There is quite an interesting story behind the Historic DeWitt Bell that rings every Sunday from our church. The bell dates back to the 1860’s. It was originally purchased by five residents of DeWitt. The bell hung in what was then the courthouse, a sturdy brick structure that stood on the southeast corner of 5th Avenue and 11th Street.

When the county seat was moved to Clinton, to the great indignation of all DeWitt citizens, certain people in Clinton let it be known they intended to move the bell to the new courthouse in Clinton. Ten DeWitt men were determined that this should not happen. Two of these ten men went in to the belfry and released all bolts, tied rags about the clapper, then returned home to await midnight on Sunday. By the light of the moon, these 10 men removed the bell from the DeWitt courthouse. They took the bell to the local cemetery and buried it in a grave from which an unknown body had been removed. The idea was that the fresh dirt would not arouse suspicion. All of the men took a pledge of secrecy and promised each other the bell should stay there until the town had need for it.

The bell laid in the grave for many years while the secret was kept. When a new Baptist church was built, (the church Grace Lutheran purchased in 1928), these same ten men made another midnight trip to the cemetery and hung the bell in the new church. On Sunday morning, when the bell rang, people recognized it as the long, lost bell.

Many questions were asked. No one knew the answers except the ten men who were sworn to secrecy. Conjecture and rumor were heard for many years and the true story, along with the names of those who took part in the midnight raid on the old courthouse, was never told until 1926. When the new Grace Lutheran Church was built in 1950, the headlines in the local newspaper read, “the famous court house bell of Clinton County has come to rest at last in the belfry of the new stone Grace Lutheran Church.”