Jackson Bell, a well known farmer and stock-raiser residing in precinct No. 5, has been identified with the interests of Dallas county, Texas, since October 20, 1854. Mr. Bell dates his birth in Lee county, Virginia, January 28, 1822. He was the seventh son and the ninth child in the family of eleven children of Dalton and Margaret (McCowen) Bell, the former a native of England and the latter of Scotland. Her parents were married in the old country and a few years afterward emigrated to American and settled in Virginia. The father was a Baptist minister, and besides preaching the gospel was engaged in the manufacture of spinning wheels. In 1824 he moved westward with his family and settled in Monroe county, Indiana, where he turned his attention to agricultural pursuits. He died there in 1832, and his wife passed away three years later. The children were all at home and unmarried at the time their parents died, and ten of them lived to be grown, Jackson being the only one now living. After the death of his parents he was bound out to learn the carpenter's trade, and served an apprenticeship of nine years and three months. At the end of that time he engaged in business for himself, and continued thus employed in Indiana until 1854.

    June 11, 1843, Mr. Bell was married to Miss Ester J. Patton, a native of Wythe county, Virginia, and a daughter of Henry and Katy (Grub) Patton. She went to Indiana with her parents when a child, and before she was grown her mother died and her father was subsequently married to a second wife, the children by his first marriage finding homes for themselves elsewhere. On the 11th day of September, 1854, Mr. Bell, accompanied by his wife and three children, started for Texas, and made the journey in a wagon drawn by horses, arriving in Dallas county on the 20th of October. While en route to this State they lost their eldest daughter and buried her at Preston, on the Red River. At first Mr. Bell rented a farm near Hutchins and afterward one near where he has since lived. In 1869 he purchased forty-two acres of wild land and has since cultivated it. Besides this he has 1,200 acres in Buchel county, which he pre-empted as a stock ranch. All these years he has been extensively engaged in stock-raising, and for fifteen years has been raising sheep, which industry has proved a profitable one. During the war Mr. Bell served in the Confederate army for nearly a year. In June, 1863, he was taken with a spinal disease and was thus disabled from active duty.

    Of the nine children born to Mr. and Mrs. Bell, seven are still living. Margaret Elizabeth died at the age of ten years; Joseph Henry is a resident of Brown county, Texas; James Simon resided in this county; the others are, Mary Catherine, Indiana, Jane, Esther Laura and Robert Ephraim.

    Mr. Bell is in politics a Democrat, and he and his wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.