DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, you might think a bell is just a bell — but this one has lived more lives than most people you'll ever meet. We're talking about the bell called Bessie.
Not the steamboat, mind you — though that's where the story starts. The steamboat Bessie was the last of the Mifflin Kenedy and Richard King Rio Grande shipping fleet, one of those grand mid-1800s operations that worked the river when the river was the road. And this particular boat, instead of carrying a whistle like any sensible vessel, hauled a four-hundred-pound bell.
Four hundred pounds. You don't misplace that. You don't forget it.
And you surely don't just let it go quietly into history. When the Bessie made its final trip on the Rio Grande in 1902, that bell rolled off into the next chapter of its life — out to John Closner's plantation east of Hidalgo, where it rang and rang until 1909. After that, Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen wanted it.
Now here's where the story gets good, because there was a dispute over ownership. A genuine back-and-forth over who had the right to that bell. And that dispute — that maddening, drawn-out argument — delayed the purchase long enough that when fire destroyed Sacred Heart Catholic Church in 1924, Bessie wasn't inside.
The dispute, the very thing that seemed like trouble, is what saved her. The church was rebuilt, and in 1926, Bessie was finally placed in it. But she wasn't done being tested.
In 1937 the bell cracked. Cracked, melted down, and recast from her original metal — still herself, just remade. And sometime after that, she was moved again, here to St.
Joseph the Worker Church, where she stands today. A four-hundred-pound bell that outlasted a steamboat, a plantation, a fire, a feud, and a fracture. Some things, it turns out, just refuse to be silenced.
What the marker says
The steamboat "Bessie", last of the Mifflin Kenedy-Richard King Rio Grande shipping fleet of the mid-1800s, carried this 400-pound bell instead of a whistle. After its final trip on the river in 1902, the bell "Bessie" was used until 1909 on John Closner's plantation east of Hidalgo. A dispute over its ownership delayed the purchase of "Bessie" by Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen, and saved it when a fire destroyed (1924) the church. In 1926 it was placed in the rebuilt church. Cracked in 1937, and recast from original metal, the bell was later moved here to St. Joseph the Worker Church. (1975)