4th of July 2026 Bell-Ringing Ceremony in Historic New Castle, Delaware

LET FREEDOM RING — Join us as we celebrate the 4th of July and the 18th century Delawareans who gathered in New Castle to support the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Children and families of all ages, regardless of age, faith, race or ethnicity, are cordially invited on the 4th of July to attend historic New Castle’s bell-ringing ceremony, which is held annually at Immanuel Church on the Green from 1:30-2:30 pm. This free annual event is part of an ongoing national ceremony.

When the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia is tapped, bells in Philadelphia and across the nation will ring simultaneously at 2:00 PM, officially commemorating the birth of American Independence. Children, representing the original thirteen colonies, will then ring a smaller bell donated to the day’s event by the Old Courthouse Museum.

This year’s Keynote Speaker is Wade Catts, Historic Site/President and Principal, South River Heritage Consulting. His talk will be “Give Them As Much Trouble as You Possibly Can”: The Battle of Cooch’s Bridge (3 September 1777) - The Opening Engagement of The Philadelphia Campaign and the Invasion of the Upper Delmarva Peninsula

The Battle of Cooch’s Bridge was a short but spirited fight between the vanguard of the British army and the American Light Infantry Corps. Catt’s presentation integrates historical, topographical, and archaeological studies into a discussion of the battle and its context, using contemporary British, Hessian, and American accounts to reconstruct the course of the engagement, the landscape the battle was fought over, the battle’s outcome, and historical legacy.

Wade Catts Bio
Catts is a Registered Professional Archaeologist (RPA) with more than 40 years of experience as an historical archaeologist specializing in history, archaeology, and historic preservation. He is a nationally and internationally recognized historian.

He is a Consulting Historian to the Friends of Cooch’s Bridge Historic Site and authored a chapter about the battle of Cooch's Bridge in “Partisans, Guerillas, and Irregulars: Historical Archaeology of Asymmetric Warfare,” published in 2019 (The University of Alabama Press).