Charles J. Bell (businessman)

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Charles J. Bell

Charles J. Bell (1858-1929) was a Scotch-Irish-Canadian-American businessman, cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, son-in-law of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, and nephew of Melville Bell. Born in 1858 in Dublin, Ireland, he attended Wesley College before emigrating to Canada in 1873. He moved to Washington DC in 1880 to be his cousin's secretary in the new Bell Telephone Company. In 1881 he traveled to Paris to set up branches of the Bell Telephone Company in Europe. That same year he married Roberta Hubbard, daughter of Gardiner Greene Hubbard. She died giving childbirth in 1885, and after her death Bell married her sister Grace Hubbard. In 1888 he co-founded the National Geographic Society, and was its first treasurer. He bought the property for the headquarters of the society, where it still is. Bell died on October 2, 1929.