1925 Biography - Chancey C. Bell

Chancey Clyde Bell is president and owner of the C. C. Bell Manufacturing Company of Monroe. Mr. Bell has had a continuous experience since early youth in the lumber industry, and knows every phase of the business from the expert work involved in woods as a timber cruiser to the manufacture and sale of the finished product.

Mr. Bell was born in what was at one time the capital of the lumber industry in the Middle West, Muskegon County, Michigan, in 1880. He was educated in public schools in the North and from boyhood became familiar with the work of logging camps and lumber mills.

Mr. Bell came to Louisiana in 1899 at the age of eighteen. His work as a lumberman was done in South Louisiana until 1905. In that year at Huttig, Arkansas, he became associated with the Frost-Johnson Lumber Company. This company is one of the largest manufacturers of lumber in the South, with mills in Arkansas, Louisiana and East Texas. Mr. Bell is still connected as a stockholder with the Frost-Johnson Company. Mr. Bell is best known in the lumber industry as a timber cruiser and estimator, and for a number of years that was his chief service to the Frost-Johnson Company.

Early in 1916 Mr. Bell established the C. C. Bell Manufacturing Company, with a plant in West Monroe. This is the oldest millwork plant in this part of the state. The plant is equipped with all modern machinery for the manufacture of sash, doors, stair and cabinet work, also other special millwork. Besides doing a large business as manufacturers, the company also carries a large stock of building lumber and building materials and specialties. The company has recently completed a mirror and glass beveling plant as an auxiliary to the main business, this plant being located in the City of Monroe.

Mr. Bell came to Monroe in 1913. For two years he was mayor of West Monroe, and has always borne his share of responsibilities in civic affairs. He is a former director of the Monroe Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Rotary Chub and is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner. He is also a member of the Lumbermen's Club, at Monroe, and a member and former director of the Southern Sash, Door and Millwork Manufacturers' Association, also being a member of the lumbermen's social organization, the Hoo Hoos.

In 1900 Mr. Bell married Miss Sarah Elizabeth Reive, of Muskegon, Michigan, and they have one child, a son, C. C., Jr.

Note: The sketch is accompanied by a portrait of the subject.

Contributed 2021 Nov 04 by Mike Miller, from A History of Louisiana, by Henry E. Chambers, published in 1925, volume 2, pages 303-304.