PA Photos and Documents

This digitized diary of Thomas S. Bell was kept from January 1862 to September 1862 while he was a Lt. Colonel with the 51st Pennsylvania Volunteers. The unit saw action at the Battle of Roanoke Island; Newbern and Camden, North Carolina; the second of Bull Run; South Mountain, and Antietam. Bell died September 18, 1862, at Antietam. The diary includes pen sketches of camp. Thomas Sloan Bell was born May 12, 1838, to Thomas S. and Keziah Hemphill Bell of West Chester. He was one of five children, and his two brothers, Joseph and William, also served during the Civil War. Bell attended the West Chester Academy. He was commissioned as an aide-de-camp to the Major General of the third division of the Uniformed Militia of Chester and Delaware Counties in 1858, and in 1859, he was appointed paymaster of the same and made major adjutant. Bell was admitted to the bar on April 4, 1859, and had a law office with his father in West Chester.