OTISFIELD – The 92nd annual service will be held at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, July 31, at the old Bell Hill Meetinghouse. The service will be followed by refreshments outside on the lawn and an optional tour of the one-room brick schoolhouse next to the meetinghouse.

The Bell Hill Meetinghouse Association, organized in 1927, is planning the event. The association was formed for two stated purposes: to conduct an annual religious service on Bell Hill and to maintain and preserve the meetinghouse and schoolhouse next door.

Built in 1839 by master architect Nathan Nutting Jr., the meetinghouse is the second church built on the hilltop.

The first, constructed in 1798, served as a Congregational Church and a meeting place where Otisfield residents conducted town business. For many years, the town militia trained once a year on the town common adjacent to the building.

About 1887, the Congregationalists stopped holding their services on Bell Hill, moving to the newer and more convenient church at Spurrs Corner. Since that time, the meetinghouse has been maintained first by neighbors, townspeople and friends, and later by the association.

This year, those attending the annual service will have an opportunity to examine the construction – and reconstruction – of the dome and belfry of the building, which are about to be detached and lowered by crane to the ground in order to expedite the repair work.

For Dan Allen of Allen and Co., South Paris, who is in charge of reconstruction, it will be the sixth such church repair job. Because of the age of the building and the difficult stair access to the dome, he recently decided the job would be safer and easier if the two upper sections of the belfry were moved to ground level.

Allen expects to complete the work in about two months. The many donations to the association’s Belfry Fund, including one by the taxpayers of Otisfield, have made the work possible.

The speaker will be Silver Moore-Leamon, a commissioned minister in the United Church of Christ who preaches monthly at the South Paris Universalist Church. A retired mathematics teacher, she lives in Auburn and serves on several committees of the Maine Council of Churches. Her sermon title will be “Who Are You, God?”

The Otisfield Brass Ensemble will provide special music. The group includes Dick Coombs, trombonist; Penny Tougas, flutist; Doug Kessel and Kyle Jordan, trumpeters; and Virginia Noble, pianist.

Association directors extend a special invitation to summer visitors in the area to attend the historic, nondenominational service.