John Bell and Bell Mines

Who was John Bell creator of our Bell Mines and Community

 

In 1836 John Bell, a politician from Nashville, Tennessee, came to Crittenden County in hopes of establishing a new coal mining industry. He purchased thirty-one acres of land from John Lamb and John Rourk. The land being located in northern Crittenden County, next to the Tradewater River. This was the beginning of the coal mining town that would be named Bells Mines, after the man that started the mines.

 

John Bell was rarely present at his Kentucky mine projects, he relied on paid managers. After five or six years of work on the Kentucky mine project, John Bell left and returned to national political arena and the U. S. Senate as a Senator from the state of Tennessee. In 1847, Bell put his coal holdings in trust and his agents continued to run the Bell mines. 

 

 W. C. Carvell, who had as interest in the mines and who was manager for Bell while he was away, eventually purchased Bell's interest in the mines.

 Although John Bell died in 1867 in Tennessee, Carvell kept the mine going for several years, but John Bell's legacy of the beginning of Bells Mines continued to be carried on today.

 

Bell, John Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Bell entered the U.S. House of Representatives in 1827 and served there as a Democrat until 1841. He broke with Pres. Andrew Jackson in 1834 and supported Hugh Lawson White for president in 1836.

 

After White’s defeat Bell became a Whig and, in March 1841, as a reward for party services, was made secretary of war in Pres. William Henry Harrison’s Cabinet. A few months later, after the death of President Harrison, he resigned in opposition to Pres. John Tyler’s break with the Whigs.

 

After six years’ retirement from political life, Bell was elected as a U.S. senator for Tennessee in 1847, serving in the Senate until 1859. Although a large slaveholder, Bell opposed efforts to expand slavery to the U.S. territories. He vigorously opposed Pres. James Knox Polk’s Mexican War policy and voted against the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas–Nebraska bill (1854), and the attempt to admit Kansas as a slave state. 

 

Bell’s temperate support of slavery combined with his vigorous defense of the Union brought him the presidential nomination on the Constitutional Union ticket in 1860, but he carried only Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. He initially opposed secession; however, following Pres. Abraham Lincoln’s call for troops, he openly advocated resistance and henceforth classed himself a rebel. Bell spent the war years in retirement in Georgia and Alabama returning to Tennessee in 1865. 

 

 This marker is located in Sturgis, KY, Union County, close to the town's 4-way stop.  I always wondered why it was placed here instead of at the Bells Mines Road on SR 365.  Perhaps it is safer located there.