Church Bell - Bessie Baptist Mission - Bessie, OK - Bells on Waymarking.com

This bell and yoke are mounted on a metal frame about 6 ft. high. The bell is from the C.S. Bell Company in Hillsboro, Ohio, and is a No. 20. A chain is attached to the bell so it appears it is rung on Sunday mornings.

The American Bell Association's website has an interesting article on the C.S. Bell Co. and I quote:"They were the largest producer of big bells in North America. During the peak bell production decade of the 1880’s they turned out as many as 20,000 bells each year. In 1858, Charles Singleton Bell, a Scotsman, started his firm and made Mogul stoves, caboose stoves, coffee hullers and pulpers, grinders, corn and cob crushers, burr and hammer type feed mills, sorghum and maple syrup evaporators, plows and garden rollers, cane mills and counter-mounted meat grinders. The story goes that one day, Mr. Bell dropped a piece of steel and it struck something on the way to the floor making a ringing sound. He then decided to try making cast bells of steel instead of the traditional cast iron. In truth, there is little difference in the sound of the two materials. He sold about 1,000 bells his first year, and soon concentrated on the casting of bells.

"The firm was run by three generations of the Bell family, the last being Virginia Bell Thompson who ran the firm for 34 years. A year after her death, it was sold out of the family in 1974 and the new buyers ceased casting all bell sizes above dinner bells (also called farm bells). The firm was still making bells until after 1984. Sometime after that they sold the bell molds to a California company. The Hillsboro firm is still in business, but making furnaces and other items, not bells."

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