Walkers could stroll right by the bell and barely notice it was there.
The bell would ring to signify church services or a happy occasion like a wedding at Pisgah Presbyterian Church and Needham Christian Church in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Once the Johnson County Museum of History got the bell, it was rarely noticed, museum director David Pfeiffer said.
Until this summer, when a teenager seeking to become an Eagle Scout restored the bell, giving the artifact new life.
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Cole Bellmore made restoring the bell and designing landscaping around the bell his Eagle Scout project.
He spent five days over the summer, scrubbing the weathered bell, planting flowers around it and putting up a sign so people would know its storied history.
“It was interesting to see the history of the bell,” Bellmore said.
“I just thought it would be helping the community to learn about the bell.”
When Bellmore approached Pfeiffer, offering to help as an Eagle Scout project, Pfeiffer knew what he wanted done, he said.
Restoring the bell had been on a list of projects he hoped to tackle when he had the manpower, Pfeiffer said.
“I knew that we had it, but most people just walked past it, or didn’t know we had it,” he said.
“Now, people know where this bell came from.”
The bell has a rich history that both Pfeiffer and Bellmore wanted people to know.
The bell was at two churches in the Needham area, ringing out in the late 1800s, likely letting people know when church was starting or when other occasions were happening, Pfeiffer said.
In 1957, the church took the bell down and set it out as an artifact on the church grounds. The church shuttered in 1997 and the museum got the bell in 1999. Since then it has sat outside on the museum grounds, Pfeiffer said.
“It is an important part of history we received from a church in Johnson County,” he said.
About 20 people helped Bellmore with his project. They used electric wire brushes to get weathering off of the bell. Bellmore got soil from the new Franklin Kroger construction site, planted hostas around the bell and moved a plaque with the bell’s history outside.
Now, even motorists can look at the bell and appreciate the history, Bellmore said.
“Now that it has a sign on the outside, you can see it passing on the street,” he said.
