Horace Bell

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Reminiscences of a Ranger: Early Times in Southern California (1881)

Horace Bell (December 11, 1830–June 29, 1918), Los Angeles Ranger, Filibuster, soldier, lawyer, journalist, author of two books about the early American period of Southern California history.

Life

Horace Bell was born in Indiana on December 11, 1830. He was educated in Kentucky and came to Placerville, California in August 1850, during the California Gold Rush spending two years there with little success. He came to Los Angeles in 1852 to visit an uncle Alexander Bell who had settled there in 1842, married a Californio woman, becoming wealthy as a trader and influential in politics. Bell became a founding member of the Los Angeles Rangers a miilitia company that pursued outlaws in the most violent, lawless county in Southern California. In 1856, he left California to join in the Walkers Filibuster into Nicaragua becoming a Major in Walkers army. In 1859 he joined Benito Juárez's Army in Mexico during the Reform War. He returned to Indiana to join as a scout in the Union Army during the American Civil War. In 1866, married and with two children, he returned to Los Angeles. He became a lawyer and journalist and as an investor in city land he became properous. From 1882 to 1888 he owned and edited The Porcupine a newspaper he created to fight municipal corruption. As a lawyer and as an editor he defended the Californios and the poor. In 1883, the Police Chief of Los Angeles attempted to shoot him, before he was overpowered by Bell's son. After his wife died in 1899 he married a wealthy widow in 1909. He died in June 29, 1919, and was buried in Rosedale Cemetery.[1]

Books

Horace Bell, was the author of two books about his life and the times of the early years of the State of California. The first, an 1881 memoir, Reminiscences of a Ranger: Early Times in Southern California and some more of his memoirs were included in a posthumous On the Old West Coast: Being Further Reminiscences of a Ranger (1930).[2] Both volumes provide material for the early American period of California History.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger, pp. vii-ix
  2. ↑ Horace Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger: Early Times in Southern California, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1999, pp.i-xii Introduction by John Boessenecker
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