Ringing True: After 177 Years, a Stolen Bell Returns Home as a Symbol of Unity

Stolen, forgotten and misidentified as the bell of the 1840s Nauvoo Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hummer's Bell has returned, 177 years later, to its rightful home at the First Presbyterian Church of Iowa City.

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A dedication was held in Iowa City on Sunday, October 5, 2025, to mark the return of the 33-inch wide, 800-pound Hummer Bell.

“Every time this bell rings, we think not only of the people who heard it in Iowa City, but the people who heard it for decades in Salt Lake City, and say, ‘This bell unites us,’” First Presbyterian Church Pastor Nathan Willard said during the dedicatory sermon. “This bell is a sign that the thing God wants most of all for all of us is that we may be one in God’s name, that Jesus Christ calls us to unity and not to division, that Jesus calls us to remember the poor and the hungry, the widow and the orphan, the powerful as well as the powerless and say they are all one in Jesus Christ.”

In a later interview, Elder Kirt L. Hodges, an Area Seventy for the Church of Jesus Christ, echoed Pastor Willard’s comments about coming together in Christ through this bell.

“We want to establish a relationship between the two churches, to do things in the community, to be involved in community events and community service so that we can work together and turn people to the Savior,” said Elder Hodges, who grew up in Idaho hearing this very bell mark the hours on KSL radio station in Salt Lake City. “That’s both of our desires as churches — to turn people’s hearts to our Savior Jesus Christ.”

The History

How did the bell finally end up in Iowa City?

“It’s a pretty crazy story,” Pastor Willard said.

“This is one of the most remarkable stories you’ll ever hear, as far as all the twists and turns,” added Elder Hodges.

Michael Hummer became a pastor of the newly founded First Presbyterian Church of Iowa City in Iowa Territory in December 1842. Over the next several years, Hummer raised funds for a building for the congregation and purchased a bell for the church from the Meneely Bell Foundry in Troy, New York.

By 1848, several concerns about Hummer — including claims that he mishandled funds — caused the congregation and the church trustees to expel him from his position. Hummer requested back pay, which he claimed he never received. He therefore decided to take the bell from the church.

Pastor Willard said he looks mercifully, even gratefully, on Hummer’s actions that set in motion the removal of the bell, because the original church was later destroyed by fire and the bell would have been destroyed with it. What’s more, he said, Hummer may have had every right to take the bell.

“Every time someone talks about Hummer taking the bell away or the fact that he stole it, I bring up the point that he was underpaid and given permission to take things. Perhaps it was just a debt owed [and] we shouldn’t be too hard on [him],” Pastor Willard said.

“Hummer was granted the rights to movable items,” added Keith Erekson, director of historical research and outreach for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “And so that became the question. Hummer thought the bell was movable, and the congregants didn’t think so.”

After Hummer lowered the bell from the belfry, Iowa City residents intervened. They removed his ladder and whisked away the bell by wagon and submerged it in Rapid Creek for temporary safekeeping, while the angry former pastor remained perched in the tower.

While the bell was hidden, four men who knew of its whereabouts and who were likely involved in sinking it in the creek, secretly loaded it on a wagon and took it with them as they traveled west toward California in early 1850. After arriving in Salt Lake, the men sold the bell to the Church’s tithing office.

“The Saints needed bells,” Erekson explained. “They used bells. In the 19th century, bells were hung in churches; they were hung on schoolhouses; they were used to wake people up; they were used to call people to meetings. The Church members had brought the Nauvoo Bell across the plains, and then, when it cracked and became unusable, they were looking for a new bell.”

Several years later, after learning that the bell had been sold to the Church of Jesus Christ, representatives from the First Presbyterian Church and Michael Hummer both wrote to Brigham Young. The prophet told both parties that if they could provide clear proof of ownership of the bell and pay for its return, he would happily return it. Hummer never responded, and members of the First Presbyterian Church were unable to raise the funds needed for its return. So the bell remained in Salt Lake City.

With time, the bell was placed in storage “with a really vague note that just said, ‘old bell,’” Erekson said.

Decades passed, Erekson says, and around 1939, “We get a new generation who is really zealous and nostalgic for Nauvoo,” where the Saints erected and dedicated a magnificent house of the Lord in 1846 before their trek west.

“As they’re rummaging through the items,” Erekson said, “they find this old bell, as it’s labeled, and — I think it’s as much wishful thinking as anything — they really wished it was the Nauvoo Bell. And so it was. They published the news that it had been discovered, and that got people excited. Eventually, it got installed on Temple Square.”

It was thus that the Hummer Bell — not the Nauvoo Bell, though no one knew it at the time — was placed in the Relief Society campanile on Temple Square in 1966.

In the late 1990s, Church History Department staff began to investigate the bell in the campanile. Over the next couple of decades, the truth of the bell’s origins emerged, culminating in a 2019 “BYU Studies” article on the topic. The bell and campanile were taken down in 2023 as part of the larger renovation project of the Salt Lake Temple and the surrounding square.

“The construction project at Temple Square gave us the opportunity to rethink what was on the square,” Erekson said. “When the option came up, we said, ‘You know, the best thing to do would be to send this back to the church where it came from.’ We reached out, and they were excited. We’re thrilled to be able to make that restoration of the bell to its home.”

The bell has been restored to its 1840s appearance and now hangs in a campanile at First Presbyterian Church of Iowa City.

At the conclusion of his Sunday sermon, Pastor Willard invited the congregation to hear in the bell’s ring Christ’s call to unity.

“In this world of division, what can we do to signal unity in Jesus Christ? We can ring that bell,” he said. “We can make that bell ring across a century of time, calling different people to worship in the same place and saying the most important thing for all of us is to remember that Jesus Christ was and is and will be.”