She was christened Anna Martha Bell, but she was always known as “Mattie.” The baby girl was born 9 July, 1857, in Erie, Miami County, Indiana to a father with the unusual name Pleasant Lilly Bell (1809-1882). According to his 20 July, 1879, obituary, “Mr. Bell was born in [Vevay,] Switzerland County [Indiana] in 1814, two years before the admission of Indiana to the sisterhood of states. He came to this part of the state [Miami County] when yet a young man and worked on the Wabash & Erie Canal which the state was then constructing. He was a resident of Miami for more than 40 years. His reputation was spotless and he was in high esteem by all who knew him.”
Pleasant was the son of Armiger Lilly Bell (1771-1816) and his wife Sarah Blackford (1779-1848). Armiger Bell was born in Fluvanna, Virginia, 10 January, 1771. He was the third youngest of a dozen children. The Bell family was large, well off, and owned land and slaves. Armiger later sailed down the Ohio River to Kentucky, meeting his future wife Sarah, and married her on 31 March, 1795. The couple settled near Vevey and took up farming in what was then a heavily forested area.
After Armiger’s death on 5 November, 1816, his eldest son James took over the farm, until his mother remarried in 1821 and his new stepfather took over from her son. Her second husband, John White, appears to have been abusive and volatile. Ultimately, he mysteriously vanished while taking a herd of hogs to market. Sarah eventually came to live with her son Pleasant and his family. She died in 1848 and is buried in the Tillett Cemetery.
"Your Dying Charlotte" 