November 6, 2007

The Story of a Bell

There's an old church bell that sits affixed to the top of a low brick platform behind Fourth Avenue Church of Christ in Franklin, Tennessee. The church building has been there at the corner of Fourth and Main since 1928, but the bell's history goes back to before the Civil War. And yet there's no plaque that tells the history of the bell and why it has been preserved. The church's website does provide a brief history of both the congregation and the bell.

It seems the bell was part of the first church building built at the corner of Fourth and Indigo streets - Indigo being the former name of what is now called "Main Street." Construction of the building began 1851, and the first worship service was held there September 5, 1852. According to a letter from one present that day, the building was a "brick structure about 40 by 60 feet-elegantly furnished." It had a bell tower with a bell that which was rung regularly.

The building survived the Civil War and the 1864 Battle of Franklin. It was remodeled around 1885 and again in 1914 - beautiful stained glass windows were added A tornado destroyed the building in 1927. The church rebuilt - the building built in 1928 is the one that stands there today. While some of the beautiful stained-glass windows from first building were preserved and incorporated in the present structure, the bell was not.

Some time later, though, church members missed the old bell and searched for it, finding it mounted on a pole on a farm fourteen miles away. The farmer who had bought the old bell gave it back to the church.

That's the history of the bell.

And this is too: For years, a Franklin resident and merchant named O.T. Craig rang that bell every Sunday to call members of the church to services, even during the Civil War when church attendance had dwindled to a very few.

And here is where the story gets interesting. O.T. Craig died in February 1899. An obituary/editorial published in the religious paper the Gospel Advocate - written by David Lipscomb, the namesake and co-founder of David Lipscomb University (and an outspoken pacifist before, during and after the Civil War) - tells this story about O.T. Craig and that bell:

During all the excitement of the war, when all the other churches ceased to meet, he never failed to call the little band together for worship. One Sunday morning, early, there was a battle in the streets and upon the Public Square of Franklin, between some of the cavalry of the two armies. The town was in a fever of excitement. A man of the world, telling me of it, said every one was wild with excitement until "your Brother Craig rang that bell for church."

He said, "It sobered the town." The man said, "I believe he would ring that bell when the time came, if both armies were carrying on a fierce cannonade in the streets of Franklin. He is determined to die close by that church."

That's the mystery of the bell.

April 10, 1863, was a Friday. But November 30, 1864, was a Wednesday. And the 1864 Battle of Franklin was one of the few nighttime battles of the entire war. It began at 5 p.m., and continued for about five hours, and has been called the bloodiest hours of the war. (More men of the Confederate Army of Tennessee were killed in five hours at Franklin than in two days at the Battle of Shiloh. For a good history of the 1864 Battle of Franklin, I recommend James Lee McDonough's book Five Tragic Hours - though, actually, nothing compares to getting a guided tour of the battlefield from McDonough because you took his Civil War history class in college like I did back in 1984, not knowing that 23 years later I'd be living in a house built on ground where some of the Confederate troops encamped before launching their suicidally futile attack on the federal position in Franklin.)

When I heard the story of O.T. Craig and the church bell, I thought that he rang the church bell to call people to services during the Battle of Franklin, considered one of the most horrific slaughters of the war.

But the Battle of Franklin was not fought on a Sunday.

Did the obit writer get the story right but the day wrong? Did O.T. Craig ring the bell to call people to Wednesday night services? Or was there some other skirmish between Confederate and Federal cavalry in downtown Franklin on some long-forgotten Sunday during the war?

I wish I knew. After all, O.T. Craig was my mother's father's grandfather - and my great-great grandfather.