John D. Bell
In the business community of Upland, Mr. Bell has been a leading factor for nearly twenty years. His entrance into business was on October 15, 1894. Mr. Bell is the fourth successive hardware merchant at Upland, and has succeeded in producing a large, prosperous concern where others have failed. He has had both the persistence and the good judgment and industry required of a man who makes a success in retail merchandising and is now to be ranked among the successful men of Grant County. His first attempt at conducting a hardware store in Upland occurred about nineteen years ago. The Bell store carries a splendid stock of varied goods comprised under the general name of hardware. This includes both shelf and heavy hardware, stoves, tinware, plumbing goods, a complete line of harness, buggies, wagons and farm implements, sporting goods, a general stock of household supplies and paints, oils, and decorative material When Mr. Bell began business about twenty years ago his stock was invoiced at a valuation of $280.00. His progress is well indicated by the fact that his stock would now invoice at $8,000 or $10,000, and so energetically does he manage his establishment that he turns over the capital several times a year. He occupies all of a two-story brick building which has a frontage of forty-two feet on Main Street, and runs back one hundred and twenty-seven feet deep. For three years Mr. Bell was on the road selling goods, but with that exception had no business experience when he started at Upland and since than has worked out his own salvation.
Mr. J. D. bell was born at Clarksburg, in Decatur County, Indiana, July 6, 1856. His early life was spent in that vicinity, where he got a common schooling, and was educated in the normal school, and with the training and qualifications obtained there spent six years as a teacher. After that he did plain farming for a few years, and then went on the road to sell goods and from that got into the mercantile venture at Upland, and thus found prosperity.
Mr. Bell's grandfather was Daniel Bell, a native of Virginia, and of English and Irish extraction. In early life he moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where in 1803 he married Nancy Smith. Some years later, in 1822, he took his family to Decatur County, Indiana, where he purchased a squatter's claim of almost new land, and the items of the family history is that his first crops were destroyed by wild game eating the grain and roots, and otherwise devastating the fields. His first purchase was one hundred and sixty acres, and he also entered eighty acres in Fuget Township of Decatur County. He was one of the pioneers of that section, and in time his labors brought about a splendid farm which represented his pioneer activities. He was remarkable for the length of his life, notwithstanding eh many hardships which he had gone through in his early years. When he died bout 1876 he was ninety-five years of age, and his wife who passed away in 1883 was ninety-six years old. They were Methodist in religion, and took an important part in establishing the activities of that church in Decatur County. In political faith he was a Whig during his early manhood. The original land, 240 acres, in Fuget Township, Decatur County, Indiana, originally owned by Daniel bell, is still in the Bell family, with the exception of forty acres.
Tarleton R. Bell, father of the Upland merchant, was born in Kentucky in 1818, and was still a child when his family moved to Decatur County, Indiana, where he grew up as a farm boy and spent the early part of his manhood. Before his marriage he went to Tennessee, and was fro some time engaged in railway grade contracting. In that state he met and married Emma E. Adams, who was born and reared in Tennessee. Finally they returned to Indiana, and settled on the old Bell farm in Decatur County. After that the occupation of carpenter and farmer occupied the attention of of Tarleton Bell, until his death in 1882. His widow is still living, at her home in Greenburg, Decatur County. On October 14, 1913, she was eighty years of age, and in spite of her fourscore years is bright and keeps up with the current news of the day, and often entertains her pioneer friends at the regular annual meeting. She has been a lifelong member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and her husband worked with her in the same faith. he held to the political policies of the Democratic party, and living in a Republican district was at one time nominated for the office of representative, and nearly succeeded in overturning the normal Republican majority. He was a close friend of the Hon. William S. Holman.
Mr. J. D. Bell was one of six children; a daughter, Mrs. Mary Cheneworth, lives in Los Angeles, California; Wilbur is a farmer near Burlington, New Jersey, and has a family of children; Emma is the wife of William E. Tull, of Fairmount, Minnesota, and has one daughter; Nora lives with her mother in Greenburg, Indiana, her filial devotion never having permitted her to marry; George died when forty-three years of age, leaving several children.
At Clarksburg, in Decatur County, Mr. Bell married Miss Emma C. Cain, who was born at Matamora, in Franklin County, Indiana, March 3, 1857. She grew up and received her education in the same locality. Her parents were Doctor C. C. and Eliza A. (Clements) Cain, her father well known as a prominent physician and surgeon at Matamora in Franklin County, and for sixty years practiced his profession and was one of the old time country doctors who took his services to his patients regardless of personal discomforts and physical obstacles and inconveniences. Dr. Cain died at the ripe age of ninety-five, and his widow was ninety-six when she passed away. They were likewise active members in the Methodist religion. Mr. and Mrs. Bell have no children. Fraternally Mr. Bell is affiliated with Areana Lodge, No. 427, F. & A. M., at Upland, and is lodge treasurer. He and his wife are working members in the Upland Methodist Church in which he is trustee and recording steward, offices which he has held for the past eighteen years. He is also a trustee of Taylor College at Upland and has given his official interests to that institution for the past three years.
Centennial History of Grant County Indiana 1812-1912. The Lewis Publishing Co., 1914.