First Methodist Church Bell

The bell outlasted the college's owners. Henry L. Graves and his partners sold the property to Alice M. Adams in December 1869 for $1,500 and the assumption of $5,000 in debt. Afterward the Fairfield Masons named a committee each year to see that children of deceased Master Masons were schooled. The Handbook of Texas says the college closed in 1889, and the plaque says the buildings came down in 1909, when the bell went to the Methodist church. The bell's English casting and ox-wagon haul from Galveston come from the plaque alone.

What the plaque says

First Methodist Church Bell Soon after Fairfield Female College opened here in 1858, plans were made to have a bell cast. The students gave some of their money and jewelry to give "tone" to the bell and the citizens added several hundred dollars in silver. The bell was made in England, then shipped to Galveston and hauled here by ox-wagon. Because of its great weight, college officials had the bell placed in a special frame on the front porch. When the college buildings were torn down in 1909, the bell was given to the Methodist Church, where it is still in use today. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 18 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 24 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Old Fort Parker — 25 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.

More markers nearby

• Site of Law Office, General John Gregg — steps away
• Freestone County — steps away
• Val Verde Battery, C.S.A. — steps away
• Butler Church Bell — steps away