1899 – Dudley's Secret Gift of Church Bells

In June 1899 the Boston Globe revealed that Ezra C. Dudley was the anonymous donor of the ten-bell chime installed that March in the belfry of the First Baptist Church at Newton Centre. The church’s trustees had kept the donor’s name a secret until then.

The Globe called Dudley “one of the wealthiest and most prominent residents of Newton Center,” and reported that his gift was made in memory of the late Rev. S. F. Smith — the author of “America” (“My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”) — a lifelong friend whose Newton Centre congregation Dudley had long attended.

Boston Globe, June 9, 1899.

A postscript. The chimes outlived their donor as a piece of Newton Centre’s civic life. On election morning, November 3, 1903 — two years after Dudley’s death — the Globe reported that the day was “ushered in … by the playing of patriotic tunes on the chimes of the First Baptist church,” noting they had been “given to the church a few years ago by Ezra Dudley” in honor of Rev. Dr. Samuel Francis Smith, “who lived at Newton Center for nearly 60 years.” (Boston Globe, November 3, 1903.)