Bell & Bates Hardware Company was founded in 1902 by Norman Cawthon Bell and Mortimer Boulware Bates.
Mr. Bell was born in 1862 near Bainbridge, Georgia. He spent his first twenty years on the family farm near Bainbridge and began working for the Savannah, Florida and Western Railway where he learned Telegraphy. He was employed with the railroad for 17 years in Climax, Georgia. For the first ten years of that time he was associated with his brother in the timber business, supplying railroad ties and bridge building materials to the railroad. Mr. Bell was married in 1889 to Luella Bates, sister of M.B. Bates, in Mount Pleasant, Florida.
M.B. Bates was born in 1883 in Mount Pleasant, Florida. He worked on the family farm until he was 19 years old and decided he wanted to learn the hardware business. An arrangement was made for him to spend a year’s apprenticeship in Tallahassee with his uncle, George I. Davis, at Gilmore and Davis Hardware Company. Mortimer borrowed eleven hundred dollars from his uncle Thomas J. Davis of Mount Pleasant in 1902 to go into business with Norman Bell. He repaid his loan in a year’s time.
