Essary Springs Bell

July/23/2009 15:46 Filed in: West Tennessee
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Thursday, July 23, 2009, Tom Childers was tour guide to about 17 people who visited important sites in Chester, Hardeman, and McNairy counties in Tennessee. Officals at Freed-Hardeman gave us a key to the Essary Springs church of Christ with a request to take photographs of the bell, if we could.

One of the elders at the New Hope church of Christ, James Kirk, and his grandson met us at Essary Springs. He brought a ladder. The ceiling entrance to the bell tower was nailed shut and we had to pry it loose to gain entrance to the see the bell. Lyndon Crowley, the slimmest of the group crawled inside the bell tower and was able to take some photos.

The bell was made by The C.S. Bell Co., Hillsboro, Ohio. Here is a link to a Web site which gives the history of the company - http://home.swbell.net/csz_stl/towerbells./HillsboroFoundry.htm.

The question at this point is when was the bell installed? Was it in 1889? or 1895 after Freed left and the school was run by I. N. Rowland and David Nelms? or was it after the school was taken over by Hardeman County in 1913? We could find no cast markings that identified the date of the bell. There appears the numbers 1936 on the outside of the bell near the bottom but this is handwritten and not a part of the casting of the bell. Other markings are 26 and No Yoke.

Freed-Hardeman University has been given the property. At the present a few Christians are still meeting at Essary Springs, but they are making plans to relocate to neighboring congregations.