A solid bronze one-half-ton bell was found stored at the Sumter County Stockade on McMath’s Mill Road with a companion bell dated 1860 that is now mounted on the lawn of the fourth Sumter County Courthouse. The older bell, originally bought by the Masonic lodge, was placed through public effort in 1867 on the Georgian second courthouse on the town square in a tower built for it. The other bell was put into use when the Victorian courthouse was built in 1887. Together, the two bells were part of courthouse clock systems that regulated life within the sound of their tolling from 1867 to 1960, when the Victorian third courthouse was demolished. Parts of Americus even had different numbered tolls to direct firefighters to burning buildings. In 1974, the Sumter County Commission gave this bell to the Sumter County Federation of Garden Clubs and helped place it at Founders Memorial Park as an American Revolution Bicentennial Memorial project of the fourteen Garden Clubs of Sumter County.