Governor Frank B. Bell

January 28, 1840 - February 13, 1927.

6th Governor of Nevada.

Frank Bell was born and educated in Toronto, Upper Canada, before moving to the American West in 1858. The most interesting aspect of Governor Bell was his genealogy, being a distant cousin to Alexander Graham Bell. He married and moved to Reno in 1858 to, as fate would have it, supervise the construction of a transcontinental telegraph line that led from Utah to California until 1860. Later, Bell became a telegraph operator and interestingly, was one of the operators who telegraphed Nevada's State Constitution to Washington D.C. in 1864.

In 1889, he was appointed the eighth Lieutenant Governor by Governor Stevenson and became Acting Governor when Governor Stevenson signed a disability certificate on September 1, 1890. By taking office, Bell became Nevada's first foreign-born Governor. He didn't seek a full term because during his tenure he simply continued to carry out the policies of the Stevenson administration, serving until the inauguration of Roswell K. Colcord in 1891. He later returned to his work in the telephone and telegraph field.

Governor Bell died on February 13, 1927 in his daughter's home in Oakland, California at the age of 87. He is currently interred at the Masonic Memorial Gardens in Reno.