A Special Donation Story for the Bell of Thomas Chapel
The History Taskforce recently got the largest single donation to date in its GoFundMe account from a woman with no connection with Willis or Thomas Chapel and who lived very far away from Willis in Washington state. It took a few days of emailing to find out why she would give such a generous gift having no personal connection with the project. Here is how this story unfolded:
I sent Sherrill, the donor who only wanted to be identified by her first name, an email asking how she came to hear about our GoFundMe effort, and asking her if she knew anyone here. She said that she did not, but she had been studying about African American history and was searching for material about Freedmen online. Her search brought up the TV news story done several weeks ago by Briana Connor at Channel 13 in Houston. Here is the link to the story she found. https://abc13.com/thomas-chapel-united-methodist-church-historic-landmark-montgomery-county-mlk-boulevard/14229211/
I sent Briana at Channel 13 an email saying that a X (formerly Twitter) post about her story on Thomas Chapel was responsible for the largest ever single donation ($1000) to the restoration project of the church. A woman in Washington state came across her story on X and felt compelled to donate.
I asked Sherrill in an email to tell me why she decided to make such a generous donation to the project. She sent me this in return:
“On Super Bowl Sunday, I was checking on a topic that was trending on X and ran across Briana Connor’s report on the preservation work at Thomas Chapel. In the tweet that accompanied the article I saw two things that caught my attention. The word “Freedmen” and a picture of Thomas Chapel. It was particularly the bell tower caught my attention,” Sherrill said.
She donated $100 that day and another $900 the next night.
“I felt like I did not donate the amount that was on my heart the first time, so I donated the rest tonight. God bless you,” she wrote when giving her second donation.
She said that her father was a pastor in a rural area of Montana when she was a child and that the bell in his church was stolen and never recovered. That church’s bell was from a train engine that originally hauled copper ore between Butte and the smelter in Anaconda. She believed that it was put in the church tower originally by Finnish settlers who started the church. She sent me a picture of her father and brother on the roof of his church in Butte, Montana, from a newspaper many years ago.
“I’ll love hearing the story about the Thomas Chapel bell being restored in its framing,” she wrote. I told her that since she lived so far away, she probably could not come to be the first person to ring the bell since the last time it rang in 1952 over 70 years ago, but that we would soon be able to ring it in her honor when it was repaired. We will send her a video.
I sent Sherrill, the donor who only wanted to be identified by her first name, an email asking how she came to hear about our GoFundMe effort, and asking her if she knew anyone here. She said that she did not, but she had been studying about African American history and was searching for material about Freedmen online. Her search brought up the TV news story done several weeks ago by Briana Connor at Channel 13 in Houston. Here is the link to the story she found. https://abc13.com/thomas-chapel-united-methodist-church-historic-landmark-montgomery-county-mlk-boulevard/14229211/
I sent Briana at Channel 13 an email saying that a X (formerly Twitter) post about her story on Thomas Chapel was responsible for the largest ever single donation ($1000) to the restoration project of the church. A woman in Washington state came across her story on X and felt compelled to donate.
I asked Sherrill in an email to tell me why she decided to make such a generous donation to the project. She sent me this in return:
“On Super Bowl Sunday, I was checking on a topic that was trending on X and ran across Briana Connor’s report on the preservation work at Thomas Chapel. In the tweet that accompanied the article I saw two things that caught my attention. The word “Freedmen” and a picture of Thomas Chapel. It was particularly the bell tower caught my attention,” Sherrill said.
She donated $100 that day and another $900 the next night.
“I felt like I did not donate the amount that was on my heart the first time, so I donated the rest tonight. God bless you,” she wrote when giving her second donation.
She said that her father was a pastor in a rural area of Montana when she was a child and that the bell in his church was stolen and never recovered. That church’s bell was from a train engine that originally hauled copper ore between Butte and the smelter in Anaconda. She believed that it was put in the church tower originally by Finnish settlers who started the church. She sent me a picture of her father and brother on the roof of his church in Butte, Montana, from a newspaper many years ago.
“I’ll love hearing the story about the Thomas Chapel bell being restored in its framing,” she wrote. I told her that since she lived so far away, she probably could not come to be the first person to ring the bell since the last time it rang in 1952 over 70 years ago, but that we would soon be able to ring it in her honor when it was repaired. We will send her a video.
