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Montgomery Bell (January 3, 1769,
Chester County, Pennsylvania Chester County (Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Tscheschter Kaundi''), colloquially known as Chesco, is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in the Delaware Valley region of the state. As of the 2020 census, the population was 53 ...
– April 1, 1855,
Dickson County, Tennessee Dickson County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 54,315. Its county seat is Charlotte. Dickson County is part of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN Metropoli ...
) was a
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entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...
who was crucial to the
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of early
Middle Tennessee Middle Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of the U.S. state of Tennessee that composes roughly the central portion of the state. It is delineated according to state law as 41 of the state's 95 counties. Middle Tennessee contains the ...
. He was known as the "Iron Master of the Harpeth" and the "Iron Master of Middle Tennessee". Today he is remembered mostly for founding Montgomery Bell Academy, one of the largest private non-sectarian all-boys high schools in the United States.


Early life

Montgomery Bell was born on January 3, 1769 in
Chester County, Pennsylvania Chester County (Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Tscheschter Kaundi''), colloquially known as Chesco, is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in the Delaware Valley region of the state. As of the 2020 census, the population was 53 ...
. His father, John Bell, was an Irish emigrant to the United States. His mother was Mary Patterson. He was of Scotch-Irish descent on both sides. Bell served a three-year apprenticeship to a tanner and later became a hatmaker with an older brother. At age 20, he left Pennsylvania for Lexington, Kentucky where a widowed older sister lived and opened a hat-making business paying for the education of his sister's children.


Career

Bell moved to Middle Tennessee and became involved in the iron business purchasing James Robertson's iron works at Cumberland Furnace, Tennessee in 1804 for $16,000. Bell expanded his operations and built other furnaces and mills including a hammer mill south of Charlotte, at Tennessee on Jones Creek using water power. By 1808, Bell was buying wood at 50 cents per cord for charcoal to fuel his Cumberland Furnaces which cast cannonballs used in the War of 1812 by General Andrew Jackson's troops at the Battle of New Orleans. Bell built another forge and hammer mill called "Pattison Forge" after his mother's maiden name. Bell finished a tunnel approximately 100 yards (91 m) long through a narrow limestone and sandstone ridge from a point seven-miles upstream creating a 4-foot fall to operate his hammers and forge. There had been an earlier plan to shorten the river path for flatboats to ship goods. Bell named another of his iron works "Worley Furnace" after James Worley, a slave. Bell made the Narrows his operational headquarters and built a home there which he called Bell View. A nearby unincorporated community where many of his workers lived is called Bell Town. Bell suffered losses in the Panic of 1819 and in 1824 he advertised the Narrows and other properties for sale in the Nashville Whig. Bell offered to sell his ironworks to the U.S. Army for an Armory but floods on the Harpeth were well known and that idea failed. Bell sold the ironworks to Anthony Wayne Van Leer, who was a member of a well known historical family in Pennsylvania and noted in the anti-slavery cause.   The Narrows property was not sold during Bell's life but much was lost through looting, flooding, and the effects of time. The tunnel remains and part of the Tennessee State Park system. As early as 1835, Bell sent 50 of his freed slaves to
Liberia Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coast� ...
.John F. Baker, ''The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation: Stories of My Family's Journey to Freedom'', New York City: Simon and Schuster, 2010, p. 8

/ref> In 1853, he sent 50 more of them. He eventually emancipated 150 more of his slaves. Additionally, he hired a teacher from
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to teach them how to read and write, at a time when this was illegal.


Death

He died on April 1, 1855 in Dickson County, Tennessee which location became Cheatham County in 1856. He was buried near the Narrows property in a cemetery near his Bell View home


Legacy

He bequeathed $20,000 toward "the education of children not less than ten nor more than fourteen years old who are not able to support and educate themselves and whose parents are not able to do so." This was the foundational grant for the Montgomery Bell Academy in
Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and ...
. The Montgomery Bell State Park is named in his honor. The Montgomery Bell Bridge, over the Harpeth River above its confluence with the
Cumberland River The Cumberland River is a major waterway of the Southern United States. The U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed June 8, 2011 river drains almost of southern Kentucky and ...
near Ashland City, Tennessee on Tennessee State Route 49, is also named in his honor.


References


Further reading

*Corlew, Robert E., ''A History of Dickson County'' (Nashville, 1956, reprinted 1980), Tennessee Historical Society {{DEFAULTSORT:Bell, Montgomery 1769 births 1855 deaths American people of Scotch-Irish descent People from Chester County, Pennsylvania People from Cheatham County, Tennessee Businesspeople from Tennessee