About a hundred fans of the 250th gathered at the Beyond the Battle Museum on Saturday, March 14 to unveil the Adams County 250 Bell. It is part of the “Bells Across Pennsylvania” initiative, a program to develop a Liberty Bell replica for each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties.
The Adams County bell was created by Wendy Allen, owner of the Lincoln into Art Gallery and President of the Lincoln Fellowship of Pennsylvania, which organizes the annual Dedication Day activities on the anniversary of Lincoln’s speech.” We were afraid she might be too busy,” said Carl Whitehill, “but when we asked her, she said, “I’m in.”
Allen reflected on her first times at Gettysburg, when she visited her sister, a Gettysburg College student. “It was a difficult time for us,” she said, “but we found that as soon as we went out on the battlefield, our cares disappeared. That was when I decided to make Gettysburg my life.” She observed that a frequent theme of writings about Gettysburg is “the people,” and she made that the bell’s theme. She read the last few sentences of Lincoln’s speech: “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Whitehill also thanked the county commissioners, who funded the bell project. The bell will be on permanent exhibit at the Beyond the Battle Museum.
