Mazeppa Union Church bell silenced for tower restoration work

The familiar bronze bell at Mazeppa Union Church has gone silent, leaving Buffalo Township without one of Union County’s oldest audible landmarks while crews restore the bell tower that has held it for generations. The 141-year-old bell has been sitting on a pallet in a barn owned by church member and property committee member Wayne Stahl since May, after workers found that the tower’s wooden floor was deteriorating during exterior brick restoration work.

For members of the Mazeppa congregation, the bell is more than an object stored away until construction is done. The Rev. Ricky Phillips has said the bell is part of the worship experience and helps set the tone for liturgy. At 3200 Johnson Mill Rd. in Lewisburg, the church remains an active union congregation serving both Lutheran and United Church of Christ traditions, and local church listings identify it as one of only two remaining Union churches in Union County.

The restoration has become bigger than the project that first brought contractors to the site. Eagle Ridge Contracting was hired in October to restore the brickwork and bell tower, but the hidden rot in the tower floor forced the church to bring in Ed Haines Construction of Mifflinburg to repair the base where the bell sits before it can be raised back into place. Gary Pfleegor and his son, Caleb, removed the bell and moved it a few miles away, a careful step that church leaders said protected both the bell’s condition and its distinctive sound. Stahl said the church does not plan to refurbish the bell itself because members do not want to alter what has carried across the community for generations.

The bell’s removal also reaches deep into Mazeppa’s history. The congregation traces its roots to a meeting in 1839, followed by a first building that cost $1,725 in 1841. A remodeled brick structure and belfry went up in 1885, and a 1917 addition may have been the last time the bell was removed. That continuity helps explain why the loss of the bell, even temporarily, feels so significant in a county where few Union churches still survive.

Mazeppa Union Church has long been more than a landmark on Johnson Mill Road. It is the oldest still-worshipping church in Union County and the oldest continuously operating union church shared by Lutheran and UCC congregations. If the floor repairs go as planned and the bell returns to the tower, the church will have preserved not just a piece of bronze, but a sound that has marked worship and anchored memory in Union County for 141 years.