This is the doorbell that has been attached above our front door since we bought this house in 1993. I have been curious about it and remember showing it to Harold Parker one time. He talked about coming back to take a closer look to see if we could get it working again. But we never got around to it, and Harold is now gone. The connections between the bell and the mechanical ringer were gone but by pushing and pulling the metal tab on the bottom (from a ladder) it rang loudly. Even under a few layers of paint the ghost circle of the ringer is visible on the door frame outside, and an actual hole that must have once held a pulley to guide a pull chain of some sort is on the inside doorframe.
Yesterday I took it down, took it apart and cleaned it. I tried to find a match to it on the net. The closest I could find for this type of mechanical bell was from 1865. Our house was built in 1869, so perhaps the bell is original to the days of Daniel Mitchell.
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