Bell County, in east central Texas, is bordered by Coryell, McLennan, and Falls counties on the north, on the east by Falls and Milam counties, on the south by Milam and Williamson counties, and on the west by Lampasas and Burnet counties.

The area currently comprising Bell County has been the site of human habitation since at least 6000 b.c. Evidence of Archaic Period (ca. 7000 b.c.-a.d. 500) and possibly Paleo-Indian Period (pre-7000 b.c.) inhabitants has been recovered from archeological sites at the Stillhouse Hollow Site, Lake Belton, and Youngsport. In the mid-19th century, early settlers found a rich wildlife population of deer, wild turkeys, wolves, bear, buffalo, antelope, wild horses, ducks, geese, wild hogs, and an occasional alligator. The buffalo, bear, and hogs were hunted to extinction in the county in the 19th century and the last alligator was killed in 1908.

The area was first settled in 1834 and 1835 by the families of Goldsby Childers, Robert Davidson, John Fulcher, Moses Griffin, John Needham, Michael Reed, William Taylor, and Orville T. Tyler, who settled as colonists along the Little River. The settlements were deserted during the Runaway Scrape, the name Texans applied to the flight from their homes when Antonio López de Santa Anna, a five-time president of Mexico, began his attempted conquest of Texas in February 1836. The area was then reoccupied, and then deserted again after the Indian attack on Fort Parker in June 1836. In November 1836 George B. Erath established a fort on the Little River about a mile below the Three Forks, which has been variously known as Smith’s Fort, the Block House, Fort Griffin, and Little River Fort. The settlements along the river were considerably troubled by marauding Indians. Little River Fort was abandoned, and by 1838 all settlers had left the Bell County area.

Settlers began to return to the Bell County area after the peace treaties of 1843-44, and Indian raids into the county became less frequent. Bell County was formed on January 22, 1850, and named for Peter H. Bell, who was governor of Texas. The election held to organize the county took place in April at the “Charter Oak,” near the center of the county at the military crossing on the Leon River. Nolan Springs was chosen as the county seat and named Nolanville. On December 16, 1851, the name was changed to Belton. The last serious Indian raid occurred in March 1859. The Independent Blues, a company of volunteer rangers led by John Henry Brown, was organized in the immediate aftermath of the raid to protect the frontier. This group functioned for about two months.

A significant minority of Bell County residents were Unionists during the secession crisis. A Whig newspaper, the Independent, was published in Belton, and, in the election of 1859, Bell County strongly supported Sam Houston. In 1861, however, the county voted 495 to 198 in favor of secession. Unionist sentiment never entirely disappeared, however, and from 1862 to 1865 some Union sympathizers and Confederate deserters congregated in northern Bell County at what locals called “Camp Safety.”

Reconstruction in Bell County was a troubled and violent period. Federal troops were quartered in Belton in 1865-66 to support Hiram Christian, newly appointed chief justice of the commissioners’ court, but they were powerless to prevent a series of feuds between political factions that resulted in murders and lynchings. The pattern of lawlessness continued into the mid-1870s; and the worst example of vigilante violence occurred on the evening of May 25, 1874, when a mob of men from Bell and other counties broke into the Belton jail and killed nine men, eight members of a gang of accused horse thieves and an accused murderer.

One of the most interesting cultural movements of the period in Texas was the Belton Woman’s Commonwealth, a celibate commune of “sanctificationists” that flourished in Belton from the 1870s through the 1890s. The women prayed about the trials in their everyday lives, especially for guidance to deal with authoritarian husbands sometimes given to unscrupulous business practices, intemperate drinking, and physical abuse. The wives increasingly sought personal, that is, religious and financial, autonomy. Sanctified wives were to live in their marital homes and perform their household duties, but with no sexual and as little social contact as possible with their unsanctified spouses. When two immigrant Scottish brothers sought out the group for religious reasons they were kidnapped, whipped, warned to leave town, and briefly committed to the state asylum. No other males tried to join.

The two world wars had a major impact on Bell County. The community enthusiastically threw itself into the war effort in 1917, providing twice its draft quota on one occasion and forming a variety of citizens’ organizations to assist in rationing, in maintaining morale, and in providing services for the armed forces. A more permanent change in county life brought about by World War II was the establishment of the military base at Fort Hood in the western part of the county.

In 2000 the census counted 237,974 people living in Bell County. Recreation and tourist attractions in Bell County include Belton and Stillhouse Hollow lakes, the Central Area Museum in Salado, the Belton Independence Day celebration and rodeo (July), the Central Texas State Fair in Belton (September), and the Salado Art Fair (August) and gathering of the Scottish clans (November).

(The information above is excerpted from the Handbook of Texas, an encyclopedia published by the Texas State Historical Association. The Handbook can be accessed online at www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online. Copies of the two-volume set may be obtained by contacting the TSHA at 512-232-1513.)