Warren County PA Suffrage Centennial Celebration Traditional Cache

Short Description – Justice Bell

The Justice Bell was designed to replicate the Liberty Bell, but without the crack. It symbolizes the Suffrage movement where liberty and justice for women were denied the right to vote. It travelled through PA cities and rural areas to promote Women’s Right to Vote. Warren, PA, was one of it’s historic stops. This cache brings you to the exact historic location in Warren where the Justice Bell arrived in Warren at “Savings Bank corner,” at 6:30 PM on June 28^th 1915. You will be searching for the cache near  a storefront, however, the business has consented to the placement of the cache container.

Long Description

The Justice Bell was cast at the Meneely Bell foundry in Troy, New York. The bell is called the Justice Bell, but has also been known as the Women’s Liberty Bell and the Suffrage Bell. It was commissioned by Katherine Wentworth Ruschenberger in 1915. She was one of the 70,000 members of the Pennsylvania Women’s Suffrage Association, and a leader of the organization in Chester County. 

The Suffragette Liberty Bell Tour traveled to the 67 counties in PA to promote Women’s Right to Vote in the 1915 -1920 period. The 2,000-pound bell travelled through Kane, Sheffield, Clarendon and Warren on the back of a modified pickup truck with banners that read “Votes For Women.” Suffragettes gave speeches where ever they stopped. In Warren, they lectured and stayed at the old Carver House. Source Warren Times Mirror – June 28^th and 29^th 1915.  Mark Twain coined the phrases in his famous speech of 1901 – VOTES FOR WOMEN and it became the words used to promote the passing of the 19^th Amendment on signs and in speeches.

When the Legislators did not pass the Women’s Right to Vote in 1915, the Suffragettes went nationwide across the USA to San Francisco where the Bell was placed on display on the eve of World War I. Along the return route between Philadelphia and San Francisco, approximately one out of every four people in the country saw the bell. Source -www.nps.gov/articles.dyk-justice-bell.htm

As a symbolic gesture because women were denied the right to vote, when the bell was first cast in 1915, the clapper of the bell was tethered and
was not released to be rung until the 19^th Amendment was passed, which it did Aug 26, 1919, and was added to the US Constitution. At the celebration in Philadelphia it was finally untethered and rung 48 times – once for every state in the union. (Alaska and Hawaii had not yet become states.)  The Justice Bell is now housed in the Memorial Chapel of Valley Forge National Park near Philadelphia, PA.

The front page of the Evening Public Ledger shows Katharine Wentworth next to the Justice Bell. Wentworth first rang the Justice Bell on September 25, 1920, in celebration of women's suffrage. Library of Congress, Evening Public Ledger newspaper image provided by Penn State University Libraries; University Park, PA. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/1920-09-25/ed-1/seq-1/

On June 28^th 1915, a news article appeared in the Warren Times Mirror (now Warren Times Observer).The bell had traveled through Smethport, Bradford, Kane, Sheffield, Clarendon and Warren during that time period. At 6:30 PM it arrived in Warren at “Savings Bank corner,” which today hosts a large street water fountain in front of the Flatiron building, near Northwest Savings Bank, Key Bank, and office building.

Following is a portion of that historic story from the Warren Times archives:

The prospective emblem of political liberty for women of the state is being transported on a specially constructed White automobile truck with two seats for driver and passengers and a platform on the rear which the bell rests. The seats are protected by a canopy top from which floats pennants of the various towns touched during the trip as well as numerous yellow pennants, ribbons and various streamers bearing the motto “Votes for Women.” stretched tightly across the rear of the truck also bearing the magic talisman.

Accompanying the bell on the truck are Miss Louise Hall of Harrisburg, secretary of Pennsylvania Women’s Suffrage Association and Mary Wolfe of Lewisburg, PA, secretary of the board of managers to provide for the establishment of a state village for feeble minded women.

The auto truck is accompanied on its journey by touring car conveying Mrs. Charles Ruschenberger of Stafford, PA, the donor of the bell and truck.  ……

…. The bell will remain overnight and will be housed in a garage. The party accompanying it will stop at the Carver House. Suffrage speeches will be made this evening at the Savings Bank Corner.