Bell, James Franklin
- Edgar F. Raines
Extract
Bell, James Franklin (09 January 1856–08 January 1919), army officer, was born near Shelbyville, Kentucky, the son of John Wilson Bell, a dairy farmer, and Sarah Margaret Venable Allen. Bell matriculated at the U.S. Military Academy in September 1874 and graduated in June 1878, standing thirty-eighth in a class of forty-three members. He served as a company officer in the Seventh Cavalry on the northern Great Plains from 1878 to 1886 and spent three years as a professor of military science and tactics at Southern Illinois Normal University at Carbondale, Illinois. He became involved in a number of service reforms, including marksmanship training and physical conditioning, and he was one of the first American officers to use a sand table to teach his men tactics. In 1881 he wed Sarah Buford. The Bells had no children....
