Francis Bell would come into his own in the Age of Manifest Destiny. Born of a father who died during the War of 1812, he migrated with his widowed mother from Cornwall, New York, to Fredericksburg, Virginia. By 1848, the Mexican War's close, the nation had expanded its boundaries, and so had Francis Bell. He and his wife Sarah welcomed their youngest of seven children, Charles Milton, into the world. As the revolutions of 1848 were animating Europe, America's expansion now tore asunder the tenuous fabric that had woven in it, the institution of slavery. The Age of Manifest Destiny would implode as sectional passions extinguished what remained of enlightened compromise. The decade that would unfold before the Bell family would mirror the impending anguish that penetrated the river communities and the nation.

By 1850, Fredericksburg, VA, was a community of 2,485 white citizens with an equal number of enslaved human beings and 400+ freemen. Frances, a gun and locksmith, was of northern stock, his wife Sarah, the daughter of a well-established Fredericksburg family. 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 keenly aware of the larger sectional cavitations. "Bleeding Kansas," Fugitive Slave Law, Dred Scott, and by the Panic of 1857, each fomenting division in America found Francis growing more concerned.

Everyone in earshot of the Rappahannock River's rapids north of Fredericksburg was well aware of an impending war, particularly after John Brown's Raid at Harper's Ferry. Southern leaning Secretary of War John B. Floyd saw to it that federal arsenals were "redistributed" throughout the south following John Brown's hanging. Conscious that the tranquil southern river town would turn battlefront, Francis discreetly moved his family to Washington, D.C., only months before the war commenced.

In 1860, residing in Washington, D.C., Francis now looked to rebuild his Bell & Bros. lock and gunsmith business in Washington. By 1862 Francis was an accomplished ambrotypist as his two other sons, Nephi and Thomas, reimagined Bell & Brothers Photography. 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 - the president begged it off. Thomas and Nephi only started to advance the business when Nephi suddenly died in November 1862. The November death would need to wait for the spring thaw for burial in April 1863. Visitors to Washington's Oak Hill Cemetery can still see a photo of Nephi encased in the obelisk in the family plot where Francis 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.

In 1868 and 1869, and intermittently after that, Francis operated Bell and Brothers as his youngest son Charles Milton Bell joined in the endeavor. 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 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, daughter of James and Mary Colley of Washington, D.C. The Colleys operated a Dry Goods enterprise and proprietors of the Clarendon and Windsor Hotels. 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. On May 12, 1893, Charles died in the Windsor Hotel among the Colley family, a Bell brother, James, Annie, and his two sons. The loss was significant; Charles' youngest son, Colley Bell, passed the moment's distress to his son, and he to his son. Annie would face legal challenges months and years later, struggling to keep the studios in operation. Like Charles, Annie was the youngest in her family and would face being a widow three times longer than her 13-year marriage and her life's devotion to Charles Milton Bell.

Annie Colley Bell, 1857 - 1932

As she lay dying in her son's home on College Point, Long Island under a gray-skied Halloween 1932, Annie Colley was melting away from a life that had frozen the faces on glass plates of the known and unknown. She was surrounded by the family of her eldest son, Colley Wood Bell, his wife Francis and three boys, Colley, and twins, George, and William. She was the devoted wife of famed photographer Charles Milton Bell of Washington, D.C.

Annie was 36 years old in 1893 when her husband returned from a wet, cold trip to Fort Monroe, Virginia fell ill, and died in Washington’s Windsor Hotel. It would be there that she and her two sons would come to terms with the loss of a father.

Annie would struggle to keep the studios and gallery operating with her two sons. The famous Civil War studios of Brady and Gardner were gone by the early 1870s, and C.M. Bell's work took prominence on Pennsylvania Avenue. Soon George Eastman's Kodak camera would make ubiquitous, the "Kodak Moment" introduced in 1888. The production of Kodak's popular Brownie Camera in 1900 only increased the studios' pressure to profit as Annie faced enormous market forces. In that same year, Annie sold the studio and over 30,000 glass plate negatives to new proprietors who kept the name "C. M. Bell Studios" until 1910. Annie's sons, Charles, Jr. and Colley, were pursuing careers in engineering and law respectfully.

Charles left Washington to advance his passion as an electrical engineer. Young Colley, a lawyer, stayed close to his mother in Washington, D.C., while working as the personal secretary to Chief Justice Fuller and Justice Charles Evans Hughes. In 1910 young Colley married Carl Bushby, the daughter of Rev. William Bushby. Carl, suffering from tuberculosis during the courtship, died seven months after the June wedding. Colley's son, Colley, Jr., learned of his father's loss when locating a box in the back of the lawyer's rolltop desk in the mid-1960s after his father’s death. The paper box contained Carl's white gloves, shoes, lace, and personal papers. Annie and her son Colley would be inseparable following this chapter in their lives.

As for the thousands of class negatives boxed in storage facilities? Eventually, Alexander Graham Bell (no relation) would acquire the glass negatives' cases decades later to see them safely passed to the Smithsonian Institute. In a historical irony, as Kodak faced its decline in the face of digital photography, the Library of Congress painstakingly opened the crates of Bell's glass negatives. For several years, curators and librarians of the Library of Congress carefully digitized and cataloged C.M. Bell's glass plates. The Bell family now presents this web site as an ongoing study and discovery in Charles and Annie's work. What had seemingly melted away in a museum storage facility is revealed to live another day in our American Experience.