Charles Milton Bell, 1848-1893

from the family materials of Colley W. Bell (son of Charles Milton Bell)

The story of Charles Milton begins with his father, Francis Bell, who came into his own in the Age of Manifest Destiny. Francis’s father, Isaac Bell, died during the War of 1812, and the son migrated with his widowed mother from Cornwall, New York, to Fredericksburg, Virginia. Francis would wed Mary Broadus Wood of a well-established Fredericksburg family. In 1833, their first child's birth, William Hamilton Bell, would then see another six children follow.

By 1848 at the end of the Mexican War, the nation had expanded its boundaries, and so had Francis Bell's outlook. He and his wife Sarah welcomed their youngest of seven children, Charles Milton, into the world that year. As the revolutions of 1848 were dominating Europe, America's expansion now tore asunder the tenuous fabric that had woven in it, the institution of slavery. The nation was buffeted by sectional passions that extinguished what remained of enlightened compromise. The decade of the 1850s that would unfold before the Bell family would mirror the impending anguish that quickly found the southern river communities in despair of the imminent War.

By 1850, Fredericksburg, VA, was a community of 2,485 citizens with an equal number of enslaved human beings and 400+ freemen. Frances, a gun and locksmith, was plying his craft in supporting a growing family. His son, William, worked shoulder to shoulder in building a business enterprise, "Bell & Brothers Gun and Locksmiths." The location was ideal; the river town communities below the Potomac and Ohio Rivers served as transportation and communication hubs on the eve of the massive rail expansion. As Americans were thinking locally, the river towns were acutely aware of the larger sectional convulsions. In 1854, Francis traveled to California as he considered new opportunities in the face of "Bleeding Kansas," the Fugitive Slave Law, the Dred Scott decision. He narrowly escaped drowning in Central America's Virgin Bay when returning from California. The Panic of 1857 only exasperated Francis, but he knew the family would need to move.

Everyone in earshot of the Rappahannock River's rapids north of Fredericksburg was well aware that war was imminent, particularly after John Brown's Raid at Harper's Ferry in October of 1859. Southern leaning Secretary of War John B. Floyd saw that federal arsenals were "redistributed" throughout the south following John Brown's hanging. Conscious that the tranquil southern river town would turn battlefront, Francis had finished his family's move to Washington, D.C., in good order.

Residing in Washington, D.C., Francis looked to rebuild his Bell & Bros. lock and gunsmith business in the Capital City. By 1862 Francis was an accomplished ambrotypist, with William being a significant presence in the family. Younger sons, Nephi and Thomas, began to reimagine Bell & Brothers Photography as the Civil War commenced. All the brothers also worked as assistants in Mathew Brady's Studio, where they gained invaluable experience. Young Charles's confidence was noted when he approached President Lincoln to sit before his young camera in 1864 - the president begged it off. Thomas and Nephi only started to advance the photography business when Nephi suddenly died in November 1862. The burial would need to wait for the spring thaw in April 1863. Visitors to Washington's Oak Hill Cemetery can still see a faded photo of Nephi encased in the obelisk in the family plot where Francis and William placed it. In 1866 son Thomas would die in the Paraguay War at the Siege of Humaitá. The older sons William and James would begin to beg off their interest in photography as the decade of 1860s came to a close.

As the nation entered Reconstruction in 1865, so many families had to face their restoration. The Capitol building was finished, the great Army had vacated the city, and Washingtonians were rebuilding. Francis continued to operate Bell and Brothers as his youngest son Charles Milton Bell joined in the endeavor in the absence of William and James. Family lore indicates that Charles was interested in law, but with both Nephi and Thomas's death, Charles's trajectory would change. He acquired a camera from Mathew Brady, and his life would become photography. Charles would begin to influence the studio's operations in the early 1870s. By 1875 he struck out on his own to establish C.M. Bell Studios. Mary, his mother, would die in 1879, and less than a year later, Francis, who continued to work for Charles, died in 1880. In that same year, Charles married Annie Colley. The Colleys operated a Dry Goods business and were proprietors of the Clarendon and Windsor Hotels. By the 1890s, Charles Milton Bell had taken four addresses on Pennsylvania Ave for his large studio operations. He also had a gallery on 15th Street across from the U.S. Treasury.

His youngest son, Colley, was not there when his father died on May 12, 1893. The son remembered, Charles Milton Bell indulged him with the delivery of an evening gift; one particular toy was a "lamppost filled with some red figures to indicate effulgence." His older brother, Charles, had traveled with his father to Fortress Monroe for a naval review in April 1893. It was to be the greatest week in Norfolk's history, Rendezvous Week April 17-24, 1893. "Thirty-eight warships from ten countries were to gather in the spacious harbor as the first of a chain of celebrations leading to the Chicago Colombian Exhibition."

Mid-week bad weather found the crowds undaunted as high winds, rain, and cold enveloped the spectators. Women sewed lead shot into the hems of their dresses so as to not see whipped skirts provide "an undue display of ankles." Men resembled a sea of teacups, holding their hats upon their heads as eastern winds from the open Atlantic moved unabated across the cold harbor waters.

When they returned to Washington, his father fell ill; the youngest son was sent to his aunt's home. It would be in his aunt Mary Colley’s home that the youngest boy would learn the passing of his father at the Windsor Hotel, a stone's throw from the White House. Young Colley recalled not taking the full measure of what it all meant to a young boy. In 1927, he wrote the "lack of a good man's influence in a boy’s life may well prove ruinous." It didn't darken the ensuing biography of Colley Wood Bell.

The funeral of Charles Milton Bell was at Trinity Church, Washington, D.C. The son remembered being "immeasurably impressed with its Knight Templar ritual." The boy, just weeks shy of six years, stared intently at the open coffin, the arch of swords passing above his father. The loss he noted gave way to the influences of a religiously devoted mother whose "early training was as careful as an intelligent, loving and self-sacrificing Mother could make it." At age nine, young Colley could be found at St. John's Church on Lafayette Square singing in the choir, he secured a position as a Supreme Court Page, and would remember sidewalk greetings with President Taft while walking to the Court - life would go on.