BELL FAMILY DATA

The BELL Family Tree

My Grandmother was Annie Bell and after researching the Wooler family it was a natural progression to research the grandparent’s family.
 It came as a surprise that my Bell ancestors came from the Taunton area as I had always associated them with Devon and Plymouth in particular.
 It was more of a surprise to discover that we had Scottish ancestry. I researched the Bell family at the Somerset records office and found a parish
entry for the marriage records of North Petherton

the transcript was as follows:-

25th February 1702 in the town of North Petherton Somerset
“Ffrancis Bell of Taunton a Scotsman and Elizabeth Speede daughter of Edith Speede widow of this parish. 

Although I have not been able to trace the Scottish connection further it is likely that Ffrancis Bell was born in Scotland around 1650 -1660
and traveled to Somerset about 1680 where he met and married Elizabeth Speed.

I continued to trace the spurious links from the Taunton records and made positive links back to Richard Tucker
baptized on 8th March 1604 the record has recorded him as the son of Agnete Tucker bc1580 and his mother Judith Tucker c1560
with an interesting comment ‘incog Judith’
the trail went cold from here but I might look for entries in the earliest church records.

The Bell family were resident in and around the village of North Petherton for generations and some records are confused as father,
son and grandfather were often given the same Christian Name. I spent several years working on the Bell family records and
believe them to be a true record of the family.

(note name Bell was associated to the McMillan clan below an extract from the McMillan web site:-

 In Scotland the name Bell is the English equivalent of Mhaoil– the genitive form ofMaol
(“bald” in modern Gaelic, but originally “shaven-headed” and thus “tonsured”) – which forms the
stem of the two Gaelic forms of the surname MacMillan: Mac-Mhaol–ainand Mac-Ghille-Mhaoil.
This is because the Gaelic “mh” – the aspirated form of the letter “m” – is pronounced like the English “v”;
as is the aspirated form of the letter “b”. So MiIl / Mell / Maol / Mhaoil =Vaoil = Bhaoil / Baol / Bell / Bile
and the proof of what seems to the modern English speaker a rather incredible nominal transmogrification
can be found in the second oldest genealogy of the MacMillans where the clan’s eponymous,
whose Gaelic nickname was Gille-maol, appears as Gili-bile.

The gill of the name M’gill is another version of the same, and at least one example can be found of the equivalent
form McBell (Malcolm, Daniel and Alexander Bell appear on a tax list for 1795 in Richmond Co., North Carolina).
America also retains examples of the old Scottish spelling Beall, most notably in a prominent family from Fifeshire
who were early owners of parts of Georgetown, in what is now the city of Washington DC.

In Scotland the name Bell can be traced back to the 13th century in the diocese of Dunkeld, where Cormac, the father of Gilchrist Maolan / Gillemaol, had been
a bishop between 1116 and 1132. A Master David Bell was a canon there in 1263, and Thomas de Perth, dictus Bell was an “Official” of the diocese in the same year. William Bell, Dean of Dunkeld in 1329 was actually elected Bishop of St.Andrews (the Primate of the Church of Scotland) in 1332, though his
appointment was never ratified by the Pope due to English pressure at the papal curia. Another Thomas dictus Bell was a canon of Dunkeld in 1340.
In the circumstances it seems extremely probable that these religious “Bells” were in fact all MacMillans. While most Bells north of the Highland line
 may be MacMillans, those further south – particularly in the Borders – claim to be a separate clan. It seems likely however that some at least of those in
Galloway – who lived adjacent to the MacMillan lands – may also have been MacMillans, since the earliest Bell on record there is one Gilbert fitz Bel, which is
the Norman-French equivalent of Gilbert mac Mhaoil; and the earliest recorded MacMillan in Galloway, who was a contemporary of this “Bell”, was called Gilbert (for the implications of which see below the “Border Bells”).