Frank Bell, Sr., son of Norval and Catherine Bell of Alabama, married Flavilla "Flavey" Bell in 1887. Flavilla was the daughter of Calvin Bell, a Black cowboy from Mississippi who drove cattle up the Chisholm Trail with the Butler Brothers after the Civil War, and his German-born wife Katie, and she was born on the old Butler Ranch in north Galveston County, where the Butler family had moved from Louisiana in 1854. Oral tradition holds that shortly after Frank and Flavey's wedding, Frank built their house from lumber salvaged from homes destroyed in the three hurricanes of 1886 that ravaged Galveston County, originally placing it on his mother and stepfather William Bell's land in the William Bell Subdivision, where Lincoln School was later built on Carver Street. Built in the Creole Cottage style like the original Butler Ranch house, the dwelling is unique in Galveston County, is the oldest surviving structure in the 1867 Settlement Historic District, and is the last known surviving circa 1800s Creole Cottage style house in the county. The couple survived the 1900 Storm there, and in 1904, after buying their own property, moved the house a short distance across the prairie on cypress logs to its present site at 117 South Bell Drive. In that small house the family endured later major hurricanes beginning with the 1915 Storm and continuing through the century to Carla and Alicia. Frank Bell, Sr. began working cattle soon after his family moved to the Settlement in the mid-1870s, worked for Stringfellow Orchards in nearby Hitchcock from the mid-1880s to the early 1890s, then returned to ranch work in the mid-1890s as a skilled bronc buster for several Galveston County ranches. He invested his earnings in several parcels of land in the Settlement until a critical injury from being thrown from a horse left him unable to fully recover, forcing his two oldest sons, Fred and Frank Jr., to leave school and work to help support the family. Frank Sr. and Flavilla Bell had seven children: Fred, Frank Jr., Isaac, Katy, Louise, Ruth, and Elnora. Louise Bell, who married James Robinson, remained in the house with her family, cared for Frank Sr. and Flavilla until they died in the early 1930s, and her family continued to live there through the next four generations. In 2007, the Frank Bell, Sr. family donated the historic house for use as a community museum.