The Bythewood Name
For generations, the Bells have given many of their children maternal familial surnames as middle names to honor their ancestors. Examples include the middle names of Black, Bythewood, and Hingston/Hinkston, all derived from one particular branch. The first Margaret Bythewood Bell (1810-1862) took that name in 1829 when she married John Bell (1782-1864). Her father John Hingston Bythewood (1767-ca. 1815) and his brother Daniel Hingston Bythewood (1764-1848) were born in Dorsetshire, England and are thought to have been sea captains. The Beaufort S.C. homes it is believed they built still stand today. It is unclear when and how John died (possibly lost at sea?), but his widow Ann Black Bythewood (1769-1846) has a stone in the churchyard at St. Helena Parish in Beaufort.
Margaret Bythewood Bell
The second-born daughter of Joseph W. and Julia Barnard Bell was one of at least three others of our Bell ancestors to be named Margaret Bythewood Bell. Joseph’s sister (1873-1900) and first cousin (1869-1957) being two additional examples.
Joseph and Julia’s daughter Margaret (1911-1998) was close in age to her older sister Mary. Theirs was a complicated relationship. “They used to argue all the time,” remembered Margaret’s son Dan. Their sister Betty Ann was 12 years younger “and when she got involved they both picked on her.” Betty Ann couldn’t pronounce either of her big sisters’ names, so Mary became “Mimi” and Margaret “Tede,” nicknames their nephews, nieces, and grandchildren used for them all their lives. Mary moved to Washington DC with her husband Leon Grayson in 1933. “Margaret was serious,” said her daughter-in-law, Dan’s wife Jane. “Mary was fun.” To be fair, Jane would admit she only got to know them both after Margaret’s family trials.
Max Pruitt
As a young lady, Margaret found a job working at the Hotel Whitney on Congress Street as a telephone operator and later, a cashier. Maxwell Dupree Pruitt ran a produce business in the old Savannah City Market on Ellis Square about two blocks west of the hotel. Did they perhaps meet on Max’s coffee or lunch breaks? In 1934 the couple eloped to Florida where they married in Jacksonville’s beautiful Immaculate Conception Church, now a Minor Basilica, then enjoyed a short honeymoon on the Florida coast. When asked why they married in Jacksonville their son Dan said, “They didn’t want to cause the family the expense of a wedding as it was during the depression.”
The Pruitt Family
“Dad worked many hours,” remembered their son Bob. “They had a processing plant between Broughton Street and the river. He always had time for us though.” “Even though it was the depression they had a very successful business,” said Dan. “He was able to buy our home on 50th Street in 1937. It was a one-story, two-bedroom home. Bob and I shared one room and mom and dad the other. When Nancy came along she shared the room with us as well.” Margaret ultimately lived in that home for sixty years. “We stored our bicycles in the garage area out back, and we’d ride our bikes to Blessed Sacrament School. Can you imagine? Nine and six year old boys riding down busy streets and intersections? Dad [even] bought me a pony. I named her Flicker,” having been inspired by the book My Friend Flicka. “Dad bought his own steed [too]. He converted our old garage into a stable. It’s hard to imagine today but we would gallop up and down 50th and other cross streets.”
In addition to the home on 50th Street “In 1943 he also bought a home on 10th Street down on Tybee Island. I have such great memories of that Tybee home, even though we only had it for two summers. It’s still there today. [Max] was a generous and loving dad, a fun and caring man,” shared Dan. “He did like to drink, however, and boy did my mother hate his drinking!” When Margaret’s sister Mary was in town, her husband and Max ran around together. “Leon got loud quick,” Bob recalled. Bob and Dan got into their own brand of trouble on Tybee, once climbing the scaffolding at the Baptist Church then under construction across from their house. Bob lost his grip and fell, a protruding nail “catching him above the eye during his fall, tearing his eyebrow and requiring stitches.”
Her Faith Sustained Her
It was on Tybee where everything changed suddenly in 1947. “I remember it vividly. Dad was lying on his back choking and seizing. Mother was frantic, making calls, trying to reach a doctor. Tybee was very isolated and by the time the doctor arrived my father was dead. The doctor said it was a heart attack but I think he choked to death. I watched him die. I should have turned him over, I don’t know. Something… I was only 11 years old.” Dan teared up as he remembered it seventy years later.
“My mother had the gift of faith,” said Dan, “and it sustained her throughout her whole life, especially after my father died. She was only 36 years old and had three children to raise. Bob was 9 and Nancy was only 4. She had no job skills.” Bob recalled that she tried to run the produce company after her husband died, but she was forced to sell the business and the Tybee house and went to secretarial school. “She never dated. She got a job with Minis & Co. and worked there for 30 years,” said Dan proudly.
Teen Hangouts
Margaret had an old ’47 Plymouth, but took the bus or streetcar to work for the most part. Bob remembered, “We went to Savannah High School. Dan learned how to hot wire [the Plymouth]. He showed me how and that was a mistake because whoever got home from school first would take the car, ” and go to places like “the Triple XXX Thirst Station on Victory Drive, a drive-in hamburger joint and Johnny Harris’, which had a more formal dining area but you could eat in the kitchen too.” Dan reminisced that Johnny Harris’ “had circular booths with bells you could push and a dance floor. And lamb barbecue. It was torn down a few years ago. They still make Johnny Harris’ BBQ sauce.“
Dan, Bob, and Nancy each eventually went away to college and married. “I was working at a bank in Atlanta at age 21 when mom fell.” Dan recalled. “I returned home and worked at Savannah Bank and Trust” to be near her. Nancy raised her two children in California, Bob raised his two in Atlanta, and Dan his three in Savannah on a beautiful piece of land that’s been in Jane’s family for more than a century.
A High Place in Heaven
“Her faith sustained her,” Dan said again about Margaret, then shared that his mother went to Mass most weekday mornings in addition to Sundays. Grandmother Julia Bell would sometimes go to Mass with her, despite never actually having become a Catholic. Margaret convinced her, and late in her life she received the Sacraments for the first time. “Mother was a remarkable woman,” declared Dan. “She deserves a high place in heaven!”
Adapted from A String of Bells: Stories of a Southern Family © 2020 by Nick J. Guevara, Jr.
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