Ringing the Bell: July 4, 2026,Washington No. 7

On April 22, 1833, Dedham selectmen established South Dedham’s first fire company. Their announcement read:

“By virtue of the statute of 1785, 1805, and 1827 – We, the Subscribers have nominated and appointed and do hereby nominate and appoint, the following persons to be Engine-men – Joseph Day, Newell Bullen, John Dean 4th, Robert H. Baker, Horace Aldrich, William Phelan, Lewis Ellis, Curtis G. Morse, James M. Lincoln, Loman Morse, Ebenezer Dean Jr., John E. Hartshorn, Moses Rhoads, John E. Boyden, Benjamin D. Morse, Rufus Fisher, Charles Morse.

“And they are to be attached to Engine No. 7 within the Town of Dedham and to continue in said office during the pleasure of the Selectmen.

“Given under our hands at Dedham this twenty-second ay of April in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and thirty-three.

Jon T. Whitney

John Bullard

Jabez Sumner

Colburn Ellis

Ellis Fuller

Selectmen of Dedham.”

The fire house for No. 7, which became known as Washington No. 7 (later Norwood No. 1), was located near the center of the village, approximately where St. Catherine’s School Hall stands.

As time passed, it became customary for members of Washington No. 7 to ring their fire bell on the Fourth of July each year. For some reason, however, the Selectmen in Dedham decided that the bell could not be rung on July 4 of 1868. Newspaperman Win Everett told the story in his Tales of Tyot series. He titled it “The Liberty Bell of Tyot Shall Not Ring Out Tonight.”

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Samuel Pond, South Dedham’s representative on the Dedham Select Board, was not in attendance at that meeting. Taking advantage of that fact, when July 4 came, a few of the volunteer firefighters asked a distracted Sam Pond whether they could ring the bell. Unaware of the vote, he agreed.

Samuel Howard, who lived at the corner of Howard and Washington Streets, across from Old Parish Cemetery, heard the ringing. An assistant fire engineer in the Washington No. 7 Company, Howard was also a constable. And, more importantly, he had heard about the selectmen’s vote. Howard headed to the station to try to stop the ringing but arrived too late. South Dedham’s bell had rung out loud and clear in defiance of Dedham’s order. It was one more rift in the relationship between village and town. Less than four years later, on February 23, 1872, South Dedham became the independent town of Norwood. And the bell rang joyously once again.

Both Samuel E. Pond, lot 1, and Samuel Howard, lot 40, are interred in Old Parish Cemetery.

Meanwhile, the bell that hung in the Washington No. 7 fire house – and which was loudly rung on July 4, 1868 in defiance of orders from Dedham – and later in Norwood’s first town hall/fire station, hung silent inside the current town hall’s tower among the carillon bells from 1928 until its removal in 2022.

Thanks to Norwood Firefighters and Community Preservation Grant funding, its refurbishment has been completed and the bell has been placed just outside the town hall across from the original fire house location on Washington Street. Today, July 4, 2026, it will ring once again