Note 9 — ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH, CHARLESTON WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS

In 1872, Mrs. Petigru Carson writes in Appleton’s Journal: “When the British took Charleston in 1780, they stabled their horses in the church, and, unhanging the bells, sent them off to London, where they were dumped on the Tower Wharf. At last the vestry of St. Michael’s received a letter bidding them expect their bells by a certain ship sailing from London. The people went in procession to bring up from the ship their beloved bells, which they had never hoped to listen to again, and with prayers and thanksgivings they were replaced in the church tower. The pious benefactor never made himself known, but he was supposed to have been some British officer who had been at the taking of Charleston. For seventy years did those bells regulate the social life of the city. For, not only did they call to worship, and celebrate all occasions of public joy and sorrow, but nightly they rang a curfew which ruled everybody’s movements. It was intended to warn the negroes home at nine o’clock in winter, ten in summer; after that hour they might not go into the streets without a written pass. All visitors were expected to take leave at bell-ring.

“Then Sherman’s army passed through leaving its track as of lightning. A party of half-drunken soldiers, out for a lark and for plunder, were accosted by a negro who offered to show them the bells which had rung in secession. ‘Never,’ said the men, ‘shall they play that tune again!’ and they smashed them into a hundred pieces.” The rector and congregation despite their poverty consequent on the war wrote to one Mr. C. R. Prioleau of London to inquire the cost of a new set.

“There was no record at Charleston of where the bells came from. But Mr. Prioleau searched the directory for the oldest founders of the city, and went from one to the other, until at Meares & Co., Whitechapel, London, a firm which had been in existence three hundred years, he found, by patient examination, the record of bells cast for St. Michael’s Church, Charleston, S. C., in 1759. The proportions of the metal and sizes of the bells were all entered in the books; and the present Meares engaged to turn out a new set which, when hung, should make the Charlestonians themselves think they heard the veritable old bells. But Mr. Prioleau was not content with this; he wrote back to have all the fragments that could be found sent out—and this was done. Meanwhile, Meares found still in their service an old man of seventy-six, who had been apprentice under the very foreman who, more than a hundred years before, had cast those bells; and he, stimulated by Prioleau’s generosity, never rested till he brought to light the very original moulds for the castings. Into them the new metal was melted with careful distribution of the broken fragments, so as to make the illusion a reality. All that was wanting to make up the cast, Mr. Prioleau added, and the reward of his perseverance and generosity was to send to the vestry these new bells, which are the very old ones still. Again did the congregation with tears and thanksgiving receive the bells from this their fifth voyage across the Atlantic, and hung them up in St. Michael’s steeple.”—E. S.