Old South Rings Out for Marathon Winners by Ken Campbell The bell of the 329-year-old Old South Church rings at the Boston Marathon finish line for the winners of the Patriots Day race.

BOSTON, Mass. April 20 --The church of the Boston Tea Party and Patriots Day rider William Dawes rang its bell today, 200 feet above the Boylston Street finish line, to salute the winners of the Boston Marathon in their Patriots Day race.

In a new tradition, the bell of the historic Old South Church was rung on four occasions, for the winners of the men's and women's wheelchair race and for the men and women runners, as they crossed the finish line.

The Old South Church is located about 100 feet beyond the finish line of the Marathon on Boylston Street in Copley Square. The bell was rung by the regular Sunday bell ringer, David Vogan.

Patriots Day celebrates the first battle, at Lexington and Concord, of the War for Independence 223 years ago and also celebrates the midnight rides of Paul Revere and Old South Church member William Dawes, who rode from Boston to Lexington on the 18th of April in 1775 to warn that "the British are coming!"

Old South Church was founded 329 years ago as the Third Church in Boston. It built its first church building in 1669 at the corner of Washington and Milk Streets. Among the founders of the Congregational church was William Dawes, a mason who was an ancestor of the 1775 rider.

In 1730, the congregation erected on the same site its second building, known as the Old South Meeting House, now an historic site and museum. It was from the Old South Meeting House that, in 1773, brewer and patriot Sam Adams (and later a member of the church) led a rally of rebellious colonists down to the docks and started the Boston Tea Party, dumping highly taxed tea into the harbor.

In 1875, the Old South congregation moved and built a new church in the Back Bay at the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth Streets. The church, designed by Charles Cum-mings and Willard Sears, is distinguished by its tall, 220-foot bell tower -- whose bell rang out this Patriots Day! +