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On Wednesday, November 8, 1899, after a Solemn Mass and a Forty Hours Devotion, three bells were blessed for use in a new tower attached to the 1849 church of St. Philip Neri in Dungannon, Columbiana County. Bishop Ignatius Horstmann of Cleveland was unable to attend this blessing himself, so he sent the vicar general of the diocese, Monsignor Felix Boff, pictured in the doorway. Monsignor Boff was assisted by priests from Salem, Warren, Summitville and Dungannon. Not only were these church bells blessed, but they were also named. The smallest of the three bells, named John, was bought in Cincinnati, shipped on the Ohio River to Wellsville and transported by wagon to Dungannon, where it hung in the original church of the parish—an 1824 brick structure—before being used in the 1849 church and then rehung in the new steeple. The second (Richard and Edmund) and third (Barbara) bells were each cast in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1899 for the new bell tower. The parishioners of St. Philip Neri Parish have attended to the preservation of the bells and their tower for 126 years, including restoration after a lightning strike in 1919 and a “Save the Bell Tower” project for the parish bicentennial in 2017. This photo was donated to diocesan archives in 2012 by Marjorie Haessly Brubeck, granddaughter of parishioner William Haessly (1867-1967), who proudly framed and kept the photo hanging in his parlor in Hanoverton.
