Historic Methodist Bell Peals Again
A childhood memory and more than a passing interest in a church choir director combined to lay the groundwork for restoration of a bell that will toll in a church belfry for a forthcoming Bennettsville wedding.
It all began when a young Columbia banker and Bennettsville native returned home for a visit and noticed an attractive young organist when he went to the First United Methodist Church one Sunday.
Dates ensued, and while Mark Trimmier waited for Sylvia Huff to finish choir practices, he recalled the fine old brass bell that hung in the belfry and last pealed at the end of World War II.
A tinkerer's skill came to the forefront, and Mark began a one-man project to restore a 134-year-old church bell to use on the scene of religious life in Bennettsville.
A lot of work went into the project. The bell tower was cleaned. Pigeons were scooted away. A long rope was threaded from the large bell mounted on a frame held together with wooden pegs 75 feet down to the vestibule entrance to the Methodist Church.
Trimmier's project has been largely completed. The beautiful old bell that was created in the foundry of O'Malley in West Troy, New York in 1852 now sounds a melodious peal from the steeple high atop the church in east Bennettsville.
When Mark and Sylvia are married June 14, plans call for sounding the fine old bell after the ceremony.
The First Methodist Church in Bennettsville was a humble, unpainted structure that was built around 1835. The early frame sanctuary had no steeple, and it had to be a proud day when O'Malley's bell arrived from New York and was hung on a frame platform outside of the church.
By the turn of the century, plans were underway for a more spacious church building to replace the plain, rectangular building. In time the present sanctuary of Gothic design came into being, and the old bell, which now earned a niche in the church's history, hung in the church steeple.
About three feet high and four feet in diameter, the bell is mounted on a pegged platform with a four foot wooden wheel powdered [sic] by tugging on a rope.
Trimmier, the son of Dr. and Mrs. Hal Trimmier, said he had been told by some of the church's senior members that construction of the steeple began in 1899 and was completed in 1903.
Mark noted that he first took an interest in the bell when he was about 12 and climbed into the steeple with other boys.
A graduate of Marlboro Academy and Wofford College, the young Bennettsville native works for C&S National Bank in Columbia, where he and Sylvia will make their home after the June wedding.