Stolen, forgotten and misidentified as the bell of the 1840s Nauvoo Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hummer’s Bell has returned, 177 years later, to its rightful home at the First Presbyterian Church of Iowa City.
A dedication was held in Iowa City on October 5, 2025, to mark the return of the 33-inch wide, 800-pound Hummer Bell.
“Every time this bell rings, we think not only of the people who heard it in Iowa City, but the people who heard it for decades in Salt Lake City, and say, ‘This bell unites us,’” First Presbyterian Church Pastor Nathan Willard said during the dedicatory sermon. “This bell is a sign that the thing God wants most of all for all of us is that we may be one in God’s name, that Jesus Christ calls us to unity and not to division, that Jesus calls us to remember the poor and the hungry, the widow and the orphan, the powerful as well as the powerless and say they are all one in Jesus Christ.”…