Ohio dinner bell resurrected as school bell

CANTON, Ohio – When the McKinley Museum curator went looking in the collection for an appropriate school bell for the new schoolhouse in the Street of Shops, she found the perfect bell in size and condition. Hoping to find a Stark County school bell, she did not.

What she found was the dinner bell from the Bucher & Gibbs Plow Company of Canton.

Located at 124 to 140 East Seventh St., the dinner bell served as the forerunner to the noon whistle, announcing to workers that it was time to stop for a dinner or lunch break. The bell is beginning a second career serving as the schoolhouse bell in the Street of Shops at the McKinley Museum, just down the street and around the corner from the Gibbs Manufacturing Office, the descendant of the Bucher & Gibbs Plow Company of 1880.