The Old Dinner Bell

By David Ball

Folks around the village of Moatsville didn’t use big words like “Campanology” (the art of bell ringing) nor did they worry about what it meant, but they were very familiar with the language of bells.  “Come and get it” meant it was time to eat and those were refreshing words transmitted by the ring of the old dinner bell on many of the hilly farms in Barbour County.  Since the bell was an early means of mass communication that began many centuries ago, it was an important asset of our ancestors in rural America.         

Like many other families in the mountains of Virginia (now West Virginia) our roots go back to the very early days of America before it was an independent nation.  Many of the daring frontier people looking for a new and better life were immigrants from Ireland and Scotland and England and Germany and other countries that somehow found themselves advancing into the Appalachian Mountains and establishing new roots.  Life was not easy in their quest to start anew with few worldly possessions and powered only by hard work and their dreams of freedom and success in America.  As they settled and created homesteads, one of their first priorities was the purchase of a dinner bell.  It was a symbol of establishment and it had many important uses on the farm.  The bell also had a sense of status much like the size of family monuments in old cemeteries but more importantly it was a safety alarm as well as a way to signal the workers in the field that it was meal time.         

Many of the early immigrants seeking refuge in America arrived in the ports of Philadelphia and Baltimore.   One of them was my Great-Great Grandfather, John Annon who was born in 1768 in Ireland and migrated to America.  Whether by destiny or other reasons, he eventually traveled into the rugged mountains of Western Virginia.  He and Grandma Isabel settled in Brandonville, located in Preston County, where they raised their family.  Sometime before Barbour County was established in 1843, he and grandma and at least two of their sons moved to an area near the Tygart Valley River that became known as Moatsville.  There he established a farm and homestead of which the ownership has remained with his family descendants since its beginning all those years ago.  My great grandfather raised his family on the same farm and my grandfather also raised his family there.  My mother was born there and so were four of her children including me.

When my siblings and I grew up on the farm, we were accustomed to hearing the ring of the old dinner bell but we never considered it anything special.  To us it just meant it was time to eat but we also knew the function of the bell had other purposes.  Some of America’s most rural and isolated areas are in the Appalachian Mountains so before telephones and electricity were available, some means of getting a quick message to other people could be a life-or-death situation.  

Bells filled that need very well in the rural communities of Barbour County.  A coal mine mishap, a logging accident, a lost child, fire or other imminent dangers to the community required a quick response and the bell was the only tool available to signal neighbors in case of an emergency. 

Long before the telegraph and Morse Code, there was a bell code for the number of rings and everyone in the community knew what it meant.  There were little country churches within a few square miles of our home and the bells not only rang for church services but they also served the same purpose as the dinner bell for signaling help when there was an emergency.  It also rang to identify the birth of a child or death of a neighbor and certainly at a wedding.  Determining the location of where a bell was ringing was not difficult since the area was rural and the homesteads and churches were separated a great distance apart.  I remember hearing church bells tolling when a funeral was taking place and it rang one time for each year of the person’s life.  The tolling began as the deceased was being taken into the church for a final service.  This was to honor and show respect for the life of that person and regardless of where you were or what you were doing when you heard the bell toll, you paused and listened for it was a reverent moment.       

While it could not be determined exactly which Grandpa purchased the family bell, it is factually known that it served the same Annon farm that was passed down by each of them.  In addition to his farm chores, Grandpa Henry had a working blacksmith shop where he shod horses, made wagon wheels, mining tools, fixed broken parts and performed all the other services of a village smith.  My mother said it was an honor for her to ring the bell when she was a little girl because it made her feel important.  That old dinner bell has been a silent witness of a changing history for a very long time.  It was in use before tractors, electricity, cars, airplanes, penicillin and cell phones but it served its purpose well for my grandfathers as well as the other generations that grew up on the rocky hilltop farm.  

By 1961 my eight siblings and I had left the farm and began our own journey into the frontier of our careers.  The old bell fell silent and chimed no more.  After my mother, May Ball, passed away in 2000 at the age of ninety-three and the home place was quietly yielding to decay, my brother, George, retrieved the bell so it would remain in the family instead of finding its way to an antique shop.  It was placed in his workshop for safekeeping and like many other keepsakes, it eventually became covered with paper and boxes and scraps of “this and that” for several years.  After his passing at nearly ninety-four, his son, Rodney, salvaged the old bell and gifted me with it for posterity.  On June 27, 2023, he brought it back to Barbour County and mounted it on a locust pole and we recommissioned it once again to stand as an emblem of the past and a symbol of establishment for the future.

Although it has been relocated a few miles away at the author’s home on Laurel Mountain, the old home place is still within view where the Annon family dinner bell was once perched high on top of a pole and its sound echoed in the hills and vales of Barbour County.  Although it now rings only for special occasions like family reunions and anniversaries and birthdays, there is still something magical about its sound that has not changed in nearly two centuries.  It is truly a piece of Americana that served many generations with distinction and for ninety-three years, it still made the same little girl feel important because its message meant; “Come and eat, it’s dinner time!”