A piece of the county’s history long hidden away in the Brown County Courthouse tower will soon find a new home in the Brown County Historical Society’s Pioneer Village for all to see.
At the Jan. 6 Brown County Commissioners meeting, it was announced that residents Duane Parsons and Don Waltman were working to build a structure to display the courthouse bell in the village.
The bell was removed from the tower in July 2019 as part of a larger effort to restore the bell tower’s structure. The cedar siding kept falling off during high wind, and pieces that remained showed dry rot.
Dewey Sizemore was hired to take out the bell and re-side the tower with cement board, which should hold up for many decades.
Since being removed, the bell has been in storage.
County commissioner Diana Biddle said that Parsons had taken the bell relocation project up on his own and then brought Waltman on it. “I just thought that was a wonderful idea,” Biddle said about moving it into a public place.
“I just want to thank you Duane for pitching in, seeing a need and coming up with a solution to fill it. That’s the kind of people we need here in Brown County to help us solve problems, people that are proactive and see a need and come up with a solution.”
Parsons said he is handling any metal fabricating that would be needed, with Waltman Construction and Excavating handling the wood work, including building the enclosure that will replicate the courthouse’s bell tower on the ground level.
“It will be enclosed in glass, so people can walk up to it and be able to view it,” Parsons said.
“We’ve kind of collectively decided not to do anything to the bell itself for restoration. We want to leave it just as it came out, so it’ll be kind of like a miniature Brown County Liberty Bell, if you would.”
Parsons said the hope is to make the bell so that visitors can ring it with a rope for a small donation. He said the money raised from it could go to different boards in the county or organizations, like the Brown County Humane Society or the Brown County Children’s Fund.
“It would just be a neat way to get the bell back out in the view of the public, because lot of people, including myself, have never really seen the bell. Nobody had really seen it unless you were up in the tower,” Parsons said.
“Now, you’ll be able to see it and we’ll put some history on who made the bell and when and what for.”
Parsons plans to inspect the bell for a foundry mark that tells who poured it, but if it does not have one, he would work with the Brown County History Center to get the history of it.
The project has not cost the county anything and will be covered by personal donations of money and time, Parsons said.
“We’re (the county) obviously short on money, and any way we can help out, we love to,” he said.
If anyone wishes to donate to the project, they can contact the commissioners by emailing [email protected].
Commissioners President Jerry Pittman said the project was “wonderful.”
“You know, no one had seen that bell for 100 years or more. Quite frankly, I don’t think most people knew there was a bell up there. I didn’t until they got up there to fix the tower and they found it,” he said.
“It’s a wonderful thing to get it out of there where people can actually see it. I like the idea of paying $1 to ring it. I would pay a dollar to ring it.”
