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MenuHomeUpfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon | BELL, Charles DavidsonBorn: 1813 10 22Died: 1882 04 07 Surveyor | ||||
Cape Government surveyor, artist, designer of Cape stamps, undoubtedly one of the most and versatile men in nineteenth-century Cape Town. Born in Crail (Fifeshire) Edinburgh, Scotland. He arrived at the Cape in 1830, and through the influence of his uncle Sir John BELL, Secretary to the Government at the Cape, obtained a position in the civil service. Having exhibited a talent for drawing, he was appointed 'draughtsman' to the two-year expedition which Dr Andrew Smith took to the interior as far as the Limpopo in 1834. In 1838 Bell became Acting Clerk of the Legislative Council, in 1845 Assistant Surveyor-General, and in 1848 Surveyor-General. Appointed one of three members of the Postal Enquiry Board in 1852, he designed the famous Cape of Good Hope Cape Triangular stamps, first issued in 1853. He also designed the rectangular stamps which continued to be used with modifications until 1902. Bell was one of the founders and later chairman of the South African Mutual Life Assurance Society, for which he designed their distinctive three anchors emblem. He was also a prominent Freemason, appointed as Grandmaster of the Lodge de Goede Hoop in 1852. He had a particular interest in genealogy and heraldry, designing many heraldic devices for South African families. A competent artist, he won a gold medal in the Fine Arts Exhibition of 1851 for the 'best original historical painting in oil of the Cape' with his painting the Landing of Van Riebeeck at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652. This picture today hangs in the South African Library, Cape Town. Many of his original paintings are preserved in that library, in the Library of Parliament, Cape Town, the University of the Witwatersrand and the Africana Museum, Johannesburg. He also did the illustrations for James Chapman's Travels in the interior of South Africa (1868). In 1854-55 Bell spent three years in Namaqualand surveying the copper resources. The town of Bellville in the Cape was named after him, Bellville station and the town that grew up round it evidencing his work as an engineer. It was Bell who reformed the Cape's outmoded system of land surveying. He retired in December 1872 and returned to Scotland. Books citing BELL
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