Liberty Bell in Elizabethtown

Got it! This site "creationpie.com" uses cookies. You consent to this by clicking on "Got it!" or by continuing to use this website. Note: This appears on each machine/browser from which this site is accessed.

July 4, 1915 was 139 years after July 4, 1776.

In 1915, 500,000 schoolchildren signed a petition asking the city of Philadelphia to send the Liberty Bell to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of San Francisco.
During World War I, the Liberty Bell made a trip from Philadelphia by railroad, including the train station outside Elizabethtown, PA. It reached the west coast and then returned to Philadelphia where it has been ever since.

It was the Liberty Bell's last trip outside Philadelphia. Jacob N. Olweiler arranged for the Bell to stop in Elizabethtown.

Does anyone remember your parents or grandparents talking about that visit?

A local history book says about 7,000 local people attended that event but the picture does not appear to have that many in the crowd. However, the number could be for Lancaster which had a much bigger crowd. My great grandfather helped dig a tunnel at that site and my grandfather would have been a teenager.

A photo of the event is in local history books and in a local restaurant.

Written in lower left: July 4, 1915, photo by S. G. Bishop (died in 1930). His son Vere Bishop (EAHS class of 1938, retired 1990 after 81 years) took over the photo studio (established in 1909), went to SP-UM church.

Can you find Vere Bishop in the photo? St. Paul's EUB Men's Class in 1952

The location is the sanctuary of the old EUB (Evangelical United Brethren) church building on High Street.

How many of these men can be identified?

More: SPUM: 1952 Mens class

Same Indiana limestone as used for Masonic Homes buildings (construction had started there in 1911).
New railroad station in 1915.
It had heated waiting room.
It had platforms to either side of the tracks.

Elizabethtown train station today.