Silent since 1999, the bell that once called children into Huntingdon’s William Smith School was dedicated Friday morning at Standing Stone Elementary — and it will sound again on the Fourth of July for the nation’s 250th birthday. The Huntingdon County Historical Society is one of the partners that brought it back.
A school bell has one particular job: it gathers people. For generations it told the children of Huntingdon when to come in from the cold, when to sit down, when the day was done. Then, one June day in 1999, the bell atop the William Smith School was rung one last time — and it went quiet.
On Friday morning, July 3, it spoke again. At a 9:00 a.m. ceremony at Standing Stone Elementary School, a group of local partners — the Huntingdon County Historical Society among them — dedicated the restored William Smith School bell, mounted now on a new ground-level display where anyone can walk right up and stand beside it.
And it is not finished ringing. On Saturday, July 4, the bell is set to sound once more as part of “Bells Across America,” the nationwide semiquincentennial observance marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence.
The bell itself
The bell that rang on Friday is older than almost everything else in the room.
According to the Huntingdon Daily News, which reported the restoration ahead of the dedication, the bell was cast by the Meneely Bell Foundry of West Troy, New York, in 1861 — making it more than 160 years old.
It was, in fact, the school’s second bell. The original, cast in 1856, cracked one winter and had to be replaced — and the larger 1861 Meneely bell took its place.
That 1861 bell served for well over a century. Its last peal came on June 9, 1999, rung by Ruth Vuille Stewart — the year the William Smith School closed. Since 2006 it has been kept at Standing Stone Elementary, waiting, until this restoration gave it back its voice.
Its last peal came on June 9, 1999. Friday morning, after more than a quarter-century of silence, it rang again.
Who was William Smith — and how did the school get its name?
The school carried the name of the man who put Huntingdon on the map, quite literally. Rev. Dr. William Smith (1727–1803) was the first provost of the College of Philadelphia — the school that grew into the University of Pennsylvania — and it was Smith who laid out the town of Huntingdon in 1767, along the Standing Stone Tract on the Juniata River, selling the first lots the following year.
There’s a well-worn local story that Smith named the town for Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, an English benefactor of his Philadelphia academy. It’s a good story — and it’s contested. Local tradition holds that the town honors the Countess, but Smith’s own descendants denied it, and reference accounts note there is no documentary evidence for it; the name may simply echo the English town of Huntingdon. We flag it here as tradition, not settled fact — exactly the kind of question the Historical Society’s collections exist to sort out.
The William Smith School itself closed in 1999, when it was consolidated with Alfarata Elementary into the newly built Standing Stone Elementary. So there is a quiet symmetry to Friday’s ceremony: a bell from a school named for the town’s founder now rests at the school named for the Standing Stone, the ancient landmark that gave this place its very first name. Two of Huntingdon’s oldest namesakes, side by side.
The project
The restoration was led by the HASD Educational Foundation (HASDEF), working in partnership with the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Huntingdon County Historical Society, and the Huntingdon Area School District. Together they set out to raise $5,000 to restore the bell and mount it on a custom, ground-level display, designed and crafted by local artisan Dave Berger.
The ground-level mount is a deliberate, welcoming choice. Instead of sitting high and untouchable on a rooftop, the bell now stands at a height where a first-grader — or a great-grandparent who once answered its call — can reach out and touch it.
How to help
The restoration campaign — “Raise the Old Bell!” — is still accepting tax-deductible donations through the Huntingdon Area School District Educational Foundation. Gifts can be made online through the Foundation’s Zeffy page, where 100% of the donation goes to the cause, or by check to the Huntingdon Area School District Educational Foundation, 2400 Cassady Avenue, Suite 2, Huntingdon, PA 16652.
Give online: Raise the Old Bell! →
Restored artifacts are easy to admire and easy to forget. A bell is different. It asks to be used — to be rung, heard, and answered. When this one sounded over Standing Stone Elementary on Friday morning, after more than a quarter-century of silence, it did the same thing it always had: it gathered the people of Huntingdon together. And when it rings again on the Fourth of July, joining bells across the country, it will be 250 years into the American experiment — still making the right sound.