The Chapel Bell of the University of Georgia

The bell hanging in the University of Georgia chapel was cast by George Holbrook of Medway, Massachusetts, a well known New England bell founder. How it arrived in Athens is, according to the university itself, shrouded in mystery. What is clear is that for generations it rang to call students to classes, chapel services, and special events, the audible heartbeat of the oldest state-chartered university in the United States, founded in seventeen eighty-five.

The chapel where it hangs is one of the oldest surviving university buildings in the South. When Georgia wins a major football game, tradition holds that students and fans ring this bell until their arms give out, connecting a nineteenth-century New England foundry to one of college football's most passionate fan bases.