John Wilbank / Joseph Bernhard
The History
John Wilbank was born in Germany in 1788 and immigrated to America sometime before 1801. He settled in the Germantown area of Philadelphia and had a small foundry by 1810. The first know advertisement for bells by Wilbank came in 1813.
Bells cast by Wilbank were not the traditional American profile but rather a German profile with crown or tang tops and the distinctive “German Lip” which is a much sharper curve than the sweeping curve of the American profile. Most of him bells were rather small, anywhere from 100 Lbs. to 600 Lbs.
John Wilbank and his bell foundry are most known for having the contract to remove the cracked Liberty Bell from Independence Hall and recast it in 1828. The old, cracked bell was offered to Wilbank for scrap value ($400), but he declined to remove it, saying “I cannot destroy the bell… your children and my children will someday value it,” secure in his ownership while leaving it in place.
The bell that Wilbank cast, now known as the Wilbank Bell, first rang on July 4, 1828 but the general public was not happy with the tone. Wilbank decided that he would cast another bill and this bell was better perceived. It later moved in 1877 to Germantown Town Hall, then again in 1924 to what is now called the Germantown Town Hall on Germantown Avenue.
John Wilbank died in 1843. There are few bells that have known to survive from the foundry of John Wilbank which makes any existing bells cast by him very rare and valuable.
JOSEPH BERNHARD
The History
There are 2 different stories that exist on what happens to the foundry next. One story is that Joseph Bernhard had been apprenticing under Wilbank and at the time of John’s death he assumed operation of the foundry. The other story is that there was no one to take over operation of the foundry so its contents were auctioned and Joseph Bernhard bought the equipment and set up his own foundry. Either way, by 1845 Bernhard was casting bell in his foundry.
At first the bells looked almost identical to the Wilbank bells but later bells from Bernhard had slightly different tops and bead lines.
Joseph Bernhard is probably best known for the recasting of the Liberty Bell’s sister bell. In 1754 a new bell had been ordered to replace the cracked Liberty Bell. That bell arrived in Philadelphia, but Pass & Stow had already recast the Liberty Bell. It was decided that both the Liberty Bell and her sister bell would hang beside each other at the state house, which they did until 1830 when the city sold it to a local church. 14 years later in 1844 the church burned, and the fragments of the bell were eventually given to Bernhard in 1847 to recast. He recast the bell, and it eventually ended up at Villanova University where it is still kept today.
Joseph Bernhard continued casting bells until at least the late 1860’s. One of his last known bells, and also the largest is a bell of approx. 2,200 Lbs. cast in 1867, which is at Peace Presbyterian Church in Flint, MI.
Like the Wilbank bells cast before, there are not many Bernhard bells that are known to still exist.
