York's Liberty Bell at the Freedom Train Stop
The other evening I was talking to a childhood friend who now lives in California. She said that her son and his family, who have just moved to Pennsylvania, recently visited the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. My friend remembered seeing a Liberty Bell in York when she was a child, while touring the Freedom Train during its stop in York in the late 1940s. She wondered if that bell was the Philadelphia Liberty Bell or a replica.
I did some internet searching and found an extensive web site on both the 1947-48 Freedom Train, which stopped in York October 9, 1948 and the 1975-76 Freedom Train, which only paused for about 45 minutes on the way to Harrisburg. That web site and others revealed that a double-sized Liberty Bell was cast, at the same London foundry that cast the original, especially for the 1976-76 Freedom Train. It now sits in front of Union Station in Washington, DC. The 1947-48 Freedom Train seems to have displayed mainly documents, not artifacts.
So then, what did my friend remember from 1948?
