Lakeport Adds Plantation Bell to its Collection
On Monday, December 14, 2009, Dr. Hal Rucks Sessions III and his wife Marilyn presented the 1856 Luna Plantation Bell to the Lakeport Plantation Museum. The bell will be on permanent display on the grounds of the antebellum Lakeport home.
The 1200 lb Luna Plantation Bell is ornately decorated with lyres, cherubs and roses. It was cast at the Buckeye Foundry in Cincinnati, Ohio by George W. Coffin. It has not been back in Chicot County since the around 1880, when it left Luna Plantation for the Glen Aubin Plantation in Coahoma County, Mississippi.
Daniel and Richard Sessions, brothers, came to Chicot County in the 1840s from Natchez, Mississippi. The brothers owned Luna Plantation, north of Lake Chicot, from about 1844 until 1878. The Johnsons of Lakeport knew Luna and the Sessions very well. Lydia Johnson’s sister, Theodosia Taylor Sessions, was married to Daniel Sessions. In addition, the only known surviving letter from Lycurgus to Lydia was written to her while she was visiting the Sessions at Luna and he was on a steamer headed for Lexington, Kentucky.
