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By Rachel Roubein Times Staff Writer

It’s a small church with a small congregation. But for a few seconds, just after its newly installed cast iron bell is rung, the sounds of Bethesda United Methodist Church can be heard loud and clear.

The Sykesville church is holding a ceremony for the bell today, dedicating it to the mother of the congregant who found the bell and gave it to the church to put outside its building on North Klee Mill Road.

The circa 1894 bell was created in Ohio, discovered on a Woodbine farm roughly 120 years later and was recently placed on a post outside the Sykesville church. It’s a story to behold, Beverly Anderson Smith said, one of granting her late mother’s wish in an unexpected way.

Magdalena Anderson Irwin wanted Bethesda United Methodist Church, which has an average of 22 attendees on a Sunday, to have a bell because people would hear it and they’d come, Irwin would say. She died in 1987.

“Two or three years ago, it really became very important to me,” Smith, of Sykesville, said. “I worried about the church dying from the inside out; all the people attending church were getting older.”

She began researching, finding that her perfect bell cost thousands and thousands of dollars.

So, she tried a different tactic. When she saw a church with a bell, she’d write down the name, call later and ask officials if they were interested in selling their bell. None were.

It’s a good thing, though, because she ended up finding one for free.

One day, Smith was cleaning out her late aunt’s Woodbine farm with her daughter, Kellie Patton, who was in the back of a barn.

“She calls out and says, ‘Mom, look, here is the bell for Bethesda.’”

Smith waded through the packed barn to where her daughter was standing.

“There was a certain piece of the bell where the sun hit, and it shone like a star,” she said.

The mother-daughter pair cleared the hay and debris from the bell. They lifted the heavy object, carrying it to Patton’s car, so it could be moved to her Finksburg barn, where it sat — but wasn’t forgotten — for the better part of a year.

“I kept saying to her that I’m just driven to get this bell,” Smith said.

She picked it up in November, placing it in the back of her car, where it rang whenever the vehicle turned.

Later that month, Smith gave it to a couple who are church members and had said they would restore the bell and place it at the church. She had done her research first, contacting Prindle Station, which makes bells from the C.S. Bell Company, the company that had created the mold more than 100 years ago. A Prindle Station official told her how it should be retouched.

Though Smith doesn’t know exactly why the bell was at the Woodbine farm or when it got there, Smith learned it was indeed cast iron, but had more of a brass bell sound.

In late December, the bell was ready. It was placed on a post outside the church, where it was rung for the first time prior to the Christmas Eve service.

“It rang all over that valley,” Smith said. “You could hear that bell forever and ever and ever.”

It’s a welcome addition to the small church, said the Rev. Taysie Monroe Phillips, the church’s pastor.

A ceremony will be held today to dedicate the bell to Smith’s mother, her dream of hearing a bell toll before each service now fulfilled.

“It’s truly just a sign of our call — our continuing call — to serve the people of Carroll County,” Phillips said. “That’s us.”