Dust and cobwebs aren’t the only things covering many of the historic bells of Lewiston-Auburn — they also are shrouded in a fair amount of mystery. 

Bells in a town or city at one time determined the rhythm of the day. In Auburn, the Androscoggin County Courthouse bell rang every hour of the day, keeping time for those without a personal clock. Mill bells called workers to the factories. Church bells called parishioners to worship. Bates College’s bell called students to classes and meals. 

Needless to say, once alarm clocks, watches and other modes of communication became more common, the bell signal became less and less of a community necessity. The ringing hunks of metal, worth thousands of dollars in today’s currency, consequently faded into such obscurity that, at least locally, records of their sale or destruction are extremely difficult if not impossible to find.

Experts on Lewiston and Auburn’s once-many bells are hard to come by. Fortunately, dozens of newspaper clippings in the Sun Journal archives as well as records at the Androscoggin Historical Society and local interviews revealed the origins and stories surrounding some of the area’s historic bells. 

Here are the highlights and histories of 12 bells that still hang high above the Twin Cities — many still ringing — reminding us of simpler times.

The Androscoggin County Courthouse, 1857

Auburn’s Androscoggin County Courthouse bell has a long history of tradition behind it. Created by Henry N. Hooper & Co. foundry of Boston, ringing the bell has gone in and out of style as a way to signal court sessions. 

In April of 1897, the Lewiston Saturday Journal reported that the bell had been “put upon the shelf a number of years ago by order of one of the presiding justices of the supreme court, who gave orders not to have it rung during the terms of court.” A few years later, another judge reinstated the tradition. 

While the bell would toll each hour to mark the time, once at 1, twice at 2 and so on, it was also rung 20 times, paused, and then rung once more at the start of each court session. The reason behind the ringing pattern has been a mystery since at least 1933. The Lewiston Daily Sun published an article in October 1933 headlined “Court House Bell Clangs 21 Times but Nobody Knows Why,” and since then the newspaper has published at least seven more articles updating the public on the fruitless search for an answer. 

The clock mechanism that rings the bell was restored in 2018, fulfilling one of current Facilities Director David Cote’s biggest goals at the courthouse. Since then, it has rung every hour throughout the day. The clock and bell mechanisms get re-wound by hand twice a week by Cote’s staff. 

“The guys take pride in doing it,” Cote said. “It’s something that they want to do. I don’t force anybody. They choose to come up and do it.”

Cote added that court marshals have the option to ring the bell to signal the start of court, but they choose not to. “Justice Delahanty (Thomas E. Delahanty II) was probably the one person that liked it and wanted it to be used. But most of the modern judges don’t incorporate that,” he said. 

Bates College’s Hathorn Hall, 1857

This bell has likely experienced the most hijinks of the bunch. Acquired through a donation from Johnathan “Jack” Davis in 1857, the Hooper bell once regulated daily life at Bates, ringing every hour from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. to signal the start of the day, classes and dinner. It also tolled for funeral services for faculty members, debate team and athletic team victories, commencement and chapel services at the Lewiston college. 

Two students in good academic standing would be assigned to ring the 1,000-pound bell each hour of the day. The students lived in Hathorn Hall and would be excused from classes a few minutes early to ring the bell. Archived issues of The Bates Student newspaper recount bell ringers’ stories of ringing the bell too early or forgetting to do so altogether, much to “the confusion of all concerned,” one 1957 article noted.

One 1978 article in The Student reported that one morning, a bell caretaker found the bell “engulfed in surgical tape and sporting a sign reading ‘the phantom has struck.’” The bell clapper reportedly had also gone missing that year. 

The student newspaper received a note following the theft stating, “The recent non functioning of Hathorn’s bell is due to the fact that about 40 pounds of essential metal are missing. The reason for this is that some of us are tired of being rung out of bed; rung out of class; rung from stall to stall (Bates College Stables)…” The clapper was never found and had to be replaced.

After being out of service for a few years due to a hazardous and unreliable electric ringing mechanism, the Hathorn bell and its ringing mechanism was updated and repaired in 2024. According to Timothy Pratt, director of facility services operations at the college, some students and older staff members missed hearing the bell. The bell is now operated through a remote control system and is rung to mark the start of special events and daily at noon. 

Bates Mill, 1861

This bell called factory workers to the Lewiston mill each day from 1861 until 1914, when the factory replaced its bell with a whistle. The bell is now in the parking lot of the Maine Museum of Innovation Learning and Labor in Lewiston. 

First Universalist Church, 1876

This Auburn church’s bell was acquired through the parish’s group effort following a small tiff with the first potential bell supplier. According to an 1897 article in the Lewiston Saturday Journal, after receiving enough donations in 1876, a contract was made with a bell manufacturer in East Medway, Massachusetts. The company, after delaying the delivery of the bell, requested a $350 advance to buy the bell materials. The church offered the contract to Meneely Bell Foundry of West Troy, New York, which produced the 1,600-pound bell for $600. The bell is inscribed with a quote from Alfred Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam, (Ring out, wild bells)”: “Ring out the False, Ring in the True.” 

The original bell, which was installed March 22, 1876, is still functional and is rung five minutes before service on Sunday mornings. Upon its installation, the Evening Journal reported that “The tone of the bell is rich, but unlike any other in the city. Its music was heard throughout our two cities and people were generally inquisitive as to the strange tintinnabulation.”

Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, 1884

Way up in the Ash Street side belfry of Lewiston’s magnificent Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, bells named Anne, Augustine, Pierre, Jean-Baptiste and Louis pass their days unrung. The bells were cast by the McShane Bell Foundry of Missouri in 1884. In total, the bells weigh a whopping 10,000 pounds.

Anne is the heaviest bell at 3,600 pounds. Along with information about the pope at the time and the blessing of the bell, a Latin inscription on the bell reads: “I, the first (bell) in this city, call the Catholic people to the church and to divine services.”

The other bells honor significant leaders in the church as well as the patron saint of the French Canadian faithful, Jean-Baptiste. 

The enormous bells were a significant addition to the city when they were installed. At the blessing of the basilica bells in 1884, a Lewiston Evening Journal article states: “There were fully two thousand persons present, among whom were many strangers.”

The bells were replaced by an electric carillon in 1977, which was updated in 2002. The carillon plays the “Angelus,” or call to prayer, each day at noon.

Court Street Baptist Church, 1888

The bell at this Auburn church was a gift of Deacon David Allen, a wealthy and influential member of the church, however it was a gift not easily earned. In 1872 the church was about $30,000 in debt, which Allen hoped to resolve. After he died, he left $3,000 to build a steeple on the church. The church was only to receive the money after the death of the deacon’s wife and after reducing the church’s debt by $10,000. 

According to a 1897 article in the Lewiston Saturday Journal, “After her death the work of reducing the debt in order to get Deacon Allen’s $3000 was pushed and the canvass was successful. The bell was bought, mounted and dedicated during the pastorate of Rev. F. W. Bakeman.”

The bell was founded by William Blake & Co., an apprentice of Paul Revere, in 1888. The 2,000-pound bell cost $593.32, the equivalent of about $20,000 today. According to church office manager Marjorie Muise, the bell fell into disrepair after a lightning strike about three years ago. Muise said church leaders plan to fix the bell along with other repairs and have it ring again.

West Auburn Congregational Church, before 1846

Not much information was available about this bell, but church moderator Wendy Gilpatric speculates the church acquired the bell from the original church built in 1791 and demolished in 1846. 

The bell appears to have been cast by G. H. Holbrook, according to its inscription. Holbrook was an apprentice of Paul Revere and based his own bell foundry in Medway, Massachusetts. 

The church steeple was rebuilt in September 2018 and the rope attached to the bell, which was worn out from years of use, was repaired. Gilpatric said the bell is rung Sundays when the church is in session.

High Street Congregational Church, 1857/1897

Little information could be found about this bell, except that in 1897 the Lewiston Saturday Journal wrote that the church has the “credit of having the pioneer church bell in Auburn, if not Lewiston.”

The bell was transferred to the current church from the original meetinghouse on Main Street, not long after which the bell cracked. “Various plans for mending the bell were tried but to no avail,” the article states. Apparently, the bell was “entirely spoiled by following the advice of one wise man, who told them to file a long, deep cut into the sides. With this gash through it, it was of no earthly use.” 

The old bell was eventually sent to the foundry to be recast and made heavier. The church still has its bell and rings it on Sundays.

Lewiston City Hall, 1892

The initial City Hall bell was used as a fire alarm, but ironically met its end in the Jan 7, 1890, fire that burned down the city building. A month following the blaze, The Evening Journal reported that the remains of the bell had been found under 3 feet of debris, “broke in two, split about the top and beyond repair.” The 1,200-pound bell had been imported from England. Following its discovery after the fire, “A big slice of it was lugged to the engine house on Ash Street and a great crowd gathered about the resurrection of the bell.” For the rest of the day, people took sledge hammers to the bell, “for the purpose of knocking the bell into relics that will serve indefinite years as paper weights.”

The current City Hall bell came from the McShane Bell Foundry in Baltimore, Maryland, according to plans for the new city building published in the Lewiston Saturday Journal in 1892. It weighs 2,340 pounds. The last time the bell rung was in March 2020 after the mayors of Lewiston and Auburn requested that churches sound their bells as a symbol of unity in the county. According to Angelynne Amores, director of communications and marketing for Lewiston, the bell must be rung manually and due to its age and weight, it is not presently rung.

St. Joseph’s Church, 1884, 1926

In September 1884, the biggest church bell in the city at that time arrived in Lewiston, occupying an entire flatcar of a train, according to a report in the Lewiston Evening Journal. The bell, called “St. Patrick,” weighed nearly 3 tons and took 45 minutes to install in its belfry at St. Joseph’s Church on Main Street in Lewiston while a large crowd watched. Unfortunately, the bell cracked in 1892 and was sent back to the foundry. It was later moved to St. Patrick’s Church on Bates Street in Lewiston, which is now the Agora Grand Event Center. 

St. Joseph’s was not bell-less for too long, however. In June 1926, the Evening Journal reported that an “interested and constantly changing group of spectators” watched the installation of 12 bells at the church. The new bells were founded by Meneely & Co., its creator installing them himself. They each bear an inscription commemorating important members and events in the church, including the reverend who consecrated the bells, the laying of the cornerstone for the church and the founding of the parish. 

The 12 bells each have names: Saint Joseph, Saint Mary, Saint Anne, Saint Caecillia, Saint Patrick, Saint Gregory, Saint John, Saint Vincent, Saint Agnes, Saint Louis, Saint Margaret and Holy Cross.

Though the church was decommissioned and is set to become a brewery, James Razsa, the brewery’s co-founder and CEO, has “no plans at this time” to sell the bells. Though he’s been approached a few times to sell them, he said recently it’s expensive to get them out of the belfry and he felt “a little funny doing it.”

St. Mary’s Catholic Church/Franco Center, 1854

Tucked away in the belfry of the Franco Center in Lewiston, which operates in the former St. Mary’s Catholic Church, is a bell once prized for its sound. It was forged in 1854 by Henry N. Hooper & Co. foundry of Boston, making it one of the oldest bells in the area. It was installed in the church in 1927.

Hooper was an apprentice of Paul Revere III, Paul Revere’s grandson. The bell was purchased from a Methodist church on Park Street in Lewiston through the donations of 200 parishioners. According to a January 1927 notice in the Lewiston Evening Journal, “The bell as remembered by older citizens of Lewiston is one of the finest sounding bells of all in either cities.” 

The bell no longer rings because it was replaced by an electronic carillon system in 1982. However, the original bell remains in the steeple of the church. 

St. Louis Church, 1915

Auburn’s St. Louis Church’s four bells were cast in 1915 by the famed Paccard Bell Foundry in Annecy, France. They were purchased by members of the church and cast in commemoration of family members. Two were purchased by the Provost family to honor Auburn businessman and Ward 5 Alderman Pierre Provost. The third bell was cast for Phillipe Dupont, a baker in New Auburn. The last bell was purchased by the Rev. Henri Gory, pastor at the church between 1914 and 1918. 

Gerard Dennison, an Auburn resident with a strong family connection to the church, wrote an article for the Androscoggin Historical Society about the church bells. He recounted his time as an altar boy and learning to ring the bells — something he had long dreamed of doing. 

“There was a heavy thick-gauge rope dangling that was tied to the bells. … I jumped a couple of times and could not touch it. The problem was that I was only 4 feet tall,” Dennison writes. After using a chair to make up the height difference, Dennison “clutched onto the heavy rope and bounced up and down.” 

For the next six years he rang the bells each day before Mass and sometimes for a funeral or wedding service.

The church closed in 2013 and was sold to a developer in 2023. After it closed, Auburn residents raised $12,000 to buy the bells from the Catholic Diocese of Maine. They raised enough money to build a structure to house the bells in Anniversary Park in New Auburn. The bells were officially moved into their new home in the summer of 2020. The bells ring every hour, on the hour, during the day.

Why keep the bells tolling?

Given the difficulty of finding information about Lewiston and Auburn’s historic bells, it’s easy to wonder: Why keep these relics dangling from their belfries? It’s clear the use of bells to alert the public to fires, church services and court sessions has long been replaced by modern modes of communication.

Yet reading about people gathering to witness bell installations and coming together to purchase or preserve these bells makes one thing clear: Bells are also symbols of their community and the value of unity.

While they may no longer practically serve the Twin Cities, their original purpose is a reminder of the importance of togetherness and community. No matter where it hangs, a bell is a call to come together.

Writer Lena LaPierre contributed to this story.