Highland County Historical Society to ring in the semiquincentennial

By John Levo
Highland County Historical Society

For years the Highland County Historical Society has welcomed each New Year with the ringing of the large C.S. (Charles Singleton) Bell gracing the front of Hillsboro’s East Main Street Highland House Museum.

For decades, Hillsboro’s C.S. Bell Company was a major manufacturer of bells. That led Hillsboro to becoming known as the “City of the Bells” and later the home to the annual Festival of the Bells.   

To honor that local history, the Highland County Historical Society invites the public to join in on this year’s bell-ringing to recognize the local bell industry, observe the start of a New Year and the beginning of the nation’s semiquincentennial – better known as America’s 250th anniversary.

The Highland Amateur Radio Association will start the bell-ringing at the exact stroke of midnight as coordinated with the National Bureau of Standard’s WWV Time Standard Radio Station in Fort Collins, Colo. (Note the Hillsboro connection: Fort Collins, Colo. and Hillsboro, Ohio, share a historical connection through Col. William Oliver Collins, a Civil War officer from Hillsboro who commanded Camp Collins, the military post that became Fort Collins.)

Individuals, churches and communities throughout Highland County are urged to participate. All are urged to take a few moments from their individual celebrations and go onto their yards, porches  or other place and let their personal bells ring out. Any style of dinner, church, school, sleigh or hand bell may be used whether it is a C.S. Bell or not.  

As has been done in past years, the radio club will broadcast the bell-ringing on their 147.21 amateur radio repeater. Past events were reported heard in locations as Kettering, Waynesville, the Cincinnati suburbs and east to McArthur and Lucasville.

Museum Director Vicki Knauff announces an official Semiquincentennial Flag will also be hoisted on the Museum’s flagpole during the evening.