February 1774

 Our Chapter began having a three minute informational talk about the events leading up to the revolution in December with the talk about the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.  

Everything moved slow in the days leading up to the Revolution.  The News of the tea party had to travel by ship to Great Britain and then the repercussions had to travel back by ship as well.  So we can know that while this was not a quiet month as the news of the Tea party traveled to all parts of the Colonies,  there were no new big events that happened during this month that were directly related to the upcoming Revolution.

But there was an event that was mentioned in the January/February National Defender that is near and dear to my heart.  It is not exactly a Revolutionary War fact, but it does include George Washington.

In 2015, in preparation for a trip to downtown Philadelphia, I asked my Quaker mail list what I should be sure to see.  My friends on the mail list explained that there are very few Quaker sites left from the late 1600s and early 1700s. That one should see the usual sites with Quaker eyes.  And one of my favorite examples of this is the Liberty Bell.

The State House bell, now known as the Liberty Bell, rang in the tower of the Pennsylvania State House. Today, we call that building Independence Hall. Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly Isaac Norris first ordered a bell for the bell tower in 1751 from the Whitechapel Foundry in London. That bell cracked on the first test ring. Local metalworkers John Pass and John Stow melted down that bell and cast a new one right here in Philadelphia. It's this bell that would ring to call lawmakers to their meetings and the townspeople together to hear the reading of the news. Benjamin Franklin wrote to Catherine Ray in 1755, "Adieu, the Bell rings, and I must go among the Grave ones and talk Politicks." It's not until the 1830s that the old State House bell would begin to take on significance as a symbol of liberty.

                                                       https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/stories-libertybell.htm

In one of his books, historian David Hackett Fischer examines the bell as a uniquely Quaker sort of tool. Essentially, his observation was that the bell could be heard by all announcing that the assembly was in session.  Legislatures elsewhere operated more quietly, more "sub rosa," if you will.  Into that, Fischer read a more democratic attitude in the Quaker life style.