L. Nelson Bell
American missionary (1894–1973)
Lemuel Nelson Bell (July 30, 1894 – August 2, 1973) was a medical missionary in China and the father-in-law of famous evangelist Billy Graham. Few people had more influence on Billy Graham than Bell.
Life and work
Bell was born in Longdale, Virginia, the son of Ruth Lee (née McCue) and James Harvey Bell. Bell and his wife, Virginia Myers (née Leftwich) Bell, served as Presbyterian medical missionaries in China from 1916 to 1941 with the American Southern Presbyterian Mission. They lived on the compound of Love and Mercy Hospital in Qingjiangpu, Jiangsu Province, 300 miles north of Shanghai. They had five children: Rosa, Ruth, Lemuel, Virginia, and Clayton.
Bell kept a busy schedule as surgical chief and administrative superintendent at the hospital. Although the hospital had a pastor on staff, Bell made the healing of souls a priority in his work, gently explaining the Gospel to his patients. He never minimized the importance of addressing the spiritual needs of the people as well as their physical needs.
The Bells returned to the United States before Pearl Harbor in 1941 and retired in Montreat, North Carolina, across the street from their daughter Ruth and Billy Graham.
“L. Nelson Bell” enters the record as american missionary (1894–1973). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nelson, Bell and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3672516. VIAF identifies the subject as 43470020. The Library of Congress control number is n90705245. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1894, 1973, 1916 and 1941.
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This entry incorporates text from “L. Nelson Bell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.