The "John Brown Bell" in Marlborough, MA

On Saturday, March 10 at 2 PM the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library Inc. (National Heritage Museum) will be offering a free lecture with Tony Horwitz, author of Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War. To learn more about the talk, read our previous blog post about this public program.

The history and story of John Brown abolitionist and militant has captivated audiences for over 150 years. Not only is it a Virginia story but it has a Massachusetts connection. Perhaps the speaker or members of the audience already know about the “John Brown Bell” of Marlborough, Massachusetts.

In the summer of 1861, members of Company I, 13th Massachusetts Volunteers were camped by the Potomac River, near Harpers Ferry. Some of these enlisted men were members of the Marlborough Volunteer Fire Department.  The militia was ordered to cross the river and seize anything of value for the US Government, and diligently searched the arsenal for items that might be of use or profitable. Others had had already been there before and taken anything worth confiscating.

Not wishing to return completely empty-handed, the men entered the engine house at Harpers Ferry that had served as Brown’s headquarters during the raid.  The militia spotted the bell in the engine-house and decided to take it home to Marlborough.  The bell, it was reasoned, could be presented to the city’s Hook and Ladder Company, who found themselves bell-less at the time. 

Was the bell Federal property that should be handed over to the government or was it a war souvenir?

In 1862 the company  did not have sufficient funds to send it home and the on-going military conflicts also  prevented them from getting the bell to Marlborough.

From 1862 to 1892 the bell resided in Williamsport, Maryland. Mrs. George Snyder, a local resident, had kept the bell for the company. In 1892, former members of Company I, now organized in a Grand Army of the Republic chapter, returned to Williamsport and, after finding the bell still in Mrs. Snyder’s possession, raised the necessary money to have the bell shipped to Marlborough.

Over thirty years after its removal in 1861 from the engine-house in Harpers Ferry, the bell was eventually  placed in the “John Brown Bell Tower” in Union Common at the intersection of Main and Bolton Street in Marlborough, Massachusetts, where it resides to this day. To learn more, visit the Marlborough Historical Society website.

Should a bell of such historic importance be located in Harpers Ferry, Marlborough or elsewhere?  We look forward to hearing if Tony Horwitz has something to add on this subject.

Photo credits:

Courtesy of Claudia Roche

 

Tony Horwitz to Speak on Raid on Harper's Ferry to Kick off Museum's Civil War Lecture Series

 

Join Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tony Horwitz at the Museum on Saturday, March 10 at 2 pm to hear the electrifying tale of John Brown and his mission that changed the course of American history.

Plotted in secret and launched in the dark, Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry ruptured the union between North and South. Yet few Americans know the true story of the militant idealists who invaded Virginia before the the shelling of Fort Sumter opened the Civil War. The lecture, “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Civil War,” is based on Horwitz’s acclaimed Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War, which takes an unblinking look at a nation on the brink of explosive conflict. A book signing will follow. Admission is free. The lecture is part of a series on the Civil War, and is made possible by Ruby W. Linn.

Horwitz is a graduate of Brown University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He worked for many years as a reporter, first in Indiana and then during a decade overseas in Australia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, covering wars and conflicts for The Wall Street Journal. He won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, and worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker before becoming a full-time author. Four of his books have been national and New York Times bestsellers: A Voyage Long and Strange, Blue Latitudes, Confederates in the Attic, and Baghdad Without A Map. He lives with his wife and sons on Martha’s Vineyard.

The Museum is offering the lecture series on occasion of the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War. The series is designed to explore the history of this divisive conflict, and its meaning for our nation today. It also relates to Museum’s mission of fostering an appreciation of American history, patriotism and Freemasonry. All talks are sponsored by Ruby W. Linn.

Other lectures in the series are:

Gentlemen of the White Apron: Freemasonry in the American Civil War - Saturday, April 28, 1 pm

Michael Halleran, a freelance historian and practicing attorney, sets the standard for scholarship on Freemasonry in the Civil War. This talk will reveal the history behind the many mythical stories of Masonic Brotherhood across the Civil War battlelines.

Among the Ruins: Charles F. Morse and Civil War Destruction - Saturday, September 29, 2 pm

Megan Kate Nelson of Harvard University will unfold the Civil War experience of one Massachusetts soldier, Charles F. Morse, an officer in the 2^nd Mass. Rgt. His letters, drawings, and other contemporary images will draw us into the world of ruin and destruction that participants in the war found themselves confronting.

Quilts for Civil War Soldiers: Stories from the Home Front and the Battlefield - Saturday, October 20, 2 pm

Pamela Weeks, Curator of the New England Quilt Museum, knows the stories behind the rare surviving Civil War quilts made by caring hands for soldiers fighting for North and South. Learn about the quilts, their makers, life on the home front during the war, and about how civilians organized to get desperately needed aid and supplies to the battlefield.

For further information, contact the Museum at (781) 861-6559. www.nationalheritagemuseum.org

Image credits:

Courtesy Tony Horwitz

John Brown in late 1856 (Courtesy of the West Virginia State Archives, Boyd B. Stutler Collection)

Brown's Last Prophesy, 1859. Courtesy of the Virginia State Archives, Boyd B. Stutler Collection