Who was Mary Bell Dennis?

Stories in a family often times hold 

some truth OR a lot of truth OR none of the 

proceeding.  Think of how something you say 

today to a friend can be added "on to" as 

it passes from person to person.  The

same is true for our family stories. 

Marion Washington Dennis
b. ca. 1856-FL (or AL possibly)
d. 1906-San Angelo, Tom Green Co. TX

The Marion Washington Dennis family 

has such stories.  Which leads me to ask, 

"Mary Bell, Mary Bell, Who Really Are You?" 

Mary Bell was said to be the Mother of 

my 2nd gr-grandfather, Marion Washington

Dennis. What we know of her is very limited, 

and mostly from a letter written by Marion's 

daughter Hallie Dennis Nugent to younger 

half-sister, Mary Dennis Gardner.

The letter is hard to read.  

The punctuation and spelling is

not great.  The letter is old. 

Was the Mother of Marion named

"Mary Bell", with 

Bell being her surname?  Or was her 

name "Mary Bell _" with her surname being 

unknown to us after years of searching?

We have nothing to go on other 

than this letter.

Family stories passed down said that 

Marion's father was born in Ireland.  

After years of brickwalls, my Dennis uncle's 

tested in the Dennis Y-DNA Surname Project 

only to discover that we were not Dennis' at all, 

but rather descended from the family of 

men with the surname FREEMAN!  Surprise!

And then the biggest surprise of all - 

we carry the Y-DNA haplogroup Q1a3a, 

the only haplogroup given to Native 

American Indians in the Y. 

Only then did one of my uncle's tell 

me his grandparents always told him that 

the Dennis' were "black Irish".  

That is sometimes how people of Native

American Indian backgrounds referred 

to themselves in order to escape the 

stigma of being Indian. 

Several descendants of Marion's children

have tested at 23andMe

and at Family Tree DNA

in the Family Finders test.

We have hundreds and hundreds

of matches.  I feel sure some

of those matches come from

Marion's mother, Mary Bell's, lines.

We sure could use her last name

to help us out in our DNA journey!

Attached is the letter Hallie Dennis 

Nugent wrote to her sister, Mary.  

It also includes information relating to 

Mary's Mother's (Laura Smith of TX) 

families (Smith and Pendley).

The letter is hard to read, so 

here is the best attempted transcription 

done by one of my Dennis cousins 

who has the original letter in his possession.

May the journey go on and may we 

one day find out who "Mary Bell" really was! 

Happy Hunting, 

Revis