Charles Milton Bell

Charles Milton Bell (1848 – May 12, 1893) was an American photographer who was noted for his portraits of Native Americans and other figures of the United States in the late 1800s. He was called "one of Washington's leading portrait photographers during the last quarter of the nineteenth century" by the Library of Congress.

Early life Charles Milton Bell was born in 1848 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to Francis Hamilton Bell. He was the youngest member of a photographer family and his father was a gunsmith. In the late 1850s, the family moved from Fredericksburg to Washington, D.C. The studio expanded to four adjacent addresses on Pennsylvania Avenue. He also had an office on 15th Street. His studio became known for its portraits of notable people in Washington, D.C.

Personal life Bell married Annie E. Colley, daughter of the owner of the Windsor Hotel in Washington, D.C., on November 17, 1880. They had two children, Charles Milton Jr. and Colley Wood.

Bell became ill while observing a naval review at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, in the spring of 1893. He died on May 12, 1893, at his home at Windsor Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Legacy After Bell's death, his wife continued to operate the studio with her sons. It was sold in the early 1900s to Atha and Cunningham who retained the original name. The negatives were sold to I. M. Boyce, who sold the Native American images to the Bureau of American Ethnology and most of the remainder to Alexander Graham Bell. From there they would end up owned by the American Genetic Association who donated them to the Library of Congress. The C. M. Bell Studio Collection held at the Library of Congress 30,000 glass negatives from 1873 to 1916 created by the studio and its successors.

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