BELL, LAUNCELOT GRAHAM

BELL

Posted By: Administrator
Date: 2/4/2006 at 22:03:07

The Fairfield Ledger, July 2, 1868, Page 3, co. 4.

DIED – On the 29th ult., in Afton, Iowa, Rev. Launcelot Graham Bell, in the 79th year of his age. Father Bell was born in Augusta County, Va. He was married March 29th 1830, and the union then entered into continued with great happiness 37 years, his excellent partner in life preceding him to the grave only one year. He served his country as a soldier in the War of 1812, receiving an honorable discharge at the close of the war.

He entered the ministry, in the Presbyterian Church, in 1827, and after a short period spent as a Pastor in Tennessee, he devoted himself to the Missionary service in the new regions of the northwest. In 1833 he removed to Frankfort, Indiana, where he was Pastor of the church for three years. In 1836 he removed to Monmouth, Ills. Here the fruits of his labors were rich in the gathering and organizing the church at Monmouth. In 1837 he again entered the Territory west of the Mississippi, making his home a few miles west of Burlington. Here he diligently and successfully labored, exploring the country in various directions, preaching in the destitute neighborhoods, gathering the scattered members and organizing them into churches, and supplying them with the word of life until he could procure someone to settle permanently among them. In 1842 he removed to Fairfield, Iowa, to be nearer his field of labor, the sparse settlements of the frontier.

In the fall of 1853, Father Bell, seeing that the advancing tide of emigration had swept past him to the Missouri River, intimated to the Presbytery that if no one else could be found to enter the field thus lying unoccupied, he himself would enter upon it. In the spring of 1854 the promise was claimed, and though Father Bell was then over 60 years of age, he undertook the work, establishing his central point at Sidney, Fremont County, in the southwestern corner of the State of Iowa. In this region he labored until 1861, when the feeble health of his wife, and his own advanced age, (being over 70 years of age,) rendered it imperative to withdraw from the kind of labor to which he had then given 25 years of his life. He therefore removed to Monmouth, Ills. There with the church whose existence was owing to his labors, and surrounded with the affectionate care of a son-in-law and daughter, and their children, he designed to spend his declining years, but still labored in vacant churches in the vicinity as he had opportunity, and devoted part of his time to writing sketches of the early history of the churches in southern Iowa, which were published in the Northwestern Presbyterian. In 1867, his beloved partner, who had endured with rare cheerfulness the privations that fell to the lot of a missionary’s wife, peacefully died.

Father Bell ….. twice visited his beloved churches in western Iowa, riding hundreds of miles on horseback, and rather than be idle, spent the last winter with the church of Pope’s River, Ill…..In the spring of the present year he again visited western Iowa, and was on his return, and had reached Afton, when he was met by the messenger of his Master, bidding him cease his labors and enter into rest…..His body was brought to Monmouth and interred beside his wife…..