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Tall. Handsome. Steely-eyed. Shrewd. Crafty. Firm. Energetic. Creative. Imaginative. Sophistocated. Unpretentious.

Montgomery Bell was Tennessee’s first capitalist and industrialist and the South’s greatest Iron Master.

According to George Jackson’s book, “Cumberland Furnace A Frontier Industrial Village,” Montgomery Bell was born in West Fallowfield Township (now Highland), Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was the youngest of ten children born to John and Mary Montgomery Patterson Bell. They were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians.

The family believed in education, were patriotic, and strongly supported the cause for independence. Bell’s five brothers and at least two of his sisters’ husbands and his father, according Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Historical Society records, were veterans of the Revolutionary War. His father and mother were friends with George and Martha Washington. The southeast corner bedroom on the second story of the Bell home is still referred to as the Martha Washington room. Bell’s brother, John Bell, Jr. is credited with writing the first biographical sketch of George Washington.

At 16, Bell became an apprentice in the tanning business. He worked with a brother as a hatter. When his youngest sister, Elizabeth Montgomery Bain, who was living in Cecil County, Md., settled her husband’s estate in 1790, Bell helped her move to Fayette County, Ky.

In Lexington, the county seat, he established a hat business that became the largest hat shop west of the Alleghenies, employing 20 people.

The Bell Crown hat became a favorite headpiece among the westerners. While in Kentucky, he owned several homes and mills and purchased the famous Harrodsburg Springs.

In 1802, Bell decided to come to Tennessee to stay. He gave the hat business to his nephew, Patterson Bean, sold some of his property and, in September 1802, appointed his lawyer power of attorney to liquidate his remaining assets.

Since James Robertson was receiving orders as late as 1803 for castings and hollowware, Bell apparently worked for Robertson at his Cumberland Iron Works. By 1804, the last of his property in Kentucky was sold. The same year Bell paid Robertson $16,000 for the 640-acre furnace tract. The transaction did not include the forge site.

Montgomery Bell was active in civic affairs from his arrival in 1802. When Dickson County was created on Oct. 25, 1803, Bell was among the first Justices of the Peace who met to organize the government on March 19-20, 1804 at the home of Colonel Robert Nesbitt on Barton’s Creek. On Aug. 3, 1804 he was appointed by the Tennessee General Assembly to a five-member commission to select a suitable site for a county seat for Dickson County, to lay out the town and sell lots to construct the government buildings. In 1806, the General Assembly appointed Bell to the county’s first school board.

Bell agressively improved and expanded the furnace operations and the lands that were necessary to supply the raw materials to operate the furnace. In 1809, he purchased Dickson County’s largest land grant, 4,800 acres owned by Dr. Hugh Williamson, a signer of the U.S. Constitution who had received the land grant for his service as Surgeon General in North Carolina’s Continental Line.

In 1805, Bell purchased the Yellow Creek Iron Works in Montgomery County and bought a forge in Hickman County. Between 1810 and 1820, Bell constructed a second furnace operation in Cumberland Furnace. In 1818, he purchased land from Christopher Strong on Jones Creek to build his Red House Forge.

During the War of 1812, Bell’s Cumberland Furnace furnished General Andrew Jackson’s Southern Army and the Navy with two-ounce canisters to thirty-two pounders, double-head and single-head cannon shot. These were used by Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans Jan. 8, 1815, the last battle for American Independence. By 1820, much of Bell’s production was for the federal government, and in addition to providing cannon balls, he also provided gun powder and whiskey.

In 1825, Bell sold the Cumberland Iron Works to Anthony Wayne Vanleer, grandfather of Mary Florence Drouillard. He constructed Bellview Furnace (now Rock Church of Christ) on Jones Creek in 1826 and a corresponding forge named Valley Forge downstream. Valley Forge was Bell’s proudest achievement. A dam more than 30 feet high and approximately 230 feet long was constructed with cut limestone and placed across a valley. Bell then cut a channel from Jones Creek for flat-bottom boats to transport iron to the forge. Then he constructed a dam across Jones Creek and redirected the flow of Jones Creek through the valley. The dam pooled the water and the elevation change produced an enormous power to operate the forge.

His most celebrated achievement, though, was his Patterson Forge. Bell was mechanically inclined and innovatively harnessed the powers of nature to build his forge located on the Harpeth River.

At the Narrows, the Harpeth River begins a long, sweeping seven mile loop which brings the stream back to within a hundred feet of the opposite river basin. Bell and his associates determined that a tunnel could be chisled through the solid limestone. Laughed at by his critics during construction, the result proved to create an enormous water pressure to operate a huge forge operation. The 90-foot tunnel at the Narrows of the Harpeth was built by slaves and is considered one of the most important engineering feats of the 19th century in the United States. (see PHOTOS)

The tunnel is eight feet high and 16 feet wide.

In 1844, Bell constructed his final furnace and named it in honor of his first and most trusted slave. Worley Furnace was named in honor of James Worley.

Worley came to Tennessee with Montgomery Bell from Lexington, where he had worked in Bell’s hat making business. Worley aided Bell in selecting ore banks and water powers, as well as in all his iron operations and indeed, every branch of his business. As Bell’s agent, he carried ironware to Cincinnati and New Orleans and every time, returned with every dollar that was due Bell. In fact, Bell credited most of his success to Worley. A resident of New Orleans once offered a large sum of money for Worley. Bell’s reply was: “Not for all of New Orleans.”

James Worley was an exceptional man and is considered Tennessee’s first prominent African-American.

According to George Jackson, “With Worley’s help, Montgomery Bell is considered Tennessee’s first capitalist and industrialist and is a legendary figure in Tennessee’s folklore.”

Worley Furnace was located on Furnace Hollow Road between Dickson and Eno, and is the only furnace in addition to the Cumberland Furnace that reopened after the War Between the States.

Bell never married, but he did have at least one daughter. In 1851, Bell gave Patterson Forge to his daughter, Evaline Deadrick and her husband, James L. Bell, who was also Bell’s nephew.

In addition to the Forge, he gave them 500 acres and 72 slaves. They were married in 1824.

Near the end of Bell’s life, he became active with the American Colonization Society, organized in 1817 to resettle African-Americans to West Africa. They established the country of Liberia on Africa’s northwestern coast. In 1853, Bell offered freedom and free passage to any who wanted to relocate to Liberia. He brought them to his church, Nashville’s First Presbyterian Church (now Downtown Presbyterian) on Church Street in Nashville. He asked his pastor, the Rev. John Todd Edgar to conduct a special service for them before they set forth on the long journey to Africa and independence.

“And when they had sung their last hymn and said their last prayer on the church steps, Bell walked down the hill with them to the river where they boarded the boat taking them to a ship that Bell chartered to take them to Liberia.”

Eighty-eight slaves were freed. According to Dr. Robert Corlew, the former slaves “were transported to Savannah, Ga. From there, on Dec. 16, 1853, they sailed for Liberia on the General Pierce.

Aboard the ship were some of Bell’s best slaves. When they reached Liberia they expressed great joy at the sight of their surroundings. Bell paid for their passage and furnished them with enough provisions and food to last six months.”

Bell kept homes at each of his operations, ususally small and unpretentious cabins. But he did keep a Mansion house at Patterson Forge, and there is a reference to a former brick mansion that burned in Cumberland Furnace near the second furnace that was built by Bell. When he was 81, Bell purchased a 200 acre estate and mansion (built by Richard Christmas in 1832) on Franklin Road in Williamson County, now Brentwood.

The home was originally named "Good Springs" (later called “Ashlawn” by a subsequent owners) There he lived the “grand” life from 1850-1854.

Then he returned to Dickson County.

Bell was at his home located at Valley Forge when he died in 1855. He is buried in a small cemetery in a field within view of his tunnel at the Narrows of the Harpeth.

His numerous investments in iron furnaces and forges extended along the Western Highland Rim, located from Western Kentucky to Northern Alabama.

By will, he bequeathed the funds to establish Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville. At his death, he was worth nearly $75,000, a vast sum for the day. Its monetary equivalent today is many millions of dollars.

Although he never owned the land, the 3,892 acres Montgomery Bell State Park is built on the former Laurel Furnace site. It honors Bell’s legacy as the South’s greatest Iron Master.

Written by Rick Hollis for the Dickson County Bicentennial Commission.

additional notes by

Jay Swafford

Montgomery Bell researcher

Article originally published November 7, 2003