Blair County PA Archives Biographies.....Bell, Rev. Peter G. March 5, 1835 - ????
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Source: Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Blair Co, PA: Philadelphia, 1892.
Author: Samuel T. Wiley

REV. PETER G. BELL,  
who has served efficiently and continuously as a minister in the Evangelical
Lutheran church since 1862, is a son of William and Elizabeth (Good) Bell,
and was born near Williamsburg, Blair county, Pennsylvania, March 5, 1835. 
His paternal grandfather, James Bell, was brought, when a child, from the
land of the Scotch-Irish, by his parents, to Dauphin county, near Harrisburg,
where he resided until his death.  He was twice elected to the State
legislature.  William Bell was born in 1801, and after learning the trade of
carpenter came to Blair County, where he became a contractor on the old
canal, and constructed the Crooked dam, on the Juniata River, for canal
purposes.  In 1839 he purchased the farm in Pleasant valley now owned by his
son, ex-Sheriff G. Thomas Bell, and in 1868 came to Altoona, where he died in
August 1877, aged seventy-six years.  He was an old-line whig and republican,
and served as one of the first three commissioners of Blair County.  He was
one of the founders and first ruling elders of the Second Evangelical
Lutheran church of Altoona.  
      A writer in the Lutheran Observer, in September, 1877, speaking of Mr.
Bell's death, says:  "he was always liberal in his contributions to the
church and charitable institutions.  His benevolent contributions were
frequent and generous, but his last gifts were more in keeping with those
enlarged views of Christian beneficence.   His character was by no means all
made up of liberality, but the usual Christian graces and virtues found among
the best of Christians were centered in him.  He carried his religion with
him, and let his light shine.  He was a faithful Christian father, and
affectionate husband, and made himself generally useful in and out of the
church."
      William Bell married Elizabeth Good, a daughter of Peter Good, and a
member of the Evangelical Lutheran church, and who died in 1866, at fifty-six
years of age.  Mr. And Mrs. Bell left six children:  David; Rev. Peter G.;
Capt. James M., of the 7th United States cavalry, and at present in charge of
Fort Myer, Virginia; Mrs. E.P. Miller, of Kansas City; G. Thomas, ex-Sheriff
of Blair county (see his sketch); and Mrs. Lewis Walton, of Altoona.
      Peter G. Bell was reared from four years of age on the old Bell
homestead, in Pleasant valley, and received his education at Wittenberg
College, Springfield, Ohio, from which he was graduated in the class of
1860.  He then entered the theological department of the same college, from
which he was graduated in 1861, and in the spring of the next year was called
to the Tarentum, Pennsylvania, charge of the Evangelical Lutheran church,
which embraced three congregations, one in Allegheny and the other two in
Westmoreland county.  At the end of three years he left the Tarentum field to
assume charge of the New Castle pastorate, of Henry county, Indiana, where he
remained until the summer of 1870, when he took charge of a mission field,
embracing Polo and the surrounding country, in Ogle county, Illinois.  Five
years later he went to Springfield, that State, and served as pastor until
1877, when he returned to New Castle, at which place he served as a supply
for two years.  At the end of that time he became pastor of the Evangelical
Lutheran church of Indiana, this State, which he served until 1882, in which
year he came to Altoona, where he has resided ever since, except about two
years.  For three years he served the Allegheny charge.  For the past few
years, owing to the ill health of his wife, he has not assumed regular
pastoral duties beyond serving as supply.  He now supplies the congregations
of New Florence, Westmoreland County, and Morrellville, Cambria
County.             
      On August 28, 1861, Rev. Bell married Nettie R., daughter of Warner
Hatch, of Springfield, Ohio.  They have three children, two sons and one
daughter, Ida M., wife of F.W. Spaulding, a druggist of South Norridgewock,
Maine; Warner H., who married Drucilla Holland, and is the managing editor of
the Altoona Gazette; and W. Frank, who is city editor of the same paper.
      Rev. Peter G. Bell is a republican in politics, and is a stockholder in
and president of the board of directors of the Gazette Company, which is
publishing the Altoona Gazette, now edited by his two sons.  This company was
incorporated April 4, 1892, with a capital stock of twenty-five thousand
dollars.  Their paper is a seven-column folio, published every evening except
Sunday.  It is republican in politics, and has already made quite a record by
the successful manner in which it secures all the important local and general
happenings of the city.  The company also issues a weekly. The enterprise of
the editors of the Altoona Gazette was well illustrated in its issue of Mary
17th last, when in twenty minutes after the adjournment of the Republican
county convention at Hollidaysburg the Gazette was being sold on the streets
of that town with a complete report of the convention and the portraits of
its nominees.  The Gazette Company has just published a directory of Blair
County, and by its present efficient management and the large circulation of
its paper gives promise of future stability and prosperity.

Additional Comments:
Originally submitted 2001. Transcribed by Tina Erb

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