Lieut. Francis Bell
Francis Bell was one of the first settlers of Stamford, Connecticut. He is on the list of twenty-nine settlers who were assigned land there in 1640, and he received seven acres. Most of the Stamford founders had come down from Wethersfield, but his name does not appear on the Wethersfield records with theirs. The Stamford historian E. B. Huntington took that to mean he was still quite young when he came.
His son Jonathan, born in 1641, was the first child born in the new town. Francis became prominent in Stamford and held the rank of lieutenant in its militia. In the 1650s he was one of the men the town trusted to appraise the estates of dead neighbours, among them John Chapman's and, in December 1658, Jeremy Jagger's.
His wife Rebecca died at Stamford in 1684. The inventory of her clothes was entered in the first book of town records, and by her husband's order the clothes were divided equally between their two daughters, Rebecca, wife of a Tuttle, and Mary, wife of Joshua Hoyt.
Francis Bell died at Stamford on 8 January 1690. His inventory, dated January 1689 in the old style, came to 317 pounds 12 shillings. His will, dated 24 May 1689 and recorded at Fairfield, left bequests to his son Jonathan, his grandson Jonathan, his daughter Mary Hoyt, a granddaughter Hannah, "grand-daughter Rebecca, whom he had brought up", and his daughter Tuttle's four sons, Jonathan, Simon, William and Nathaniel.
He was one of the two men Stamford sent to govern it. On 27 October 1641 he and Andrew Ward were admitted to the General Court of New Haven as the first members for Rippowam, as Stamford was first called. The New Haven colony met in that court twice a year, and its deputies acted as both legislators and judges. Francis Bell was a deputy for Stamford from 1653 to 1659 and again from 1661 to 1664, and a magistrate of the town in 1652, 1654 to 1656 and 1658 to 1663. He was commissioned lieutenant of the Stamford trainband, the town's militia company, in May 1655, and Connecticut confirmed the rank in October 1666 after it absorbed the New Haven colony.
Some time after 1641 the town's first minister left. E. B. Huntington's history says the people chose "two of their most trustworthy number, Lieut. Francis Bell and George Slanson", and sent them on foot to Boston to find a new one. They came back with John Bishop, who stayed as Stamford's pastor for the rest of his life.
In March 1653/4 Stamford was close to revolt. Men who were not church members could not vote under New Haven's rule, and some of them wanted war with the Dutch without the colony's leave. "Serjant Bell, one of the deputies for Stamford", told the General Court what Robert Basset had said at the town meeting: that they would obey no authority but the State of England, that they were made asses of, and that their backs were almost broken. Basset was sent to New Haven in irons.
In May 1654 the court made Richard Law, Francis Bell and John Holly the deputies "to keepe court and cary on civill" affairs in Stamford for the year, and Law and Bell took the deputies' oath. At the same session, at Bell's request on behalf of Samuel Barret, the court lifted an order that had forbidden Barret to leave the jurisdiction and made him wear a halter. On 31 May 1654 Law and Bell swore before Governor Theophilus Eaton that they had paid the sachem Piamikee for corn trampled by the settlers' oxen.
In December 1657 a Greenwich woman called him a traitor, a liar, a villain and a rogue to his face, and he took the matter to the court of magistrates. In May 1659 the General Court asked him, as Stamford's deputy, why the minister Mr. Bishop was discouraged, and he answered that the pastor should be upheld. In May 1660 the court ordered a yearly court at Stamford and chose Richard Law and Francis Bell to sit in it with the visiting magistrates.
In 1671 he was on the committee given "full power" to build a stone meeting house thirty feet square. In March 1675/6, during King Philip's War, the town named him with Francis Brown and John Green to treat with the Indians, and "Mr. Bell, sen." was on the committee to fortify and stockade the town.
An old family Bible, still owned by a descendant in Huntington's day, gives the children's births: Jonathan in September 1640, Rebecca in August 1643, and Mary at the end of May 1646. Rebecca married Jonathan Tuttle and died at New Haven on 2 May 1676. Mary married Joshua Hoyt and, after his death, Joseph Turney in 1691. Jonathan became a deputy to the Connecticut legislature, captain of the trainband and a justice, and owned a tanyard. After Francis's death the granddaughter he had brought up also died, and the court divided her legacy of 50 pounds among Jonathan's other children.
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Cite: Heirology, "Lieut. Francis Bell (d. 1690)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/lieut-francis-bell-1690-f75c8d.