American Security and Trust Co. Signed by Charles J. Bell - Stock Certificate

Stock issued to Bell & Co. and signed by C.J. Bell. Charles James Bell, cousin of Alexander G. Bell.

Alexander Melville Bell (1819-1905) was a researcher of physiological phonetics and was the author of numerous works on orthoepy and elocution. He was the father of Alexander Graham Bell.

He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He studied under and became the principal assistant of his father, Alexander Bell, an authority on phonetics and defective speech. From 1843 to 1865 he lectured on elocution at the University of Edinburgh, and from 1865 to 1870 at the University of London. In 1868, and again in 1870 and 1871, he lectured in the Lowell Institute course in Boston.

In 1870 he became a lecturer on philology at Queen's College, Kingston, Ontario; and in 1881 he removed to Washington, D.C., where he devoted himself to the education of deaf mutes by the "Visible Speech" method of orthoepy, in which the alphabetical characters of his own invention were graphic diagrams of positions and motions of the organs of speech. Melville Bell died at age 86 in 1905. He was interred in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C.

Charles James Bell (April 12, 1858 – October 2, 1929) was an Irish-born Canadian and American businessman, first cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, son-in-law of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, nephew of Alexander Melville Bell. He was a co-founder of the National Geographic Society. 

Upon reaching Canada, he was employed by the Imperial Bank of Canada until 1879.

From 1880 to 1882, he was general manager of the National Telephone Company of England before moving to Washington, DC to be secretary of the new Bell Telephone Company, founded by his cousin, and organize the private banking firm of Bell & Co. Bell traveled to Paris to set up branches of the company in Europe.

In 1889 when the American Security and Trust Company of Washington was organized, Bell became vice president. Four years later, he became president (for thirty-five years) and in 1928 became chairman of the board of directors. He was also president of the Norfolk & Washington Steamboat Company, and was an incorporator of the American Red Cross, a trustee of the George Washington Memorial Association and of the American University, chairman of the Finance committee of the Public Library, and a member of the board of the Washington Sanitary Housing Company and of the Chapter of Washington Cathedral. He also served as chairman of the Potomac Electric Power Company and the Washington Railway and Electric Company, president of the Enquirer Building Company of Cincinnati, a director of the Terminal Refrigerating and Warehouse Company, Washington Market Company, Security Storage Company, Real Estate Title Insurance Company, Columbia Title Assurance Company, and Columbia Sand and Gravel Company, the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of New York and the three allied telephone companies and the Braddock Electric Light Company.