Searching For The History of
Montgomery Bell
From The Advocate: 12/09/00
The State Library and Archives may look like a daunting place, but it’s beautiful, and the people who work there will take time to help.
By DALE GRAHAMPart 3 in a series
You’ve seen his name on buildings, you’ve been to a park in his name, perhaps passed by or even attended the school named for him. He must have been really famous in his day, wouldn’t you think? Lot’s of books about him and stories about him, right?
A few weeks ago, thanks to a call from a friend about a boy scout project to clean up Montgomery Bell’s family cemetery, I embarked on a journey to find out a little bit more about the man who once owned and worked a large portion of what is now South Cheatham County. He left his mark, in the form of the Narrows of the Harpeth, right here for us all to see. Did he leave his mark on history? The answer has to be yes, but you must search hard to find out exactly what he did, and who he was, and you must rely on many second and third hand stories. Luckily, thanks to the Tennessee State Library and Archives, and a man named Michael Holt both of whom I have only recently become acquainted,
I have found some of the information available about “The Ironmaster”.
Michael Holt is a Nashville native, who through his interest in genealogy as a hobby and history, was led to find out more about Montgomery Bell and his slaves. He is writing a book to be titled, “The Iron Men of Tennessee: The Slaves of Montgomery Bell”, which he hopes to have ready for publication by the middle of next year. Michael is married with three sons, and was educated at Pearl High School and Tennessee State University. While doing research in the archives, he found that there was more information on Montgomery Bell and his slaves than any other slave owner in Tennessee during those times. He was told by a local resident that I was doing a series on Montgomery Bell and the slaves who helped make him what he was, and contacted me.
On our morning in the archives, he showed me microfilm from the Nashville Banner, May of 1955, when Ed Huddleston began his wonderful and detailed series on Bell. You may remember the series also by Huddleston reprinted in The Advocate about the Treanor Family. Most of what you will read will be the result of Huddleston’s work, and Holt’s research, which he generously shared.
Montgomery Bell was born on January 3, 1769 in Chester County, Pennsylvania. When the Revolutionary War ravaged the area, most families, including the Bell’s, were left with little. Bell became a tanner’s apprentice at 16, a job he held for 3years and didn’t like. Quite possibly what he learned there and held on to for the rest of his life, was that he wanted more, and wasn’t afraid of working for it.
According to Huddleston, “He next tried trading, this boy who in his youth doubtless heard much talk about money … money from a family which had lost much. The trading netted him ‘a silver watch and $100.’ He then joined his uncle, Edward Leech in a hatmaking business, and was said to be a fast learner. After the death of Bell’s brother-in-law, William Bain, Bell led his widowed sister Elizabeth, her six children and one or more “servants or slaves”, on a year-long trek through what was then the wilderness, into Kentucky. He was not yet 20 years old.
They made their home in Lexington and began a hatmaking shop. He purchased a log house and land in Lexington in 1792, and did quite well there financially. So well in fact, that he moved to Tennessee in early 1800, and purchased Cumberland Furnace from James Robertson in 1804 … for $16,000. He began to make his mark quickly in the area. “Community recognition came promptly. Bell has been called 'the first justice of the peace of Dickson County’. On August 3, 1804 he was named one of the commissioners to choose a suitable and central site for the courthouse, ‘prison and stocks’ of the county”, according to Huddleston. His land and furnace purchases throughout the area multiplied for the next several decades, as did the number of his slaves.
Some documents state that he held up to 400 slaves at one time, but Holt puts the number closer to 300.
From the Cheatham County, Tennessee Bible and Tombstone Records: “he was the wealthiest man in the South before the Civil War, he owned 50,000 acres of land, 400negroes, 400 mules. He was a pioneer in iron manufacturing in Tennessee”. Holt doesn’t doubt that he had 400 mules, but has researched his slave holdings, and although the number is huge for the times, he thinks it’s closer to 300. Even with a number that high, Bell is called an “emancipator”. “You can not question that”, Holt says, “he sent 88 of them back [to Africa], and from some documents that I’ve seen, he had plans to send a lot more of them, but he died before he could do it. He was about 85 when he died.”
He may have realized shortly before his death exactly what those slaves had sacrificed in his name. For their efforts they received little, their names for the most part are unknown and their accomplishments, including the Narrows tunnel we know about and possibly a second unfinished tunnel, have gone unrecognized. It is Holt’s dream to preserve this portion of our history, and give recognition to all the “Iron Men of Tennessee”, who made Bell’s vision a reality.
We have traced Bell to Tennessee. In the coming week’s we’ll tell you more of what he did in his remaining years. It is a conflicting picture of a man who was known to be a wealthy philanthropist, yet dressed poorly and ate like his slaves. He was disliked by whites and his slaves alike, and spent much time and money looking for slaves that escaped. He had very few friends, which probably helps to explain why there is so little written about him. But the fact is that he forged a great portion of our area, and his mark and that of his slaves has gone unnoticed and unpreserved for more than a century.
