In less than an hour, a piece of Brown County history was lowered from its perch high above Nashville where it has hung for possibly over 100 years.
A crane operated by Zach Wray removed the bell from the Brown County Courthouse the morning of July 13. County employee Ric Fox and contracted worker David Mason Jr. worked from the belltower to remove the heavy bell from its saddle and secure it to a hook. Then, it slowly sunk to the walkway before it was loaded into a pickup truck and put in safekeeping.
“For everybody that says we should have left it there, it wouldn’t have stayed there very long,” said county commissioner Diana Biddle at last week’s commissioners meeting.
Removing the bell was part of a larger effort to restore the belltower’s structure. The cedar siding kept falling off during high wind, and pieces that remained showed dry rot, Biddle said. Dewey Sizemore was hired as the contractor to take out the bell and re-side the tower with cement board, which should hold up for many decades.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]“There were several gaping holes where stuff was missing … and it was starting to get water down in the courthouse,” Fox said from the courthouse lawn, waiting to go up and retrieve the bell.
As far as she can tell from the photos she’s studied, the courthouse belltower did not contain a steeple, Biddle said.
“The oldest picture I can find predates asphalt on the roads in front of courthouse. It was flat,” she said about the top of the tower.
“A lot of people kept asking me, ‘You must have already started on it because you took the top off.’ It never had a top,” Fox said. “But so many people, I guess they liken it to another belltower somewhere.”
County officials have made no decisions about what will happen to the bell next. Biddle said they’re waiting to hear back from Indiana Landmarks with a recommendation. That agency is weighing in because the courthouse, built in 1874, is on the National Register of Historic Places. She said she plans to get someone down here to evaluate the bell and see if they find any markings that would tell how old it is or where it was made.
She’s not sure yet if it’s the “original” bell, or if it might have been in the courthouse previous to this one that burned down.
“When it was a small village, (the bell) was there for town meetings and fire. … It didn’t ring on the hour like a lot of people think,” Fox said.
Ideas for what to do with it include putting it on the courthouse lawn so that people can see it or maybe even ring it, or putting it in the Brown County History Center where it might be safer.
“Truth be known, I wanted to put it on remote control so I could carry the remote with me and tell everyone the courthouse was haunted,” Fox said with a smile.
