Before Northwestern and the University of Illinois had the Land of Lincoln Trophy, they fought for the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk.  Before that, the teams played for the Sweet Sioux Statue.  And before that?  NU and Illinois initially played for an old firehouse bell, donated to the teams in 1941.  The fate of Sweet Sioux is well known.  However, as this site has described before (see the trophy history page), the eventual fate of the Fire Bell trophy is a complete mystery.

That mystery might have become a little less impenetrable.

The Bell's debut in 1941 was well-covered by the press: the Tribune and other Chicago papers, as well as the Daily Northwestern, Daily Illini and even the Associated Press all mentioned the new trophy, noting that it would take its place alongside the Little Brown Jug in the Big Ten's trophy case.  When Northwestern won the first Bell game in 1941, that too was covered thoroughly, with several mentions of the Bell trophy.

Although the Bell was not mentioned during the build-up to Illinois and Northwestern's 1942 game (which the Illini won), several newspapers do describe the Bell's handoff from NU to Illinois at the Big Ten luncheon at the end of the season.

That December 1942 event is the last time that the Bell is ever mentioned in any newspaper.  Northwestern and the University of Illinois currently have no known record of the bell after that moment.  Not only does it seem that the Bell ceased to exist after December 1942, it seems as if it had never existed.  When the Sweet Sioux trophy began in the fall of 1945, both schools acted as if it were the first time they ever fought in football for a trophy, which is bizarre: the seniors in fall 1945 would have been freshmen in fall 1942 and would surely have known about the Bell.

Because the Bell was in the hands of the Illini when it vanished, it made sense to focus further research on Illinois and its archives and newspaper articles.  The Daily Illini, the university's student newspaper, contains information that seems to add weight to the assumption that the schools only used the trophy in 1941 and 1942, and that it was terminated in early 1943. 

In October 1943, before the Illini played Purdue (or Northwestern), the Daily Illini described the upcoming debut of the Purdue Cannon, the newest Illinois trophy.  The article mentions all of the other Big Ten trophies, but give no mention whatsoever of the Bell.  It is reasonable to assume that if the Bell were still in use in October 1943, the Daily Illini would have mentioned it in this article.

So, it is increasingly clear that the Bell dropped away at some point between late December 1942 and October 1943, and was nearly certainly not used for the 1943 NU - Illinois game.  The big question, however, remains: what happened?

On the HTP Trophy History page, I speculated that the trophy was possibly sacrificed in a scrap metal drive.  This seems a reasonable assumption: between late 1942 and late 1943 college campuses across the country were conducting massive scrap drives for the war effort.  Americans eyed any shred of metal that was not essential, looking for war material.  This was the fate of at least one university bell: Western Michigan's Victory Bell, rung during home football games, was donated to a metal drive in October 1942.  A bell like the NU - Illinois bell, made in the 1840s, would have been made with bell metal-- a bronze with a high copper content-- which would have been desirable.

It now appears likely that this was, indeed, the fate of the Fire Bell trophy.  Again, there is absolutely no mention in any source of the Bell trophy after December 1942.  However, the Daily Illini does mention other trophies at the school, and they wind up on the war's scrap heap.

On October 7, 1942, the newspaper reported that the Illinois salvage section of the War Production board recommended that the university's fraternities should donate all of their intramural trophies to the war effort.  The board's representative stated, "Every trophy... no matter how small, would be of great value... Our supply of tin is practically exhausted.  Those cups standing on fraternity trophy shelves contain a great deal of tin..."

And in February 1943, the university, in conjunction with the rest of Champaign-Urbana, conducted a massive metal drive and parade, hauling in old cars, other remaining trophies, and any piece of metal that was not necessary.  Although we may never know for sure what happened to the original Northwestern - Illinois trophy, it is now very likely-- given the atmosphere on the Illinois campus at the time and the fact that sports trophies had actually been targeted-- that the Bell was placed into the February 1943 scrap heap.