Question:
I
was at the Village once when the church bells rang about a hundred times.
Why?
Answer:
You must have been here during one of our Last Farewell programs, which
re-create a 19th- century funeral. As part of that program, the Center
Meetinghouse bell tolls -- in code. That is, it rings the way it would have
in an 1830s New England community to let people know who died and how old
they were. For example, the bell rings nine times if the deceased person
is a man, six times for a woman, and three times for a child. Then it tolls
once for each year of the person's age. In the time before telephones this
was the fastest way of spreading the news that someone in the community had
died. For example, the Village has re-enacted the funeral of a Revolutionary
War veteran -- who would have been an old man in the 1830s -- so the bell
rang more than 70 times. These are not real funerals -- just re-enactments.
However, we also sometimes ring the bell in memory of real people who have
died -- those who served or worked at Old Sturbridge Village.
