A horse in the church belfry.

That’s what one early riser in St. Marys, Georgia, saw on a Monday morning in 1812: the Presbyterian minister’s horse, peering calmly over the railing high above town. According to a November 1951 issue of Ford Times, he was so shaken by the sight that he cried out for brandy and witnesses (in that order).

Soon, the whole town had gathered on the church lawn, trying to surmise how the horse got up there and, more urgently, how to get it down. Through all the commotion, “the horse alone remained calm.”

The horse hadn’t climbed those steep steps of its own accord. A band of smugglers — looking for a clever distraction as they slipped contraband past the town’s sharp-eyed revenue officers — led the quadruped to the bell tower. And their plan worked. While every eye in St. Marys was fixed on the steeple, nobody was watching the wharf.

More than 70 years later, there’s no record of how they freed the trusty steed, but there is reliable evidence that they did so — for St. Marys’ little church still stands and its belfry is horse-free.

Read the story via the Ford Times archive, November 1951. Browse more at FordHeritageVault.com.