Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/656

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VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

tion or enterprise of city-wide interest. He is an ornament to the clergy of a church that is served by many of the most able of scholars, and to the service of his congre- gation he devotes the best of his talents, talents whose power for good has been fully demonstrated.

Mr. Hall married, February 21, 1877, Emma Bickford, born in Oswego, New York, daughter of James Bickford, a drug- gist of that city, both of her parents de- ceased. Mr. and Mrs. Hall are the parents of three children, the homes of all four fam- ilies being within a square of one another in Danville: i. Helene, married J. Leonard Jennings, a physician, and has three chil- dren : Leonard, Cleveland, and James Wil- son. 2. Raymond, confidential bookkeeper of the Riverside and Dan River Cotton Mills; married Saidie Rutherfoord, daughter of Dr. Lew^is E. Harvie, of Danville ; they are the parents of a son, Raymond, Jr., and a daughter, Saidie. 3. Happy, married Major Theo Parker, a graduate of West Point Military Academy, who served in the Spanish war. now superintendent of the l^anville t.^- Western railroad.

James Pinkney Bell. In the cases of many men who have become the heads of great industrial or business concerns the early training of their lives has been directed to that end, and, although the ascent of the ladder of fortune and success may have been through the exercise of the powers that were their natural endowment, the choice of their callings was made by a guiding mind and directing interest. James Pinkney Bell, during a lifetime of vigorous endeavor and useful activity, attained the topmost round of the journalistic ladder, but it was pure and simple chance that placed him in the field in which he gained his prominence, not the loving hand of parent nor the watchful care of guardian. His family was an old one in Virginia, his grandparents, W'illiam and Molly (Allen) Bell, and his parents, James and Catherine (Terrell) I'ell, having been residents of that state.

James Pinkney Bell, son of James and Catherine (Terrell) Bell, was born in Caro- line county, Virginia, November 18, 1830, died July 24, 191 1. His youth was spent in the county of his birth, where he attended the schools, and, exhausting their humble resources, continued his studies without in-

struction or companionship. Until he was eighteen years of age he worked on the home farm, but at that time he became de- sirous of acquaintance with life beyond his immediate horizon and of a field for the try- ing out of the faculties that he felt himself to possess. For a short time he was engaged in business in Fredericksburg, later journey- ing northward to Baltimore and Philadel- phia, but, unimpressed by opportunities in these cities, went to Corinth, Mississippi. Here his beginning was so inauspicious as to discourage him immediately, for one night soon after his arrival in the city he was robbed of all of his possessions, with the exception of a small sum in a pocket that the thieves had overlooked. He speed- ily left the scene of his misfortune, facing toward Lynchburg, Virginia, in which city he arrived in 1859, his cash assets amount- ing to exactly five dollars and with no other resources other than a walling nature, an undaunted spirit, and a firm conviction that he would soon find the niche for which he was fashioned and destined. He not long afterward became identified with the "Rich- mond Dispatch," in time being placed in charge of the city business of that periodical, fulfilling the duties of local correspondent as w^ell as business and circulation manager. In addition to these offices he began deal- ings in books and stationery, to which he devoted a part of his already crowded time, leaving b;,th of his engagements in com- petent hands at the outbreak of the war be- tween the states to become express messen- ger on the Virginia and Tennessee railroad, at the same time sending letters from the front to the "Dispatch." His short notes of the movements of the armies became so popular a feature of the paper that his superiors, seeing the possibilities in such a department, directed him to resign his posi- tion as messenger and to make his duties as war correspondent his only labor. He did so, and, presenting himself to the army leaders, became a duly accredited war corre- spondent, with the privileges attached to such an army relation. From that time until the close of the war Mr. Bell's letters ap- peared in the "Dispatch," attracting the notice and interest of thousands. They were fully of the spirit of battle, stories of the bravery of men and the gallantry of leaders, of the little tragedies that but for his pen would have gone to n:imelcss graves. Tales