MUNCIE — Last month, the Star Press reported that Delaware County’s commissioners voted unanimously to move the old courthouse bell from the plaza at Washington Square Residences (the old jail) to near the downtown county building’s front entrance.
I commend the commissioners for taking this step and thank them for facilitating the bell’s move. The decision reflects thoughtful stewardship of a symbol that belongs to all generations, not just ours.
The 1,000-pound bronze “county bell” dates to 1848. It was forged by George Coffin at his Buckeye Bell foundry in Cincinnati. Coffin specialized in making ornate small and medium-sized bells for churches, municipal buildings and steamships.
For more than half of its life, the county bell served practical purposes in the belfries of our second and third courthouses. The bell tolled the hour, called court into session, clattered in celebration, summoned Munsonians to gather and sounded alarm in times of danger.
The first Delaware County courthouse, built in 1827, didn’t have a bell. It was a two-story, wood-framed structure that sat west of today’s county building across High Street. In 1837, commissioners erected the second courthouse, the first on the public square bounded by Washington, Walnut, Main and High streets.
For a decade, the new courthouse had a cupola but no bell. However, one was installed in spring of 1847. Munsonian diarist Frederick Putnam noted it on May 2: “Cold, clear and pleasant today. Hung Court House bell, very little doing.”
Apparently, this bell was too small. Its toll failed to reach even the edge of town. Within months, commissioners contracted with Coffin’s Buckeye foundry to forge a new one. The old bell was removed from the cupola and installed at the Delaware County Seminary school, a few blocks west on Jackson Street (where Gillespie Towers is today).
In spring of 1848, when Coffin finished the bell, there was no easy way to ship it to Muncie. There were no trucks, paved roads or railways that tied our village to the wider world. The rivers between Cincy and Muncie were not navigable, let alone connected. The late 1830s promise of a canal to Muncietown never materialized. East Central Indiana was effectively an isolated backwater, linked only by wood-planked corduroy and muddy dirt roads.
Before railroads and gravel turnpikes, almost all products entering or leaving Muncie traveled overland in wagons drawn by oxen or horses. In the 1830s and ’40s, four Munsonian teamsters regularly hauled freight in and out of town: Jo Davis, Jacob Ampriester, Increase Sears and Simon Conn.
The teamsters usually loaded and unloaded their wagons on Main Street in front of the courthouse. They hauled out Delaware County whiskey, furs and grain to Cincinnati or Fort Wayne, returning with groceries, iron ore, medicine, paint, hardware, salt and molasses — anything the county itself couldn’t produce. A round trip to Cincinnati took at least a week, often longer. It all depended on weather and road conditions.
Simon Conn was the best known teamster in the 1840s. He was hired often by Jacob Wysor, John Jack and James Russey to haul grain from their North Walnut Street mill to markets south along the Ohio River.
When Conn returned with a load of goods to Muncie, his arrival was heralded by bells hung from his wagon. Hearing the clanging racket for miles, Munsonians gathered at the courthouse square to see what he brought back. Around Christmas, Simon Conn was the most popular man in town.
Conn ran a team of six jet-black horses. On his journeys south, he took the Richmond Road, a mostly packed dirt thoroughfare, interspersed with stretches of wood planks. Built by the state in the early 1830s, the road followed an ancient Native American trace that ran from Whitewater River to the Wabash, effectively connecting Richmond to Delphi via Muncietown. The same corridor exists today south of Muncie as U.S. 35.
In spring of 1848, Simon Conn was hired by commissioners to pick up the new courthouse bell in Cincinnati. When he returned, hundreds of Munsonians and Center Township farmers gathered on the square to welcome Conn and his cargo.
The new bell was installed in the courthouse cupola on June 29, 1848. Putnam, in his usual dryness, noted the day as: “Warm and cloudy, raised new bell, fine tone.” Munsonians at the time believed it was the largest bell west of the Allegheny Mountains.
In 1912, an old-timer named Nathan Spence remembered that “the bell was a thing of pride to the citizens of Munseytown … (it) was used to bring people together for public meetings and served as a necessary warning in times of fire.” There wasn’t clockwork in the second courthouse, so the bell was rung by hand. The sheriff, who lived in a house on the square, rang it morning, noon and night.
The bell also tolled to call court into session and to signal major events. In 1933, 91-year-old James Streeter told the Muncie Star that steady “ringing of the bell meant that something unusual had transpired,” causing Munsonians to flock to the square.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the bell’s toll mustered volunteers for the Union army. When Robert E. Lee surrendered in April of 1865, the bell rang for over an hour, signalling an end to the war. Streeter remembered that hundreds of Munsonians packed the square with “loads of beer and whiskey … drunk in celebration of the conflict’s ending.”
When the third courthouse was built in 1886, commissioners paid the E. Howard Watch and Clock Company of Boston $1,500 to install the belfry clockworks. The 1848 bell wasn’t that old and sounded fine, so commissioners reused it.
For several decades, the third courthouse clock had to be wound by hand using a large crank. In the early 20th century, this was done by Charles Scott, head usher at Wysor Opera House and later at the Wysor Grand. Every week, he climbed 78 stairs to the tower. It took him 30 minutes to wind it.
In the 1920s, electric motors were added, but the clock stopped during the Great Depression and the bell fell silent. The county didn’t have money to fix it. Commissioners got it working again during the Second World War.
When the third courthouse was demolished in 1966, the bell was saved and placed on display at Stradling Farm, six miles north of Muncie.
The county bell returned downtown in 1992. Commissioners installed it at the plaza of the then-new jail, today’s Washington Square Residences.
I’m really happy to see the bell returned to our public square. One day, maybe, far in the future, a better generation than ours will build a new courthouse downtown on the public square, topped with a tower. Perhaps our descendants will even raise the old bell into a new belfry, where it will once again roll for the good residents of Delaware County.
Chris Flook is a Delaware County Historical Society historian and senior lecturer of media at Ball State University.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: ByGone Muncie: For whom the Delaware County bell tolls?
Reporting by Chris Flook, Muncie Star Press / Lafayette Journal & Courier
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