by Wesley Harris
Lincoln Parish built a fine brick courthouse in 1903, replacing a wood frame building that had been moved from Vienna after Ruston became the parish seat. The new courthouse featured an ornate dome topped by a tholos, a circular structure with a domed roof supported by columns reminiscent of Greek architecture. A spire or steeple rose from the tholos. While the courthouse bell may have hung in this structure at one time, photographs show the bell on a wooden pedestal on the courthouse lawn.
I have not ascertained if the bell accompanied the wooden building moved from Vienna or was added to the new courthouse in Ruston sometime after 1903.
By the late 1940s, the Ruston courthouse, while still retaining its stately beauty, was dilapidated and the in need of serious repairs. But parish government had outgrown the structure. Lincoln Parish was developing with newfound vitality after World War II, thanks in part to both north-south and east-west railroads crossing in downtown Ruston and the improvement of U.S. Highway 80, a coast-to-coast highway that brought hordes of vacationers and businessman through Ruston.
The Lincoln Parish Police Jury decided a new courthouse was needed. A flurry of courthouses had been built in Louisiana in the 1890s and early 1900s and after 30 of 40 years, government had outgrown many of them and many parishes began replacing their courthouses in the 1950s. In 1951, the new Lincoln Parish courthouse was dedicated and opened to the public. The courthouse bell was not returned to the premises.
What happened to the bell? No one I have talked to has any idea. There’s no record of its disposal in the police jury minutes, and the bell is not mentioned in the numerous newspaper accounts of the construction and opening of the new courthouse.
Could it have been sold or simply taken away by one of the contractors? After years of research, I learned that the spire on at the top of the old courthouse had been acquired by young man who apparently kept it in his entire life at his home in Choudrant. Not long ago, I wrote a story about the recovery of that spire in a secondhand shop in Farmerville by a friend of the Lincoln Parish Museum. It is now on display at the museum.
After years of inquiries and research, my mission to find the bell has been unsuccessful.
Courthouse and church bells are often revered. When Ruston’s Methodist church bell was moved to a new church location in 1938, a newspaper article said longtime citizens attached “considerable sentiment” to it. It tolled during funeral processions and rang in the new year. Even if a courthouse is demolished, the bell is often placed in a museum or displayed in a place of honor like a park.
If you have any information on what happened to the Lincoln Parish courthouse bell, please contact me at campruston@gmail.com.
