Mission’s Wooden Bells Toll a Strange Tale

Msgr. Patrick J. O’Brien halted the procession celebrating the start of the Feast Our Lady of Guadalupe on Thursday evening to bless two new wooden bells presented to the San Buenaventura Mission by local woodcarvers.

The mission, founded in 1782, once had three wooden bells hanging in its belfry. Strangely, they had no clappers and sounded only when hit by a stick.

As legend has it, one of the bells fell from the belfry near the turn of the century. The other two were removed about 1904 and remain in the mission’s museum, worm-eaten and rotten. A sign above them reads: “Wooden Bell. San Buenaventura Mission. The only Mission to have wooden bells.”

Local author and historian Richard Senate sniffed a mystery in the bells. He set out to determine who made the bells, when they were carved, and why they were wood--and never rang. He never answered those questions.

But he confirmed that the bells never had clappers, because there is no place for clappers to be attached inside the bells.

“But that doesn’t mean the Native Americans didn’t hit them; that’s part of the mystery of the bells, we just don’t know,” Senate said.

Senate also turned up a newspaper clipping that reported that Teddy Roosevelt climbed the bell tower and rang the bells in 1903.

And Senate found someone who could make modern-day replicas of the originals: the Channel Island Woodcarvers.

After taking careful measurements and drawings from the disintegrating originals, the carvers worked the last two years fashioning exact replicas. They donated their labor, and the Knights of Columbus 2498 of Ventura raised $400 to purchase the same Honduras mahogany used to make the original bells.

The wooden bells have spawned much speculation. Historians Max R. Kurillo and E.M. Tuttle wrote a whole book on: “The Wooden Bells That Never Rang.”

Msgr. O’Brien appreciates the gift, but sees less of a mystery in the bells’ history. Although wooden bells do not peal, O’Brien believes the mission may have used the bells in a very functional way.

“It is difficult to understand how quiet the world was before our century,” O’Brien said in his Irish cadence. “People could hear the clapping--people lived more closely than we do. In spite of the fables about them, they may have been quite useful in those days.”

O’Brien says the gift is wonderful because the craft of woodcarving has been almost lost, and the bells will help people today to appreciate more fully what those who have gone before us have done.

After being blessed, they will hang temporarily in the window of the mission gift shop on Main Street. When the mission’s new building is completed, the bells will hang prominently within.

“They are bells that have had a lot written about them,” O’Brien said, laughing. “But they don’t make much noise themselves.”