwing it in their outhouses, back before there were regular garbage pickups. In Baltimore, there was evidence found in the center field area of Oriole Park at Camden Yards of the childhood privy of Babe Ruth, whose chaotic upbringing took place in that part of town. And in 2017, archaeologists excavated  the site of an outhouse next door to Paul Revere's home in Boston's North End.

There's a joke there, but I won't be the one to say it.