My Genealogy Hound

Thomas D. Bell, a farmer and stock raiser and mechanic of Clay Township, is a native of Belmont County, Ohio, where he was born June 2, 1836, and is the youngest of nine children born to William B. and Rebecca (Wheat) Bell. He was reared in his native county, receiving but a limited school education, and December 9, 1858, married Miss Martha, daughter of Thomas and Jane Curtis, also a native of Belmont County, Ohio. They have had three children: Anna Laura (deceased wife of Hon. J. W. Johnson, of Kirksville), Clyde C. and Elizabeth Jane. In August, 1862, he enlisted in Company E, Ninety-eighth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and entered the army of the southwest, department of the Cumberland, and operated in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. He was in the battles of Perryville, Ky., Chickamauga, Mission Ridge, Lookout Mountain, Dalton, Resaca, Rome, Ga., Dallas, Peachtree Creek and Jonesboro, besides participating in a great many minor engagements, Bentonville, N. C., being the last of the war. He remained in service until the surrender, serving two years as sergeant. After the downfall of the Confederacy he was mustered out at Washington, D. C., in June, 1865. He then returned home, and in April, 1866, came to Adair County, Mo., when he located in Clay Township, twelve miles northeast of Kirksville, and now has a fine farm there of 160 acres, under a good state of cultivation, which is all the result of his labor since coming west, as he had no capital when he left his native home. At the age of sixteen he learned the carpentering trade, which he followed twenty-two years. He was formerly a Democrat, but since the war has been an uncompromising Republican. He cast his first presidential vote for John C. Breckinridge, in 1860. He is a member of the G. A. R. He is an active worker in the Missionary Baptist Church, of which he has been a member since 1859, and of which his wife has been a member for thirty-five years. Mr. Bell has in his possession a small gourd, which his grandfather Bell [see sketch of ancestry in account of Maj. Bell, of whom subject is a brother] used as a powder flask in the Revolutionary War, and which was given to his youngest son, William B. Bell (the father of Thomas D.), who used it for the same purpose in the War of 1812.