S2023-216c

The Faces of Gwangju: Foreigners 》The Bell Family

Story

• The Bells are one of the most famous missionary families in Korea and have a close connection to Gwangju.
• Known as the "Father of the Jeonnam Mission," Eugene Bell (1868-1925) was a Kentucky native who married Charlotte "Lottie" Ingram Witherspoon (1867-1910) in 1894.
• The couple came to Korea in 1895, settling first in Mokpo. They had two children, Henry Venable (?-?) and Charlotte Witherspoon (1899-1974). However, Lottie died in 1901 from a car accident.
• In 1904, Bell move to Gwangju and remarried to Margaret Whitaker Bull (1873-1919), with whom he had Eugene (1906-1933), Holland (1911-1912), and William (1914-1994).
• In Gwangju, he founded the Yangnim Church in 1904, Sungil Boy's School in 1907 and Speer Memorial Girls' School in 1908, and was also involved with the establishment of Chejung Hospital (today's Kwangju Christian Hospital) in 1905. He also founded Owen Memorial Hall in 1914 in honor of Clement Owen, who had died in 1909.
• After Margaret died in 1919, Bell married Julia Dysart (1872-1952) in 1921 but the couple had no children before Bell died in 1925.
• Upon Bell's death in 1925, the Curtis Memorial Hall was built as part of Speer Memorial Girls' School in Bell's honor.
• Bell's daughter Charlotte married William Linton, who was appointed as a Southern Presbyterian missionary in Korea in 1912, serving there until 1960. William was an active supporter of the independence movement during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945). In 1926, they had a son Hugh born in Gunsan, who served as a missionary in Korea from 1953 to 1984. Hugh's sons Stephen (1950-) and John (1959) became doctors, with Stephen founding the Eugene Bell Foundation whish provides medical humanitarian aid to North Korea and John working as the Director of the International Health Care Center at Severance Hospital. John, who was a medical student at Yonsei University in 1980, went down to Gwangju during the May 18 Democratic Uprising to serve as a translator for foreign reporters.

Semantic Data

Node Description

id	class	groupName	partName	label	hangeul	hanja	english	infoUrl	iconUrl
S2023-216c	Story	Episode		The Bell Family			The Bell Family	http://dh.aks.ac.kr/~gwangju/wiki/index.php/S2023-216c	http://dh.aks.ac.kr/~gwangju/icon/episode.png