Wichita Daily Times (Wichita Falls, Tex.), Vol. 16, No. 272, Ed. 1 Sunday, March 11, 1923 Page: 36 of 48
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1 -I niu
stonishing Case of the
7ve *50.000 Bab
eS
TAD
‘They Are Not My Children!” Cries the
Ghost of
‘ 22 «'TL
eresa - 1 he
1 1”
Ire!
Says One California Court and Gives the
Bell Quintet Her
Million Dollar
tune.
HERE’S THE PLOT OF THE MILLION-DOLLAR BELL DRAMA
ACT I.—Time: The Days of 49 in San Francisco.
Tom Bell, who just made his pile in the gold country, comes down to San Francisco in search
of love and adventure. He meets “Beautiful Terssa,” famous character of that early day, and J
marries her. He builds a palatial home in the fashionable section of the pity and installs Teresa,
offering her $50,000 for each child she heart him. Teresa brings a negro woman, Mammy Pleasant.
ACT He-Tima: Fifteen Years Later.
“Beautiful Teresa” has brought her hueband five children and has collected the $350,000. In
the background the sinister Mammy Pleasant dominates the household. She is sold to be a voodoo
priestess among her own people. Bell has become a national figure in the financial world. ‘
ACT Iil.—Time: 1928.
Thomas Bell is dead these thirty years and Teresa has just died. Her will it being read ami I B
astonishing statements come out. She cuts off the five children without a cent and declares they
are not her children. The will outlines how the children were passed off on Bell at hit own, but
were really procured by Mammy Pleasant to Teresa and the negress could collect the money
Srange circumstances that linked Mammy Pleasant’s name with Bell’s death are also recalled
ACT. IV.—Time: 1923. . I
A San Francisco jury gives the BeU children the right to break Teresa’s will. The jury
decides that Mrs. Bell was insane when the made the will and that her story of the baby heae can-
not be credited. But an appeal gives promise of long-continued litigation.
T OMANCE flourished s gun on another day
I in this country of ours. Romance bought
4% a borro and a supply of bacon and flour
and treked out of Placerville or Dead Dog or
some such to the gold fields of the Golden State.
Romance dug and searched and washed dust and
made its pile. Then Romance journeyed into
San Franeisco and bought s celluloid collar and______.__—____.- ..... ..,.
a piece of cracked ice to deck its red satin scarf -of thin, pale crystal-stemmed glasses, according
and went a-hunting along Barbary Coast for ad- to still lingering tales of it. And directly aching
heads had been eased and mundane things
- stored to an aspect of moment, Bell started on
the building of the now famous house on San
Francisco’s Octavia street—the “House of Mys-
tery," where he was to meet his death.
One court has decided that five children were
*GUN the Roaring Forties—burled in the mid-
die of the last century, avid of color a"d reckless
of human life as they were. Gone old San Fran-
cisco’s Barbary Coast. Only • watery memory
of it now remains in garish, false-front buildings
and a few spiritless women who absent-mindedly
aanee with tourists from Hoboken and Evansville
to the moan of mechanical pianos and the swish-
swish of half of one per cent. brew. ,
They are but ghosts of the women who were-
the lure eyed snap-and-sparkle feminine Forty-
niners! Not theirs to trouble over flne points of
conduct that more or less universallynow dictate
the behavior of the country’s womanhood. Their
code was their own. But that was a boisterous
day, so they, too, were unique. .__.
And more often than not one of them joined
up with a member of the gold-adventuring fra-
ternity in holy bonds of matrimony and thus laid
foundations of many of the country’s oldest and
proudest and most honored First Families.
ese
see
la the days of Forty-nine the figure of Thomas
Bell biased against the colorful horizon of San
' Francisco.
A multi-millionaire of America’s youth, busi-
ness partner of the all but fabled Senator James
' G. Fair, and two generations ago an outstanding
figure in the financial world West and East,
James G. Fair pyramided his pile in s snoring
picture mining camp, pick-picking out the nug-
' gets by day, and at night tripping the light fan-
I tastic in the dance-halls of the mining town.
Thomas Bell married a girl named “Teresa.”
History has nothing to say about who she was
nor whence she came. She was a figure of the
T
L **--
most romantic days this country has known. Only
this much is sure. And her companion was a
negrosa who guarded her as probably no Ameri,
can woman ever has been guarded before. Mammy
Pleasant, mystic and Voodoo priestess.
—The Bellwedding long was remembered by
gay coast society, ft was large and full of joy
like the thin, pale bubbles that rise to the tops
born to Mrs. Bell during the time she was chate. A
laine of the “House of Mystery.” Her own voice, a
coming out of her grave like a mocking laugh. ■
declares that she lived and died childless. But t 9
the riches Thomas Bell began to pile up back a W
in the Roaring Forties, which rested in her hands A
for a few years after he had passed beyond
concern or interest in them, may now belong to
Thomas Frederick Bell of San Francisco, the 1
oldest boy; Reginald Bell, banker and rancher g
of Tulare county: Mrs. Muriel Bell Hooter of
Hollister, Mrs. Robina Bell Hessel of San Fran-
cisco, and Thomas Bell, the 2-year-old child of the I
late Eustace Bell, whose guardians ere Mrs. Dor
othy Bell, widow of Eustace, and Reginald Bell
One-third of Teresa Bell’s million-dollar es-
tate will go to charity, as she wished, and two
ancient servitors, “Blind Billy” Tomlinson and
Ellen Calden, more than a hundred years old, will Mi
be provided for. But, although the probate court 6
has brushed aside the strange story of a plot to *
obtain great wealth through foistering upon a ”
shrewd man of the world a picked-op family for 1 5
his own, an appeal to a higher court threatens to
bring more rattling of family skeletons. D
Bell died suddenly and mysteriously. His body Land
was found in a huddle one morning at the foot
of a dark back-stairway. He had fallen down Mrs. Dorothy Bell (sitting) and Mrs.
the steps and broken his neck, according to in- Robina Bell Heagel. Whose Testimony Won
formation given out at the time. But before Mrs. Hobina Bell Hensel "hoC 1 esumony won
Bell died, wandering in her mind and constantly
Newspaper Feature Service, 1923.
Reginald Bell, San
Francisco Broker, and
His Wife, Who Led
the Fight in Breaking
Teresa Bell’s
Strange Will.
talking of ner mystic powers, she was heard to
say she believed. Mammy Pleasant pushed him
over the bannisters and killed him ' J
Afterward there was much slipping and slid-
ing about of real estate—mostly in the name of
Mammy Pleasant, it was said that Mrs. Bell
was ruled absolutely, with all her household, by
the threats and promises of supernatural menace
and reward as the ebony person of her name and
companion doled them out. She 1st go valuable
houses and property it was said, for investments
paying a 2 per cent, interest. She finally moved
out of the “House of Mystery” altogether, aban-
doning it to the weird agencies that were said
to possess the place.
Finally she, too, began to talk of her exploits
in the world beyond the border. Her astral body
freed itself at night, she affirmed, and floated
lightly over * vast marsh with its Fires of Fate
and its wierd, undulating gases. She began to
trace a kinship with various illustrous person-
ages of revolutionary times. She built up a be-
lief in rare and exotic minerals buried in her
Sonoma county ranch. Finally she believed her-
self to be a greet poet. f
Apparently no one cored very much about.’
what 2 - after she died and that
remarkable document, her will, was brought be-
fore the world to accomplish her purpose as out-
lined by her attorney, of giving “the Ball children
a roast and a good kick.”
The will opened with a bit of Mrs. Bell’s verse:
_ “Perhaps in some one great herole act :
Them a Share in an Estate of $850,000. The soul its own redemption will attract.
And thus from sin and shame swiftly
Made fit and ready to meet the Eternal eye.
To live until all Is dead within us but ambi-
titin and that to live and mock us."
It went on then, the will, to designate parcels
of the $1,000,000 involved for charity and to cut
off the Bell children with exactly nothing! But
strangest of all was the reason, she set forth for
her action.
Back in the early days of her marriage, the
instrument explained, the rich Forty-Niner prom-
ised her $50,000 for each and every child born.
She determined to collect as much as she could.
With such end in view she enlisted the aid of
Mammy Pleasant.
Accomplishing her purpose was not specially
difficult, according to the story told in the will.
First Bell had to be convinced that a baby was
expected. Then, while he visited his mines or
journeyed East, the "birth" was made to occur.
1 The "foundlings" used in the quintet of hoaxes,
avers the will, were obtained by old Mammy Pleas-
ant from sources which Mrs. Bell herself never
knew. But the Bell children produced a half-
dozen witnesses who claimed to have been pres-
ent when they were born to Mrs. Bell.
However a jury of nine men and three wom-
en decided that Mrs. Bell was of unsound mind
when she dictated the will and put her signature
to it. Thus had died away an echo of the old,
old days of adventure in America, when Romance
flourished a gun and San Francisco’s Pacific
street was a midway of light and color and sound
—and pre-Volstead cheer!
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Wichita Daily Times (Wichita Falls, Tex.), Vol. 16, No. 272, Ed. 1 Sunday, March 11, 1923, newspaper, March 11, 1923; Wichita Falls, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1660864/m1/36/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Texas State Library and Archives Commission.