Hear Them Ring

Hear Them Ring

The central tower of bell manufacturer Schulmerich Carillons looks across Sellersville’s rooftops to the spires of St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, where a hand bell choir has been using Schulmerich bells since forming more than 20 years ago.

Schulmerich Carillons Inc. dominates the Bethlehem Pike entrance to Sellersville, Pa., (pop. 4,700) and the company’s headquarters crowns the knoll known as Carillon Hill. One of the community’s major employers, the maker of hand bells, bell towers, and sound systems is a part of the history of this northern Bucks County town, founded in 1738.

“Schulmerich has made Sellersville ‘The Bell Capital of the World,’” says Timothy Hufnagle, a local historian and former curator of the Sellersville Museum, located in a former schoolhouse.

The pike—the route of the Liberty Bell when it was moved to keep it from British hands—becomes Main Street before it crosses the railroad tracks and rises toward St. Michael’s. The town was called Sellers Tavern after Samuel Sellers, who served as postmaster, county sheriff, and assemblyman in the late 1700s. It became Sellersville with the arrival of the railroad in the 1860s. Today, the restored Washington House—a Victorian-era restaurant—graces the downtown, along with a dinner theater, antique stores, and various small businesses. “It’s still a place where everyone knows everyone,” Hufnagle says. “Many Pennsylvania German family names have been a part of this community for generations.”

Surrounded by wooded hills and cultivated fields, Sellersville grew around two gristmills, says Hufnagle, whose grandfather was fire chief and mayor for most of his life. The railroad brought tobacco and a cigar industry in the late 1800s. “There were two or three major cigar manufacturers here,” he says, and local families rolled cigars in their homes as a cottage industry. The town flourished as people came to work in the factories and, later, in a machinery plant, which became the area’s largest employer in 1904.

Today, like bookends at either end of town, the carillon tower and St. Michael’s are the two most imposing structures—though the bell company is a relative newcomer, joining the community when founder George Schulmerich (1906-1978) moved his business from Philadelphia in 1950.

From the company’s inception in 1935, Schulmerich developed sound systems for churches. His carillons and towers have graced such places as Boys Town, Neb., and the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. A set of Schulmerich hand bells is now part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Institution.

Over at St. Michael’s, the six-member hand bell choir, which calls itself Bells on the Hill, delights in playing its Schulmerich bells, choir director Carol Nace says.

“There’s something special about a bell group; they have a special chemistry,” Nace says. Two members have been with the choir since its inception, and one third-generation bell ringer still participates when her work schedule permits. “It’s been a family kind of thing,” Nace adds.

As befits a town that calls itself The Bell Capital of the World, Sellersville has a second hand bell choir. A Touch of Bronze—a group composed of Schulmerich employees—provides concerts for community organizations and nursing homes, and carillonneur R. Bruce Todd entertains at free summer concerts. Townspeople relax on blankets and lawn chairs, watching through a large window at the bell tower’s base as melodic chimes emanate from cast bells connected to Todd’s keyboard by a series of rods.

“We like to be good neighbors,” says Scott Edgell, a Schulmerich employee since 1995. “We’re very much like a small family.”

Since the days when Sellersville was a stopping point for stagecoaches, trolleys, and trains traveling between Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley, it’s seen many changes—some of them rung in by Schulmerich bells—but some things haven’t altered.

“We’ll probably never have more than 4,800 people because we set aside our open space long before that kind of thing became popular,” Hufnagle says.

“Sellerville is a place where business people used to be up at 5 o’clock to sweep the sidewalks, and by 7 p.m. the doors closed,” Hufnagle adds. “That’s changed, but it still has that small-town feel.”

Susan Stets writes from her home in Fairless Hills, Pa.

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