Cast at the William Kaye foundry in Louisville, Kentucky, this bell was mounted on the Frank Pargoud, a steamboat built in 1868 for Capt. John Tobin and named for Confederate Civil War General J.F. Pargoud. The Pargoud operated for approximately ten years out of New Orleans to ports such as Memphis and St. Louis. After the Pargoud was decommissioned, the bell was installed on the Chalmette, a steamboat operating along the Mississippi River that made numerous passenger trips from New Orleans to St. Louis. In 1904, while carrying passengers to the St. Louis World's Fair, the Chalmette struck a snag and sank south of Natchez, Mississippi. The bell was recovered from the wreckage and shipped to the Red Leaf Plantation in Arkansas. In 1915, it was taken to the New Orleans riverfront and used upon the annual arrival of King Rex at Mardi Gras. In 1920, Herbert P. Crane, son of Richard T. Crane, founder of Crane Plumbing Company of Chicago, purchased the bell at auction in New Orleans and installed it in the bell tower at Wild Rose Farm in St. Charles, where it signaled the beginning and end of each workday and called farmhands to dinner. Crane used Wild Rose Farm for hunting and horseback riding with friends, including St. Charles notable Col. Edward J. Baker. In 1927, Crane donated the four bronze foxes cast in France and installed on the Main Street Bridge in St. Charles. In 1986, the Thomas E. Rosensteel and Thomas F. Lappin families developed Crane Road Estates on Herbert P. Crane's Wild Rose Farm property. On December 27, 2007, Thomas E. Rosensteel and Nuala McKiernan Rosensteel donated the bell to the City of St. Charles in memory of Thomas F. Lappin and Anne Rosensteel Lappin.