The story of Charles Milton Bell is, at its core, the story of a family shaped by ambition, adversity, and the vast, sweeping currents of 19th-century America. It begins with his father, Francis Bell, a man who came of age in the era of Manifest Destiny when the nation's borders and its aspirations stretched ever westward. Born in Cornwall, New York, Francis lost his father, Isaac Bell, during the War of 1812, and with his widowed mother, he migrated south to Fredericksburg, Virginia, a town whose fate, like his own, would be inextricably linked to the tumultuous events that followed. There, he married Mary Broadus Wood, a woman from a well-established local family, and together they would raise seven children, among them a boy born in 1848, their youngest—Charles Milton Bell.

By Charles’s birth, America had won a war with Mexico, stretching its dominion to the Pacific. Yet this same expansion had intensified the great national struggle over slavery, bringing the country closer to the conflict that would ultimately consume it. Fredericksburg, like many towns of the upper South, was a place where the great contradictions of America played out daily. By 1850, it was a town of 2,485 white citizens, nearly 2,500 enslaved people, and 400 free Black residents, caught between the traditions of the past and the forces of change that would soon tear the country apart. Francis, a gunsmith and locksmith, worked with his eldest son, William, under the name Bell & Brothers, operating a shop that benefitted from Fredericksburg’s location along the vital trade routes of the Potomac and Ohio Rivers. The 1850s, however, were not kind to men trying to plan for the future. The nation reeled from events like the Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-Nebraska crisis, and the Dred Scott decision. In 1854, in search of opportunity, Francis journeyed west to California, nearly drowning in Central America’s Virgin Bay on his return. The Panic of 1857 only added to his growing unease. The family would have to move.

By 1859, following John Brown’s Raid at Harpers Ferry, it was clear that war was inevitable. Federal arms supplies were being deliberately shifted south under Secretary of War John B. Floyd, and Francis Bell, knowing that Fredericksburg would become a battleground, made the decision to move his family to Washington, D.C. There, he attempted to rebuild Bell & Brothers as a locksmith and gun shop, but the business soon took another turn. By 1862, Francis had become an ambrotype, a photographer specializing in an early glass-plate format. His sons, particularly Nephi and Thomas, saw the future in photography, assisting Mathew Brady, the man whose images would come to define the Civil War. Even young Charles, with an eye for opportunity, boldly asked President Lincoln to sit for a portrait in 1864—Lincoln declined.

But tragedy would strike the Bell family in the war years. Nephi Bell, barely 19 years old, died in November 1862, and because of the winter’s deep freeze, his body could not be buried until April 1863. Even now, at Oak Hill Cemetery, his portrait, faded by time, remains embedded in the family obelisk. Three years later, Thomas Bell was killed in the Paraguayan War, fighting at the Siege of Humaitá. The eldest sons, William and James, turned away from photography altogether, leaving only Charles, still just a boy, to step into the family business.

By 1875, with Reconstruction reshaping the South and Washington, D.C., transforming into a true capital city, Charles Milton Bell struck out on his own. He purchased a camera from Mathew Brady, whose business was in decline, and opened C.M. Bell Studios, a name that would soon dominate portrait photography in Washington. His parents’ deaths—Mary in 1879, Francis in 1880—only reinforced his resolve. That same year, Charles married Annie Colley, whose family owned the Clarendon and Windsor Hotels and ran a successful dry goods business. By the 1890s, Bell had expanded his operation, holding four major addresses on Pennsylvania Avenue and establishing a grand gallery on 15th Street across from the U.S. Treasury. He photographed presidents, senators, justices, and foreign dignitaries, his name becoming synonymous with the visual record of Gilded Age Washington.

But his own story would end suddenly. In April 1893, Charles and his eldest son, Charles Jr., traveled to Fortress Monroe for Rendezvous Week, a grand naval celebration tied to the upcoming Chicago Columbian Exposition. The week was historic—thirty-eight warships from ten nations assembled in Norfolk Harbor in a show of maritime power. But the weather turned violent. Cold rain and heavy winds battered the crowds. Women sewed lead shot into the hems of their dresses to avoid their skirts whipping in the wind; men gripped their hats, bracing against the Atlantic gusts. Returning to Washington, Bell fell ill, and within weeks, he was dead.

His youngest son, Colley, was sent away to his aunt Mary Colley’s home to shield him from the worst of it. He would later recall learning of his father’s passing at the Windsor Hotel, just blocks from the White House, without fully grasping the finality of it all. "The lack of a good man's influence in a boy’s life may well prove ruinous," he wrote decades later. But life would move on. He found solace in faith, singing in the choir at St. John’s Church, later working as a page in the Supreme Court, where he would regularly greet President Taft as he walked to the Court.

The funeral of Charles Milton Bell took place at Trinity Church, where young Colley, just shy of his sixth birthday, stood transfixed by the sight of the Knight Templar ritual, the arch of swords raised above his father’s casket. Bell’s passing marked the end of an era for Washington photography. In time, Annie sold the studio, and the family’s glass negatives—some 30,000 in all—disappeared into storage. Decades later, the collection was rediscovered by Alexander Graham Bell (no relation) and transferred to the Smithsonian Institution. There, they sat largely untouched, until the Library of Congress, at the dawn of the digital age, painstakingly opened the crates, cataloging and preserving what remained.

Today, Bell’s portraits live again. Presidents, statesmen, suffragists, and everyday Americans stare back at us, their expressions frozen in time, reminding us of a world both distant and familiar. Charles Milton Bell, the man who had once asked Lincoln to sit before his camera, had instead captured the faces of an era—and, in doing so, secured his own place in history.

Charles Milton Bell, Photographer, 1848-1893