Captain Frank M. Bell
From Fruit From a Family Tree by Michael Bell, copyright 1998
Shakespeare wrote that "in his time a man plays many parts". This
was certainly true of Frank Bell.
He was a college-educated
businessman, law enforcement officer and military veteran. He had
a strong, independent
personality that made people
take notice of him.
Frank Matthew Bell was born on July 6, 1859, in the little town of Springhills,
Champaign County, Ohio.
His father, William M. Bell,
was a carpenter-turned-storeowner and the son of a Scotch-Irish immigrant.
His mother
was Lucretia Elizabeth Cretcher,
of Lewis County, Kentucky, by birth, when she married William Bell in the
autumn
of 1856.
They lived in a large, two-story frame house in Springhills, where William
Bell had a store and was
Postmaster for the town for
a few years. He was also elected mayor two years in a row in the
mid-1860s. Four
children were born in Springhills.
The first, a boy named George after his Grandfather Bell, died when he
was twelve
years old. The other
children, in order of birth, were Frank, Harry, and Clara. The Bell
family moved to the growing
town of Lima, Ohio, in 1864,
possibly influenced by William Bell's brother-in-law, John Melhorn, who
had been on the
city council and was mayor
of Lima from 1855 to 1857. Three more children were born in Lima.
Lizzie died when she
was sixteen months old.
William C. Bell, named after his father, died at the age of forty, having
established himself as
a partner in the firm of Mosier
& Bell, running the Mosier Steam Laundry in Lima. Kathyrn moved
to Indianapolis after
marriage and lived to be ninety-two
years old.
Frank quit going to school in 1875, when he was around the age of sixteen.
He had felt that his teacher
was not doing a good job;
he left school a discouraged young man. Within three years, however,
Frank decided to continue
his education. On November
4, 1878, his father put him on the train to the University of Notre Dame
in Indiana. He went
to school there for four years,
ending his studies in June, 1882. Frank was a good student, earning
high marks in algebra,
French, surveying, elocution,
and machine drawing in his senior years. His final exam average was
ninety-seven, and he
was awarded First Honors,
a gold medal indicating, among other things, a deportment without exception.
He received no
degree, but almost all Notre
Dame students in that era ended school without one.
Frank Bell returned to Lima with his newly earned education and entered
the business of retail and wholesale
merchandising. He was
twenty-three years old, almost six feet tall, with a fair complexion, brown
hair and blue eyes.
More than one person in town
considered Frank Bell "the handsomest man in Lima". Around 1885 he
worked as a civil
engineer with a local railroad
company. Later, he probably assisted his father in the management
of the Bell Block. This
landmark Lima building was
constructed around 1882. It was three stories high, 200 feet deep,
with a seventy-five foot
front to North Main Street.
The Bell Block was considered one of the best business locations in the
city. On March 2,
1889, Frank entered into a
business partnership with his brother-in-law Frank E. Harman. They
operated a house furnishing
business called Harman &
Bell at 213 North Main Street, on the Bell Block, until 1894 when Frank
sold out. The business
continued as the F.E. Harman
Company.
Only two months before the start of Harman & Bell, Frank Bell married
Lelia Kelly, a beautiful twenty-seven
year-old woman with bachelor's
and master's degrees from the College Wooster, who could rad Latin and
Greek with ease.
They would have three children:
a son who would die when he was two days old; a daughter, Eleanor; and
another son,
Harold.
In 1894, Frank Bell became interested in the growing field of oil production
in the Lima area. He was in that
area of business for the next
four years. During that time, he also served two years as the Chief
of Police in Lima. In
1898 war broke out with Spain.
Frank Bell's National Guard unit, the Melanchton Light Guards (officially
Company C, 2nd
Ohio Volunteer Infantry),
was called up for service. He had been Captain of the company since
December, 1884. When
Company C was mustered into
regular army duty the mustering officer told Captain Bell that his company
was the best one
he had seen so far.
Company C was a well-trained military unit under the direction of the third-highest
ranking captain in
Ohio. Captain Bell was
a firm officer who expected much from his men but also looked out for their
welfare. This attitude
would later cause him trouble
with his superiors.
The Lima newspaper sent reporters to follow the progress of Company C as
it headed, so everyone thought,
for Cuba. Soon after
mustering in, Captain Bell spoke to his troops about what he expected from
them. The newspaper
printed the speech in its
entirety. "If you make an ass of yourself," he told them, "you make
asses of all of us". He
cautioned against smoking
and drinking, warning the men that "the first man intoxicated goes back
to Lima". He also
described his idea of punctuality,
saying "when I say be here at 2 PM, it don't mean 2:10 PM".
Over the course of the next few months the company traveled by train south
to Tennessee and later to the
Chickamauga battlefield in
Georgia. The camps they lived in were horrid and filthy. One
officer even got in trouble for
authorizing his men to leave
camp to find a more sanitary place to sleep. Disease spread rapidly,
even making Captain Bell
seriously ill in Chattanooga.
Besides disease, rumors were also spreading concerning where the troops
would be sent
next. After it was clear
that Cuba would not be their destination, talk spread that they would be
sent to Puerto Rico. The
men were becoming agitated
and restless. Eventually a petition started its way around the 2nd
Ohio's camp regarding
the regiment's future.
Something in that petition struck a raw nerve in the men of Company C and
some of them
expressed their feelings in
a brawl with men from the company that started the petition.
It was August 24, 1898 on the Chickamauga battlefield, and Captain Bell
was regimental officer of the
day. Sensing that trouble
was brewing, the colonel of the 2nd Ohio ordered Captain Bell to disperse
his men before they
did anything, but the captain
did not do so. He probably believed that the release of built-up
tensions would do the men
some good. Captain Bell
was brought to court-martial in September on charges of neglect of duty
and disobedience of
orders. He was found
guilty and sentenced to loss of his command for thirty days, giving up
half of his pay for two
months to the Federal government,
and a reprimand in General Orders.
This was not the end of the story, however. Privates in Company C
informed the Lima newspaper that they
believed the Captain Bell's
court-martial was a "scheme" by his superior officers to kick him out of
the army. Support for
Captain Bell was strong in
his company and in his hometown, which even sent a committee to visit President
McKinley
protesting conditions in Company
C's camp. On September 29, while the regiment was moving its camp
to Knoxville,
Tennessee, the colonel allowed
Captain Bell to ride on a wagon in the supply train instead of being in
rear of his
company as regulations dictated
for an officer under arrest. During the march, he left the wagon,
making his way into
the city of Knoxville to visit
his family, who had traveled south to see him. He made no effort
to find his regiment. Instead,
he wandered the streets of
the city until he found the Palace Hotel, where his wife and children were.
He rejoined the regiment the next morning. Brought up on charges
of leaving his quarters while under
arrest, Captain Bell was found
not guilty. Legally, this verdict may have been determined by his
testimony that he was
not aware that he was obligated
to stay on the wagon while under arrest. More likely, the court probably
decided not to
make a bad situation worse
by convicting him. A few months afterward, moving farther north,
the 2nd Ohio returned home,
never having left the United
States. In writing up Captain Bell's efficiency report, the colonel
of the regiment noted that he
was always considered an insubordinate
officer. His descendants did not know all of these specifics concerning
Captain
Bell's military career until
100 years later. However, it does fit the character of the person
his grandchildren remember as
Grandfather Bell.
On their return home to Lima, the men of Company C were treated like heroes
even though they never were
in battle, and Captain Bell
had won the lasting respect of the men he served with during the war.
He was always "Captain
Bell" whenever people addressed
him; he was very proud of that title. Once, in the 1930s, he even
started driving down a
blocked street. A policeman
stopped him, but he said in a forceful tone, "I'm Captain Bell!" and the
officer snapped to attention
and saluted as he drove on.
After the Spanish-American War, Frank Bell went into business again.
This time he operated the Bell Supply
Company, which dealt in photographers',
jewelers', and dental supplies. He was very successful. His
"tarnished" service in
1898 and 1899 did not prevent
the military from calling him up for service again during the First World
War. During the war,
Captain Bell helped provided
border security in the Big Bend area of the Rio Grande River along the
Texas-Mexico border.
When Captain Frank M. Bell died in 1939, the men with whom he served forty
years earlier paid him a final
honor: veterans of Company
C served as pallbearers at his funeral.