Growing up in a small town deep in the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia, we didn’t have much at Christmas. The whole town was poor, so we were not alone, but what we did have was a great set of bells at the Methodist Church across the street. On Christmas morning, the bells would ring out all over town. There was something breathtaking and magical about the sound of the bells floating over the crisp winter air. I loved it as a child, and I love it now, but it’s something you don’t hear often any longer.

Once upon a time, bells were a matter of church pride (in a good sense), and most every church had at least one. In fact, bells ordered people’s days, telling them when to get up and when to sleep. The bells were rung to mark deaths, weddings, births and holidays. In the Middle Ages, church bells were thought to ward off sickness and to heal the body. If someone was sick, they would come to a bell service to revive their health. Some bells were tuned to play entire songs, and many cathedrals had massive sets of bells with different tones. It was something of an art. As we learn more about the power of certain frequencies to bring health, this idea no longer seems so farfetched to me. Churches used to consecrate new bells when they were installed. Part of an old bell blessing service I found reads like this:

And as onetime thunder in the air frightened away a throng of enemies, while Samuel slew an unweaned lamb as a sacrifice to the eternal King, so when the peal of this bell resounds in the clouds may a legion of angels stand watch over the assembly of your Church, the first-fruits of the faithful, and afford your ever-abiding protection to them in body and spirit.

Some churches in Brownwood still have their bells. Howard Payne University also has a few, but you don’t hear the bells as often anymore. They’re out of fashion, I suppose. I was interested to see which churches still have bells in town, and when they ring them, but soon realized the project of finding that out would be pretty massive. There are a lot of churches in Brownwood! So I chose one to see if I could find out what happened to it.

The beautiful church building in the photo above, Austin Avenue Presbyterian Church, no longer exists. It was struck by lightning in 1969, and could not be saved; however, some stained-glass windows and the old church bell were salvaged. The Austin Avenue congregation merged with the First Presbyterian Church to become the current Union Presbyterian. According to a history published online by the church, the bell might still be in the possession of First Presbyterian.

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church building, later renamed Austin Avenue, was completed in 1901. If the bell is original to the building, that would make it about 120 years old. I asked at Union Presbyterian if anyone knew what happened to the old bell. No one could recall that information, but member Gene Deason was interested, and was kind enough to look into it. He searched through 3 stories of storage rooms and closets to see if the bell might have been stashed somewhere on church grounds, but to no avail.

“It’s a mystery what happened to the bell,” Deason told me. “A church bell rung at Austin Avenue Presbyterian Church for decades until it merged in 1967 with First Presbyterian on Fisk Street to form Union Presbyterian Church in Brownwood. Media reports from that time state that the bell was moved to the Fisk Street location along with stained-glass windows and furnishings that survived a fire, but information on the bell’s location is not immediately known. The building housing Union Church has no bell. The congregation hopes to be able to find out those details, and perhaps the bell itself, in time for the 150th anniversaries of Austin Avenue Presbyterian (originally Cumberland Presbyterian) in 2025 and First Presbyterian in 2026”. Mr. Deason promises to let us know if he succeeds in finding the lost bell.

There is something joyful but also sobering, almost austere, in the deep sounds of church bells ringing. The sound seems to call up something equally deep in the human spirit, something that reaches across time and cultures to fill us with a sense of what is holy and blessed in life. The Austin Avenue bell, like the old rhythms of the bell ordered ways of living, seems to have disappeared. Maybe one day all the old bells that are gone will be found, and we’ll hear again the bells ring out on Christmas Day.

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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com