{"id":53213,"date":"2019-10-09T11:35:34","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T15:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=53213"},"modified":"2019-10-09T11:36:02","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T15:36:02","slug":"last-letters-are-powerful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/last-letters-are-powerful.html","title":{"rendered":"Last Letters Are Powerful"},"content":{"rendered":"

Family stories.
\nImagine if you had the last words spoken or written by your ancestor.<\/p>\n

If you are related to Tom Bell \u2013 who was born about 1825 as Thomas J. Hodges in Rome, Tennessee \u2013 then here is his \u201clast letter\u201d preserved in the old newspapers put online by GenealogyBank<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This letter was written to his mother just before he was executed.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Daily Democratic State Journal (Sacramento, California), 18 October 1856, page 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Powerful.<\/p>\n

But, why did he write: \u201cProbably you may never hear from me again.\u201d<\/em>
\nWhy so dramatic \u2013 so dour \u2013 did he know he was about to die?<\/p>\n

Yes.
\nHe was a thief \u2013 a stagecoach robber. Worse, men and women were killed by him and his gang during their robberies.<\/p>\n

Caught and arrested, he was executed the same day this letter was written.<\/p>\n

The San Andreas Independent<\/em> tells us more of the story.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
San Andreas Independent (San Andreas, California), 11 October 1856, page 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He was born Thomas Hodges in Rome, Tennessee, and took the name Tom Bell.<\/p>\n

He served in the Mexican-American War and went to California in 1850.<\/p>\n

He was well educated and was a physician with \u201cconsiderable surgical skill.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Once, when a man was wounded during one highway robbery, \u201cBell immediately dismounted, took up and tied the bleeding vessel, with much skill, had the man conveyed to a house, giving direction for his treatment, and rode off. The wounded traveler got well.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Tom was captured and put in the State Prison at Angel Island, but escaped while faking an illness.<\/p>\n

Tom Bell was a surgeon and threw a bright future away for a life of crime.
\nWhy?<\/p>\n

According to his letter to his mother:<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no one to blame but myself,\u201d<\/em> adding that his \u201cruin\u201d<\/em> was caused by \u201cbad associations\u201d<\/em> and frequently entering \u201cinto\u2026 gambling saloon[s].\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Memorable.<\/p>\n

Find your family\u2019s stories in America\u2019s newspapers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article, Thomas Jay Kemp describes the last letter convicted murderer Tom Bell wrote to his mother right before his execution in 1856.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12557],"tags":[23641,12,18861,2020],"class_list":["post-53213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-stories","tag-crime-and-criminals","tag-genealogy","tag-letters-and-diaries-or-journals","tag-newspaper-archives"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/illustration-0810-2017-featured-graphic-writing-hand.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}