DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker at Bell Cemetery tells it, as best as I can carry it to you. Uriah Jasper Bell was a Confederate veteran, born in 1839, and by the time 1871 rolled around he had a family to think about and a calling pulling him northeast. He brought them all to this part of Texas — Anderson County — and took up the work of leading the Ft.
Houston Baptist Church, an ordained Baptist minister with roots deep enough to anchor a community. He and his wife Nancy built a life here. Seven children.
Six sons and one daughter. Now, that daughter — Lula Bell Kent — that's where this story turns quiet. Lula married a man named Will Kent, and three months after that wedding, in January of 1890, she died in a fire.
Three months. The ink on that new chapter of her life barely dry. She was buried on the family farm, and that burial — Lula's — is the first one in what would become the Bell Cemetery.
Think about that. A father who had survived a war, who had answered a calling, who had raised seven children, now setting aside a piece of his own land to hold his daughter. Uriah Bell lived until 1915.
Nancy Bell lived until 1918. The six sons are buried here too, and after them, generations of Bell family descendants followed, each one laid to rest in ground that Lula was the first to consecrate. What started as a family's grief became a family's permanence.
That's the Bell Cemetery.
What the marker says
Confederate veteran Uriah Jasper Bell (1839 -1915) brought his family to northeast Texas in 1871. An ordained Baptist minister, he relocated to this area to lead the Ft. Houston Baptist Church. He and his wife Nancy (d. 1918) were the parents of seven children. Their only daughter, Lula Bell Kent, died in a fire in January 1890, three months after her marriage to Will Kent. She was buried on the family farm, and hers is the first burial in what became the Bell Cemetery. Also buried here are the Bells' six sons, as well as several generations of Bell family descendants. (1991)