Jonadab Bell (1839 - 1880)

Born 13 Sep 1839 in Beverley, Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 4 Aug 1880 at age 40 in Shrigley, Melancthon, Ontario, Canada

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Biography

Jonadab was christened in the Primitive Methodist Chapel in the Parish of St Martin´s in the district called Paradise, in Beverley. His son, Ernest, who ascertained this fact on a visit to England, chuckled that he had traced the family back to Paradise. Jonadab was with his parents in Christiana at an age when he was able to profit by the experience. He learned the language and is said to have interpreted for Lord Ellesmere and his sisters when they were traveling in Norway. He was a precocious child and is said to have been urged to education by Lord Ellesmere. He retained the culture that his opportunities afforded. Jonadab was blue-eyed and had light brown hair. Two pictures of him are known, a daguerreotype of his early twenties and a photograph of his late thirties.

As a youth, he helped to clear the land. During harvest, he went down to a settled country to earn cash. It was on such an expedition to Stouffville that he met Mary Ann Stevens and brought her home when he was twenty-six and she seventeen. They both had good voices and loved to sing. They had the first organ in the community. Jonadab led the Sunday School in the log church at Shrigley. Often he was the only minister the group had and his teachings were long remembered. For a time he had a farm beyond Maple Valley in Nottawasaga township. Here little Minnie (Mary Anne) died and is buried and here Frances was born. Then, his health failing, he had the general store in Badjeros. Periodically. He made the journey to Toronto to buy supplies for the store, seventy-five miles, but in the 1870´s it took him two weeks to make the trip and return. By 1878 he had taken his family back to the neighborhood of his parents and brothers. There was a log house then.

In 1935 his son Chauncey wrote, “The old house at the farm was replaced by Caleb – (who bought the farm after Jonadab´s death) with a new brick structure. I can´t recall whether Caleb also rebuilt the barn. The stone fence has grown in stature several cubits by the thought which was taken for it since the day´s when father took me by the hand and we together trudged down along it when I was five."

“ One of the apple trees which I am sure father planted with his own hand (and I recall vividly the time he put out that orchard) and upon whose blossoms he gazed in May from the window the last time he rose from the comfort of his bed in 1880, is standing still in the front yard.”

On August 4, 1880, Jonadab died of tuberculosis, His wife was only 33. His children were 14, 13, 11, 7, years of age. For the verses on his monument in Badjeros Cemetery Mary Ann selected:

“ He´s gone, the loved and cherished one, Like some bright star, he passed away, Death claimed his victim and he sunk Calm as the sun´s expiring ray."

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

"Another harp is broken and the tone that trembled upon its strings is now heard in heaven”

(A brief account of the forebears of Mary Anne Stevens. The wife of Jonadab Bell will be found in a later chapter, “ Stevens, Browns, Marrs.”

The above excerpt is copied from Olive Bell, Genealogist,

https://archive.org/details/bellfamilydescen00dani

NOTES ON STEVENS, BROWNS, MARRS https://archive.org/details/bellfamilydescen00dani/page/45/mode/2up?q=stevens&view=theater

=

JONADAB BELL (son of John)

b. 13 Sept. 1839 at 11 o'clock P.M. in Beverley, Yorkshire, England.

d. 4 Aug. 1880 at Shrigley, Ontario bur. at Badjeros, Ontario

^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ Olive Bell, Genealogist, (daughter of Ernest Albert Bell)

• The English Browns of Markham and Uxbridge Townships 1800-1985 by Rev. Victor Gordon Brown and Letitia Mae Brown

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