The Philadelphians, having outgrown the primitive “Towne House” that had served the community’s needs since 1709, undertook in 1729 to erect an Assembly building commensurate with the growing importance of the province. A dozen years later the new State House was completed, including the dignified chamber now famous as the Hall in which the Declaration of Independence was discussed and received its first signatures. Another decade passed before sufficient funds were available for the rearing of a frame steeple on the south side of the building, “with a suitable place thereon for hanging a bell.” To grace this steeple and call together the Provincial Fathers, whose meeting-place was in one of the rooms below, it was decided after prolonged discussion that a bell be ordered from England. A letter dated November 1, 1751, was forthwith dispatched from the Superintendents of the State House to the Colonial agent in London, asking that he purchase “a good bell, of about two thousand pounds weight, the cost of which we may presume may amount to about one hundred pounds sterling, or, perhaps, with the charges, something more.… Let the bell be cast by the best workmen, and examined carefully before it is shipped, with the following words well shaped in large letters around it, viz: ‘By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania, for the State House in the city of Philadelphia, 1752.’ And underneath, ‘Proclaim Liberty through all the land, to all the inhabitants thereof.--Levit. XXV. 10.’” Within a year a ship bearing the new bell was reported at the water-front, and eager citizens thronged the pier hoping to see it. The arrival of the State House bell, destined none knew to what great mission, was the chief interest of that August day in Quaker Philadelphia. To the chagrin of the Superintendents they were compelled to announce a few days later that the long-looked-for bell had “cracked by a stroke of the clapper without any other violence, as it was hung up to try the sound.” Two “ingenious workmen” essayed to recast the metal, to which a larger proportion of copper had been added, and in April, 1753, artisans raised the “American bell” to its place in the steeple. Later on it was cast again, because the metal composition was now thought to contain too much copper. The result, we are told, was but tolerably successful. However, this “new great bell” continued in service for over sixty years. It announced the convening of the Assembly and the courts, and for a time was used to summon church-goers on Sunday.