John Evans Bell (1864 - 1952)

Born 15 Feb 1864 in Mercer, Mercer Co, PA

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Descendants

Died 9 Aug 1952 at age 88 in Reno NV

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Biography

Arthur Chapman's Introduction to Jack Bell's 'Hooded Messengers' Oakland Tribune, January 14, 1923, page 38

Arthur Chapman, noted western writer, author of "Out Where the West Begins," has written the following tribute to Jack Bell, author of the article on this page today, the first of a series describing the thrilling heroism of the drivers of the air lanes.

JACK BELL belongs to the West. He would not fit into any other background. As a prospector and miner he has roamed the hills and the desert, and has pitched his tent in the deep snows above timberline and in the shadeless sands below sea-level. He has mushed over the far Northern tundra and has tramped the sterile plateaus of the Southwest. He has known the solitude of the wilds and the greater solitude of the mine depths. He has been in at the christening of mining camps, big and little. Some of them have been his own discoveries.

Through all these things, Jack Bell has walked with seeing eyes. From his own observation he has learned more of all phases of Western life than any other man I have ever. Nothing on the trail escapes his attention. He is a thorough-going naturalist, and knows animal life, not from what he has read but from what he has observed. He is a lover of the primal who has never been too keen after the Mother Lode to forget to bake an extra pancake in the morning for the birds and chipmunks about his camp. That sometimes harsh parent, Mother Nature, has talked to him fondly and indulgently. She has told him things about the birds and animals and the trees and streams and rocks, as well as about human beings that have given the old West its fascinating distinction from any other place on earth. Jack Bell's diaries, which he has kept faithfully these many years, tell the natural bent of the man for outdoor things. In them he has written more fully when alone in the solitudes in the midst of some mining camp hurly-burly.

I hope Jack Bell will be spared to get what he knows of the West into print. I know of no other man with anything like his store of valuable first-hand information, when it comes to things Western, animate or inanimate

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Howdy Stranger! Oakland Tribune, February 18, 1923, page 8

GENE FOWLER, noted New York journalist, writes as follows of Jack Bell, author of the Air Mail series now running exclusively in the Oakland TRIBUNE Magazine.

By Gene Fowler

"Know Jack Bell?"

"Which I reckon I do."

That used to be the test-word [xx] welcome, hospitality and anything you needed at the moment. Anywhere, any time - if you knew Jack Bell you could come in. If you didn't they might take you in, but it wasn't quite the same.

It has been nearly eight years since I saw Jack. But I know just how he looks and just how he is. He is one of those genuinely he-men that seems to have the secret of youth. I know that Jack, peering from under the broad brim of his Stetson, hasn't changed a bit.

When I was a young squirt, I remember meeting Bell. I had read many of his real, honest-to-God stories of the actual (not movie) West. Later Jack became a warm friend. He is never halfway. Either he likes you or you can go to the devil.

I thought then that Jack could write the best Western stories that were to be written. I am of that [xx] "Mister Burro" in script, and I regarded it then, as I do now, a masterpiece. It is a sketch that experts on Western lore, including those who have mucked, busted and shot their way through the land of Sunset Trails, regard as a beautiful picture from the hand of an artist.

Stranger, maybe you have heard of Jack Bell. Now I am asking you to meet him. Lucky, indeed, if you could sit down with him about a fire at night - out in the open, I mean, and not in any drawing room - and hear him tell of his travels and adventures. The next best thing to that, however, is to meet him on the printed page. He has a faculty of talking to you that way.

You can't go wrong on Jack Bell. He is aces in any deck.

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Raine Writes of "Jack Bell of the Frontier" Oakland Tribune, February 25, 1923, page 8

WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE, famous American writer, author of successful novels of the West, has penned the following tribute to Jack Bell, author of the Air Line articles appearing in The Oakland Tribune:

By WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

JACK Bell of the Frontier! There it is in a word. For Jack Bell typifies that quest for high adventure, for the conquest of the wilderness, that is the soul of the West. In the days of his youth the dry and thirsty desert, the lands of the high snow peaks, were trumpet calls to the eager hearts whose eyes turned always to the frontier. Jack answered that call. He has been answering it ever since.

For Jack Bell is your true soldier of fortune. He has always been on the edge of civilization and beyond, tramping blithely wherever there was a promise of hardship or danger, of colorful drama in the borderlands where life was turbulent and young.

As a lad he followed the shining rails of steel to the camps known temporarily as "end of the road." He was telegraph operator, railroader, lumberjack, bartender, cowpuncher, prospector. In two waars he put on the khaki and went through. There is no city in this country of Canada where he is not known. He has mushed in Alaska and hiked through the hills of Mexico. With a burro as companion he has broken new trails in almost every state of the West. Cripple Creek and Goldfield were his habitat when the names stood for all the riotous and picturesque vitality of new mining camps. He has seen and been a part of the vanishing West, of the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century in the land of wide sun-and-windswept spaces.

To look once at Jack Bell is to place him instantly. The sun-browned skin, the compact strength of the lithe, graceful body, the cool grey-blue eyes that can be warm or chill and hard as steel, mark him for an outdoor man who has lived long alone among the high pines with the stars for a roof. As much as any man I know he looks the part.

But he is more than a soldier of fortune. Always in his wanderings he has carried with him another Jack Bell, one who loved birds and trees and little chipmunks and sunsets in the high hills. He can tell you all about ptarmigan in the white snow reaches of the peaks. He can talk by the hour of the habits of beaver and blue jay and mountain sheep, and he is always interesting, because the thing he knows has come to him from first hand observation. For Jack is a born naturalist.

He keeps diaries in the long months when he is prospecting in the hills with only a burro for a companion. (By the way, you should hear him talk about the burro if you want to understand the man. I have heard men talk with the same affection about their dogs, but nobody else in that way of the lowly and despised burro.) His diaries are full of notes of the things he sees, and what he sees are the things that the rest of us ought also to see but do not.

For Jack comes to Nature with the same simple and open mind that Muir and BUrroughs brought to it. It is the inquiring mind of a child plus the trained one of a scientific observer. He studies patiently, always observing and classifying. So he makes his theories fit his facts rather than the reverse.

A man worth knowing, this Jack Bell of the Frontier - worth knowing both in his own person and in the stuff he writes. There are few of his type left. In the not distant future the last of them will have vanished.

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An Old Timer Nevada State Journal - August 13, 1952, Page 4

One of the West's colorful old-timers passed away Saturday at the age of 88 and newspaper men as well as sportsmen in Reno and vicinity will miss him.

Jack Bell was his name and if he ever used any other name besides "Jack," which might have been John when he was given a name in Pennsylvania where he was born in 1864, no one ever heard it around the newspaper offices.

Jack was in many respects a soldier of fortune and he engaged in many activities. He could write and write well. He was an expert fisherman and he was a detective of far more than ordinary ability. His detective work was done in the mining camps of Colorado and elsewhere around the turn of the century after he paid a visit to the Klondike.

As a lover and student of nature Jack was an authority on bird life and the habits of innumerable animals, as well as the lowly but respected rattlesnake.

He was a soldier, too, in two wars because he liked it. He served in the Spanish American War and in World War I and was thoroughly disgusted when at the age of 78 he was unable to enlist in the armed services in 1942.

Twenty-five years ago Jack Bell was a constant contributor to the sports columns of the Nevada State Journal and provided numerous feature stories, many of them dealing with his personal experiences as a detective, a guide, a prospector or a soldier. He wrote for several national magazines and had visions of writing a "best seller" but never got around to it.

Married late in life to a newspaper woman, Jack enjoyed ten years or more of home life which was terminated when Lola Bell died. He was lonely after that but came to Reno occasionally from his home in Verdi to see old friends and they visited him occasionally. The birds and even the rattlesnakes at his Verdi home were his friends, but when he was rejected for the armed services ten years ago he seemed to lose the fire and the interest that induced him every year to march in the Armistice Day parade carrying an American flag. The parades were always followed by a gathering of Spanish American and World War I veterans with Jack as the host. They were gatherings to be remembered.

Jack Bell will be buried here with military honors, well won and well deserved.

John was born in 1864. John Bell ... He passed away in 1952.

Sources

1870 Census Shows John E. living with father James M. and mother Sarah E. in Mercer, Mercer PA.

Rocky Mountain Daily News Saturday, February 20, 1897 Ouray CO Feb. 19. Notice of J. E. Bell thought to have been lost in an avalanche. Found safely later. Article mentions "he has a wife and child in this city."

[1] Marriage announcement between J. E. "Jack" Bell and Catharine Burnett Mercur. Denver Post, 14 June 1902.

[2] Article saying that "Arizona" has arrived to John E. "Jack" Bell. Dated photographs show baby Bradley at the same date, so Jack must have had trouble convincing Catharine to name the baby Arizona.

John Bell and Catherine Bell divorce in Fremont County, CO docket number 3636, 11 Jun 1909.

[3] Denver Post 7 Feb 1915 Jack Bell prospecting with wife Laura

[4] The Record-Argus, Greenville PA, Monday, 23 July 1917, Page 3 Obituary of mother, Sarah Evans Bell, mentions son John Evans Bell living in Mercer, Mercer PA.

1920 Census. Shows John E. Bell with father James M. Bell, sister Fannie E. Bell, and wife Laura Bell in Mercer, Mercer PA.

1940 Census. Shows Jack Bell with wife Lola F. in Verdi Township, Washoe Co, Nevada.

[5] Nevada State Journal - June 16, 1941 Obituary for Lola F. Bell, wife of Jack Bell of Verdi.

Death certificate gives dates of birth and death for Jack Bell, father's name with middle name, incorrect first name and correct surname of mother (no nearby family; all his family dead), place of birth and death.