Alameda County Biographies

DR. SAMUEL B. BELL

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 

	Rev. Dr. Samuel B. Bell, who passed away at Santa Barbara, California, in 1897, was 
one of the earliest and leading ministers of the gospel in San Francisco, winning recognition 
as a distinguished Presbyterian preacher. He was born in Orange county, New York, and was 
ordained as an evangelist at Onondaga, that state, in 1852. In November of that year he was 
sent by the American Home Missionary Society as one of their missionaries to the Pacific coast, 
and he sailed around the Horn on the clipper ship Trade Wind, landing in San Francisco after a 
most eventful voyage of one hundred and five days. Upon his arrival in California he commenced
 his work as a Presbyterian missionary on the shores of San Francisco bay, upon the site where
 Oakland now stands, and he was thus a pioneer in the foundation of Presbyterian principles and 
doctrines in this vicinity. He built the first Presbyterian church edifice of Oakland and was 
its pastor for many years, exemplifying in his honorable and upright life the principles in 
which he believed.
	A man of great breadth of view, activity of mind and of varied interests, he left during 
the ten years of his first residence in California the impress of his personality and standards 
upon many of the most notable institutions in the state. He procured the charter for the College 
of California, now the University of California, and he was one of the founders of that 
institution. He represented his district in the state senate and in the house of representatives 
for three years, during which time he was connected with a great deal of important legislation, 
aiding in the passage of the Homestead law and introducing the bill creating the board of regents 
in California. He was president of the first republican state convention ever convened in 
California and in many other ways aided in making political history. He preserved a lively 
recollection of pioneer times in the state when gold was so plentiful that there were grave 
apprehensions that it would soon become valueless, and he could remember the period of crime and 
lawlessness which necessitated the organization of the Vigilance Committee.
	After a residence of nearly ten years in California, Dr. Bell returned to the east, making 
the journey overland to New York. He tendered his services to General Hooker in 1862 but was not 
permitted to go to the front, the same year witnessing his appointment as pastor of the Fiftieth 
Street Presbyterian church in New York city. He there became prominent as a lecturer and orator, 
taking part in many stirring events of that time and making numerous addresses at the laying of 
corner stones, and before colleges, universities and other learned bodies. He was a member of two 
general assemblies of the Presbyterian church of the United States and was prominent in the 
councils of his religious denomination.
	From New York city he went to Lyons, in Wayne county, New York, and thence to Hillsdale, 
Michigan. From the latter city he again removed to California, having accepted a chair in 
Washington College, Alameda county, which he afterward resigned in order to become pastor of the 
First Congregational church of Mansfield, Ohio. Afterward he removed to Kansas City, Missouri, and 
then came again to California, making his home in Santa Barbara, where he lived a retired life until 
his death, passing away in 1897, in his eighty-first year. His wife, who bore the maiden name of 
Sophia Walworth, was a native of Cleveland, Ohio, and a descendant of Revolutionary ancestry.

Past & Present of Alameda County, California � Vol II, S. J. Clarke Publ. Co., 1914, p. 514