This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Like most other idealistic young men and women, new ministers go out to their calls with visions of being good shepherds to their flocks. That was certainly true of the Reverend Michael Hummer who came to organize and pastor a Presbyterian church in Iowa City, Iowa, in 1840.
The Reverend Hummer was an enthusiastic and hard worker. His congregation responded by voting to build a new church. Hummer made several trips to the east to raise funds. On one of the trips he returned with a church bell, which was installed in the belfry of the new building.
Then the honeymoon ended. The Reverend Hummer was not the first—nor the last—clergyman to discover that some of his flock were wolves in disguise. Money grew tight. There was a whispering campaign suggesting that the Reverend was leaning away from the true faith, dabbling in Swedenborgianism.
Amid this ill-will, Reverend Hummer moved to Keokuk, Iowa, where he became associated with a spiritualist group. The Iowa City congregation still owed him $600 but refused to pay. In 1848, in lieu of the money, he decided to take the bell from the belfry. Several members of the congregation discovered the act in process, removed the ladder, and stranded their ex-pastor on the roof. They removed the bell, loaded it on a wagon, and drove off, determined to put the bell where Hummer would never find it. They sank the bell in several feet of water in the Iowa River, where it remained undetected.
Both Hummer and his flock had forgotten all about the bell by the time the Mormons, fleeing Nauvoo, Illinois, headed west. A party of them coming through Iowa City discovered the bell as they crossed the river, loaded it onto a wagon, and took it to Salt Lake City. Brigham Young offered to return the bell to Iowa City, but it eventually disappeared.
Stories like this remind me of why teaching is a much easier occupation than preaching. As I like to tell my preacher friends, my congregation moves every four years, taking their dissatisfactions with them. I stay put.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
