| Born
in New Philadelphia, Tuscarawas County, Ohio on
the 13th of August, Bell was just thirteen when
the family removed to Naples in Scott County,
Illinois and married there, Civil War Veteran -
Oliver Jasper West. While in Naples, their son
Bert was born, but then they moved to Woodson
County, Kansas where their children Ida, Nellie,
Charles, Robert and Benjamin were born in Yates
Center.
Two years after
the birth of Benjamin, Bell was left widowed.
Like so many, they had joined in the Land Run of
1889 and had settled their family on 160 acres of
land in central Oklahoma. In the winter of 1891 a
flu epedemic came to the area and Oliver caught a
chill tending to the his neighbor's livestock who
were too ill to tend to their own stock. He fell
ill and died that spring on the 5th of April at
the age forty-six leaving Bell to tend to their
small children, the youngest being but two years
old.
Bell survived her
husband by thirty-eight years, passing away at
the age of 77 in Apache, Oklahoma where she was
living with her daughter Nellie Robertson.
|
