Restored Revere Bell is on display at First Baptist Church

Keith Gushard, The Meadville Tribune, Pa.
·2 min read

A very brief, simple ceremony recently marked the dedication Meadville First Baptist Church’s historic Revere Bell.

“It’s been a long journey,” Paul Oppenlander, a trustee of the church and project manager for the restoration, said before the restored bell’s unveiling on Flag Day.

The 1830s bell, cast at the Paul Revere Foundry in Boston, arrived back in the church May 16 after restoration by the Verdin Company of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Last August, the bell was lowered from the church’s bell tower on Diamond Park to go to Verdin, a world-renowned manufacturer of cast bronze bells, for its restoration.

The bell, restored with its original bronze luster, is now on public display on a stand outside of the church’s offices at 353 Chestnut St. It is available for public viewing from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays as well as Sunday mornings at the church.

The bell will remain there on public display for the next two to three years before it’s reinstalled in the church’s bell tower, according to Oppenlander.

Restoration work on the bell tower itself is expected to be done in the spring of 2025.

The entire restoration of the bell and its tower is estimated at about $220,000.

In early June 2023, First Baptist Church was awarded a $10,000 competitive grant from the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Historic Preservation Grants program toward the bell’s restoration. The bell restoration itself was around $20,000.

That grant helped trigger First Baptist Church getting a $100,000 competitive grant from the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission for the project. The state grant requires local matching funds.

Oppenlander also credited Tom Law and Debbie Corll with aiding the project. Law is a member of the church with engineering expertise while Corll helped write the grants to secure funding.

“Without them, the project wouldn’t have happened or happened as fast,” Oppenlander said of the DAR grant. “The DAR, Tom Law, Debbie Corll, you people made it all happen. Every single one of you played a part.”