“To Ring the Bells for two hours Each Time”

Yesterday I described the arrival in 1745 of a set of eight bells from Gloucester, England, for the steeple of Christ Church, now also called Old North Church.

Those bells were tuned to different notes and made for change ringing, the first such set to arrive in British North America. Few Bostonians had heard that style of bell-ringing. Even fewer knew how to do it.

The church’s website states:

Reverend Timothy Cutler had a difficult time finding any experienced bellringers. They sat idle and unused for five years—that is, until 1750, when a group of teenage boys living in the North End was contracted to ring for two hours per week for one year. Each of them was paid 2 pennies a week for their work.

Those boys formed a collective, and its charter agreement survives in the church archive:

We the Subscribers Do agree To the Following Articles Viz

That if we Can have Liberty From the wardens of Doctor Cuttlers church we will attend there once a week on Evenings To Ring the Bells for two hours Each Time from the date here of For one year

That will Choose a Moderator Every three Months whose Business shall be to give out the Changes and other Business as Shall be Agreed by a Majority of Voices then Present

That None shall Be admitted a Member of this Society without a Unanimous Vote of the Members then Present and that No member Shall begg Money of any Person In the Tower on Penalty of Being Excluded the Society

and that will Attend To Ring at any Time when the Warden of the Church Aforesaid shall desire it on Penalty of Paying three Shillings for the good of the Society (Provided we Can have the whole Care of the Bells)

That the Members of this Society Shall nott Exceed Eight Persons

and all Differences To be decided By a Majority of Voices

John Dyer
Paul Revere
Josiah Flagg
Barthw. Ballard
Jonathan Law [Low?]
Jona. Brown, junr.
Joseph Snelling

For some of these names there are multiple candidates in the Boston vital records, and I have no candidate at all for Law/Low. But it looks like all of these signers were in their late teens in 1750 except Dyer, born in 1730. Revere, born at the start of 1735, and Flagg, born two years later, were the youngest. (Nonetheless, Revere signed with a fancy paraph.)

Here’s a question I haven’t seen discussed before. Seven boys signed that agreement to ring the bells—but there were eight bells. They seem to have recognized that in limiting their society to “Eight Persons.” Shouldn’t they have brought in someone else? Or did the sexton of Christ Church join them in pulling a bell rope since sextons usually rang the bells in Boston?

The church’s statement that each boy was named 2d. a week suggests that payments might show up in the account books. It would be interesting to see how long the payments and thus the bell-ringing society might have lasted.

TOMORROW: The fading of Boston’s bells.