A Gentle Gentleman

Joseph William Bell (1883-1959)

Joseph William Bell, Sr. (1883-1959) was the fifth of eight children born to Julius Bythewood Bell and Elizabeth Jane Catherwood in post-Civil War Savannah, Georgia. Both parents had died by the time Joseph turned 18.

Joseph worked a variety of odd jobs in his young adulthood. Joseph’s Irish-born maternal grandfather Samuel Catherwood (1822-1873) was a druggist in Beaufort, South Carolina and Savannah for many years, and at age 15 Joseph was employed by fellow druggists Isaac and Joseph Solomons. Joseph Bell next worked as a mechanic in the fledgling automobile industry, during which he met and in 1907 married Julia Marie Barnard (1889-1969), a young woman from a working class but pedigreed family whose English forebears were among the first to receive a royal land grant in the new Georgia Colony. “Sir John Barnard was the Lord Mayor of London,” Joseph and Julia’s daughter Mary (1909-2001) assured us. “Wilmington Island was our family land grant.” Grandson Dan Pruitt used to catch rides to Wilmington Island and sneak into the General Oglethorpe Hotel (“which was always rumored to be owned by the Mafia,” he said) to swim in the pool. He’d joke that try as he might he’s never been able to find his piece of that land grant.

Though Joseph was a devout Catholic, Julia’s family was Baptist and it appears they did not receive a Sacramental marriage. Even so, their children were raised in the Catholic faith and each received their sacraments at St. John’s Cathedral, a twin-spired French Gothic structure which still towers over Lafayette Square in the Savannah Historic District.

Family Employment and Cotton Connections

Julia had three children by age 21, and one of Julia’s grandchildren said she heard that Joseph and Julia endured six miscarriages in addition to their six children that lived: Julius (Barnard), Mary, Margaret, Joseph Jr., Elizabeth (Betty Ann), and Charles (Billy). Julia’s father William M. Barnard (1849-1912) worked as police officer for the Central of Georgia Railroad, which once employed Joseph’s father Julius and, at the time of Joseph’s 1909 hiring as a clerk, his brother John and his uncle S.C. Catherwood (1863-1949) as well.

By 1917 Joseph had been recruited to work for the John Flannery Co., a cotton factor on Bay Street, where Joseph’s brother-in-law John McLaughlin Jr. served as a company officer. Cotton factors served as agents for cotton growers, and “took commissions of about four percent. Factors also wrote mortgages and loaned money to planters at rates of eight to twelve percent. … [and] sold them nearly everything which the plantation did not produce – groceries such as wheat flour, coffee, granulated sugar, and salt; clothing; tools; [and] luxury items.“¹ The cotton industry had changed greatly in the sixty years since his grandparents were sea-island cotton planters before the war, to say the least. Joseph found himself as a Bell working in cotton again, while communication and transportation technology advanced exponentially, a great war raged across the sea, and men whose own grandparents worked the cotton fields as slaves labored with and around him. Did he ponder these truths as bales of cotton were being unloaded from the rail yards to their warehouses, and later transferred aboard ships? In any case, in less than ten years the boll weevil would come along and devastate the cotton industry once again.

Even if Joseph was inwardly philosophical, he was outwardly jovial and kind. Granddaughter Jeno Hemmelgarn remembered him as “A happy man. If he had money he’d spend it. If he didn’t, that was okay too.” Grandson Bob Pruitt said Joseph, “Didn’t often have much to say. I do remember he collected coins.” Granddaughter Ann Grayson Guevara (1942-2015) remembered that her Granddaddy Bell “Worked as a clerk in the big old mercantile building on the waterfront,” dealing with merchants and ship captains.“My grandfather was a joker. He was wonderful. Happy always, always telling stories. He was a tiny man, 5’5″ with a size 5 shoe. He was a sweetheart.” Grandson Dan Pruitt added that though, “Small in stature, he had the biggest heart. He spent as much time with [his grandchildren] as he could – taking us to ball games and other outings. He was a true gentleman, and my mother’s guiding light.”

In addition to children and grandchildren, there were always animals in the house. Ann’s grandfather would “Come home in the afternoon, put on Bermuda shorts and walk the dogs,” always dachshunds. “Grandmother Bell had houseful of dog figurines too – all sorts of breeds, shapes, and sizes on shelves throughout the home,” Dan remembered. “She always had two or three dachshunds. My mother [Margaret] hated those yapping dogs!” Ann shared that “Mother [Mary] was four or five years old and he had gotten the children a pet alligator and it got out one day. And the old lady down the street came running up to the house and said, ‘Mr. Bell, Mr. Bell, your alligator is in my bathroom!’ And he called the man down the road who wrapped the alligator under his arm, held its mouth closed with his hand, and walked home with it. I think he had alligator soup for supper that night!”