Local resident tells story of John Brown Bell
By Angela Greiner Community Reporter

Joan Hartley Abshire, who traveled the East Coast and pored through countless manuscripts to retell an accurate account of the travels of the John Brown Bell, stands in front of her display at the Marlborough Historical Society's monthly meeting. PHOTO/ANGELA GREINER

Marlborough - No one would have predicted in May of 1861 that the men from Marlborough's Torrent Engine #1 Fire House would be responsible for bringing home what would become a treasured American historical relic. On Feb. 25, for a crowd of nearly 50 people at the monthly meeting of the Historical Society, Marlborough resident Joan Hartley Abshire wove a tale of the people and events that led the John Brown Bell from Harpers Ferry, W.Va., to Marlborough.

Abshire volunteered to give the talk thinking that it would be interesting and fairly easy with information available through the society and online.

"It seemed simple," Abshire said, "but simple it was not."

What she discovered when she began to unwind the web of information was a mystery filled with detours and discrepancies that led her on a road trip from Harpers Ferry to Williamsport, Md.

During Abshire's onehour lecture, she described the events leading up to the Civil War, including the development of Westborough native Eli Whitney's cotton gin, which made the South one of the largest producers of cotton in the world. She introduced John Brown and described his first-hand experience with the cruelties of slavery, which turned him into an abolitionist.

In 1859 with the help of the "Secret Six," men who supported the abolition of slavery by providing him with money and arms, Brown set off to take over the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, at the junction of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. Abshire described the days leading up to the raid, the stand-off that took the lives of 17 men, including John Brown, who was captured and hung for treason.

Nearly two years later, the Torrent Engine Number #1 volunteers were camped by the Potomac in Harpers Ferry.

"They were only there a few days when they were ordered to cross the Potomac and seize anything that was of value to the U.S. government," Abshire said. "Many others had been there before them and taken everything of value. They spotted the bell and decided to take it home since their hook and ladder company had no bell.

"On Sept. 16, 1861, Lt. David L. Brown and 15 others of Company I went to Harpers Ferry, and with ropes, began to lower the bell from the belfry. It's said to weigh around 700 or 800 pounds."

Knowing that the bell was property of the government, the men applied for and were granted permission by the War Department to keep the bell. Ordered to Williamsport, Md., the men boxed the bell and sent it up the river on a canal boat with them to Williamsport. Nearly a year later, when the men were ordered into enemy territory and did not have the funds to send the bell home, they left it in Williamsport with William and Elizabeth Eswinger.

Abshire said it was not until after the war in 1892, when six of the original veterans, who had returned to Washington for a parade, made an 80-mile detour to Williamsport to check on the bell. To the men's surprise, Elizabeth had kept it safely in her backyard.

Abshire also addressed rumors about the bell. She said that although several requests from representatives of Harpers Ferry have asked for it back, the bell belongs in Marlborough because it was not stolen. And the bell was not buried for 30 years, as rumored, but rather seven years, for fear it would be ruined during the war.

In Marlborough, the John Brown Bell is at Union Common, at the corner of Main and Bolton streets, in a tower built specifically for its display.