D Ward, John & Simeon K Bell
D. Ward Bell, Simeon K. Bell & John Bell, one of Jay county's best known and most substantial farmers and landowners, proprietor of an excellent farm in Jefferson township, where he makes his home, rural mail route No. 2, Redkey, is a native son of this county, a member of one of the real pioneer families of the county, and has lived here all his life. Mr. Bell was born on a farm in the immediate vicinity of New Mt. Pleasant, in Jefferson township, December 1, 1870, and is a son and only survivor of the three children born to Simeon K. and Sophia ( Williamson ) Bell, both of whom were members of pioneer families in Jay county, the latter the daughter of Hugh and Mary Williamson.
The late Simeon K. Bell, formerly and for many years a member of the board of county commissioners and also for years county school examiner and who succeeded himself in this latter office when he was elected first county superintendent of schools, was born in New Mt. Pleasant neighborhood on January 9, 1843, and was a son of John and Lovina (Kidder ) Bell, the latter of whom was born in Warren county, Ohio, April 10, 1821, a daughter of John and Sarah ( Burns ) Kidder, who had come to Jay county in 1837 and settled in Pike township.
John Bell, the pioneer, was born in Harrison county, Virginia, September 6, 1816, a son of Dr. Simeon and Mary ( West ) Bell, the latter of whom died in Virginia, her bereaved husband later moving to Ohio with his family and locating in Warren county, John Bell then being sixteen years of age. Dr. Simeon Bell died atCincinnati in 1832, while ministering to patients stricken with cholera during the epidemic of that year. . . . John Bell, in 1837, came over into Indiana and entered a quarter section of land in Pike township, this county, and proceeded to clear and develop the same. . . In December 1839 he married and established a home at New Mt. Pleasant . . . in 1860 he moved to his farm in section 22 of Jefferson township and there spent the remainder of his life, his death occurring on January 21, 1880. He and his wife were the parents of ten children, of whom Simeon K. was the second in order of birth.
On January 25, 1870, Simeon K. Bell was united in marriage to Sophia Williamson and to that union three children were born, the subject of this sketch (first born), John Bell, now deceased, and Bertha, also deceased. D. Ward Bell was five years of age when his parents moved from New Mt. Pleasant to Portland and he received his schooling in the schools of that city. . . On March 4, 1900, D. Ward Bell was united in marriage to Clara Croft, who was born in Ohio, daughter of Abraham and Ida Croft, and to this union has been born two children, Thelma and Simeon K., the latter of whom is at home. Thelma Bell married William Hampton, and has one child, Regina. The Bells have a very pleasant home and have taken an interested part in the general social activities of the neighborhood in which they live and where the family in now represented in the fifth generation of Bells in Jay county.
SOURCE: Milton T. Jay, M.D., History of Jay County Indiana, Historical Publishing Co., Indianapolis. Vol. II, pp.427-429.