The mayor of Union Bridge is working to get a historic artifact prominently displayed in town to honor a former African American school.
Mayor Perry Jones intends to set a bell, which once was installed at Union Bridge School, in a spot where it will regularly be seen by crowds of children again.
“We want to have it mounted up at the Elmer Wolfe Elementary School,” Jones said. “We’re working with the Board of Education so they can build a platform and put it in and then we can put some kind of a plaque there saying it was the original bell off of the original Union Bridge School.”
The principal of Elmer Wolfe Elementary has to select a place for the bell, according to Marsha Herbert, vice president of the Carroll County Board of Education.
The bell has historical significance to black history in Union Bridge, according to Jones.
“The original Union Bridge School was a school that was built before the Elmer Wolfe School was ever built,” Jones said. “Elmer Wolfe was built somewhere around 1931 when they started and at that time the kids from the Union Bridge School went to the Elmer Wolfe school because that was just one school at that time. The Union Bridge School — that’s where all the African American kids in the area went before the Robert Moton school (not the same as Robert Moton Elementary that is known today) was built in Westminster.”
Jones was able to procure the bell from a woman in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, who is the daughter-in-law of a man who worked for the construction company that tore down the school in the mid-1930s, according to Jones. The town bought the bell for about $350, he said.
Herbert is eager to do what she can to contribute to honoring the history of Carroll County schools.
“It’s just a thing that I wanted to help out with and preserve Carroll County public school history,” she said. “That’s what I’m trying to do, preserve the county history, and it needs to be done. I think it’s very important.”
Jones also hopes that displaying this artifact will add to the historic part of Union Bridge.
“I’m hoping that once we have some documentation on it and put some literature there, it’ll give some historic respect back to the town, people will look at the bell and they’ll read up on it — this is part of the original Union Bridge,” Jones said. “Anything that we can bring back to the historic part of town, or people can walk around and look at it, it’s a benefit to the town.”