By Max Gard
Published in the Farm & Dairy, May 1954

Near the place where the old Y and S Railroad tracks cross route 517 between Lisbon and East Fairfield is the Ross Bell farm. Ross and his wife are retiring from the strenuous farm life which has kept them hustling for years and now the old homestead is for sale.

Across a secondary Elkrun township road from the homestead, 5 of the first Bells to occupy the farm are buried with small hand carved sandstone markers to mark the location. Above these 5 graves are more than a hundred unmarked graves which can only be located by their sunken appearance. Beside this old cemetery are the foundation stones of the first Quaker Meeting House in Columbiana County. This was the Quaker Meeting and Burying Ground on Little Bull Creek, forerunner to the Middleton Quaker Meeting referred to in this column several months ago.

From Route 517 as you approach the farm, you can see an old millrace passing along the hillside in a direction toward the railroad. This race carried the water which provided the power to run the grist mill operated by Louis Kossuth Bell during the latter part of the 19th century. The foundation stones of the old mill are still in their original position excepting for those disturbed while the railroad fill was put in. When the Y and S was built, the mill was torn down as it passed across one corner of the building site. 2 of the old flint stone buhrs with wrought iron bands around them which once ground the grist for the farmers of the neighborhood lie in the thicket by the township road.

Across the township road lived Mark Bell, a man of artistic tastes whose tastes and abilities are still reflected in the home he once occupied where Ted Lyder now lives. Behind the old home stands a long structure which used to be a smoke house and sugar making shed.

A short distance east of Bell's Mill was Oakville (now Signal). A regular line of stagecoaches passed between Oakville, E. Fairfield and Middleton (Mosk Post Office), in the 1870's and 80's indication that this was an active center of population during the latter years of Victorian Era.

Not far away from Bell’s Mill lived William and Louisa Marlatt with their children including their son Ira who will figure in this story and the one to follow. An age old question in our society is, What circumstances in a man's life make him commit murder. Let us study the record of Ira Marlatt.

On May 10th, 1862, the Marlatt home caught fire and one of the daughters was known to be inside. The father was away at the time, and the mother who was about 25 years younger than her husband and eight months pregnant rushed into the burning structure and found her daughter and led her to safety. That night, Ira was born a month prematurely. From the time he first learned to walk, he stuttered.

The youngsters at school teased him because of this affliction and made him very self-conscious of his speech. His teacher C. Z. Taylor recognized the fact that Ira was the best writer in his school, the best mathematician and excelled in Geography. The child absolutely refused to read or spell orally, and this was thought to be because of his stuttering and the taunts that resulted from it.

Wm Marlatt was of a very nervous temperament, and when Ira did not do enough work to suit him he would beat the lad with a stick, often over the head. Ira fell from the barn loft 1 day cutting his scalp badly and causing a slight concussion. Later he fell from a sycamore tree at school and had dizzy spells as a result. Pains in his head would sometimes arouse him from his sleep and he would get up at midnight to relieve them.

Because of the reasons mentioned and others, Ira developed a persecution complex which cause him to feel mistreated often times when he was being treated fairly. He was picking strawberries for a neighbor one day at an agreed upon rate of two cents per qt when he suddenly without just cause stormed into the berry shed and demanded that the farmer pay him three cents per quart, he became violent in his argument and it took several people to cool him down by explaining to him that two cents per quart was as much as anyone in the district was paying berry pickers.

He took a correspondence course prescribed to correct his stuttering, and as a result of this memorized chapter of the Bible and several long poems and speeches. He would retreat to the barn or woods and recite these w/o an audience as the course directed him to do. People heard him talking to himself and began to consider him a bit odd. His reputation for being peculiar together with his persecution complex prevented any good opportunities from knocking even once at his door.

When he was very young his father died, and his mother sold the land they owned. It made Ira unhappy to think that they had changed from a landholding family to a family to tenants. He was known to be a good farm hand and worked by the day for the neighboring farmers for small wages that were then paid. When he had saved up $100 he went to Iowa in search of a better job w. more pay. This was in 1880 when he was 18 yrs old. He soon sent word back to his mother that he must have another $100. In about a year he returned penniless and w/ his clothing worn out.

He went to work for the neighbors again, and between pays and jobs sought more lucrative work in Salem, Youngstown, and even Pittsburgh. Ira stuttered when he talked with his prospective employers, and they did not hire him. East Fairfield was in those days and is yet, a great center for fruit culture. Ira read everything available on this business and decided to plant an orchard to amplify his income.

During to early spring evenings and on his days off, he grafted hundreds of young wild apple sprouts in the nearby wasteland and planted peach-stones in the fall so that he could bud them later with good saleable freestone varieties. Lou Bell had 25 acres of land for sale at $50 per acre. By early April 1885 Ira had saved up $150 and he went to Barak Ashton, a wealthy Quaker whom Ira knew sometimes loaned money on first mortgages. B. Ashton would only loan him $800 in exchange for a mortgage on the Bell land so Ira borrowed $200 from a Mr. Wood. With $1150 and a personal note for an additional $100 Lou Bell gave him to deed for the 25 acres.

He then went to work grubbing out undesirable brush and that spring planted about 400 apple trees and 400 peach trees. He worked hard on the project for more than a year but when the taxes came due and interest and principal payments on his many notes, he had no funds. He could not work for others for wages and himself full time. After he had worked for himself it was difficult to go back to the drudgery of day labor on the nearby farms.

Then Ira got another idea which took up a lot of his time without compensation. He conceived the theory at that early date that if he could attach a gasoline engine to the wheels of a buggy in such a manner that he could control it from the seat, he could avoid the expense of keeping a horse which he would have to replace every few years at great expense. If he could only perfect such a contraption, he may be to sell his invention to the Studebaker wagon people or a similar concern for enough to pay off his mortgage and notes and have some cash beside.

In the meantime, Lou Bell rented a portion of the land from Ira that he had sold him and left the rent apply on the note he held. Altogether Ira paid $40 or $50 on the Bell note. One day Ira saw Lou taking some apples from the portion he had rented and went into a violent rage over the affair. Ira went to a lawyer in Columbiana in an effort to have Bell arrested but the matter was finally settled by Lou Bell giving the lawyer $10 for the apples which he felt were his since he had rented the land they grew on.

When the County Treasurer listed the tract on the delinquent land list to be sold to cover the taxes due thereon, Barak Ashton offered to give Ira $30 or $40 damages and foreclose the mortgage and pay the taxes to protect his investment. Ira became angry at this proposition also and refused to deal on these terms.

On the day that Sheriff John W. Wyman sold the land, Lodge Farrel took Ira to Lisbon to watch the sale. It was about 2:00 pm when they got there, and they learned that the tract had been sold that morning at 9:00 am to Willis Jordan. When Farrell and Marlatt went to Jordan's office Jordan readily admitted that he had bought the land for his client Barak Ashton. On the ride back from New Lisbon, Ira would talk to Farrell only of the way that Ashton and Bell had plotted against him to cheat him out of his land and orchard, which he had done almost nothing with after he had cleared and planted it.

Ira's threats aroused his mother and she went to some of her friends and told them that she thought that he should be put away before he did something desperate. The friends assured her that Ira’s was peculiar but harmless and that he would cool off after a while.

Part two to follow...