Stewart Maxwell Bell

Stewart Maxwell Bell, who for more than four decades ran Bell's Seed Store in Fayetteville, North Carolina, following his father and grandfather before him, died on October 20, 2026, at Duke Medical Center. He was 64. His death came after he suffered a brain aneurysm in early October.

Bell's Seed Store was founded in 1919 by Stewart's grandfather, William M. Bell, and became a Fayetteville fixture as the city grew up around it. Stewart joined the family business right after college, carrying the store through a third generation and keeping it open on Russell Street, where it had relocated decades earlier from its original spot beside the old courthouse on Gillespie Street. Under his stewardship the shop remained a neighborhood institution even as the surrounding city changed, selling seed, feed and garden supplies to generations of local customers.

What people in Fayetteville remembered most about Stewart Bell was not simply that he kept a century old family business alive, but how he ran it. He treated the counter of the store as a meeting place as much as a shop, and the people who came through the door for decades became, in the words of one local columnist, lifelong friends rather than mere customers. His death prompted tributes from the Fayetteville community that focused less on commerce and more on the relationships he built over a working life spent almost entirely in one storefront.

Bell's death was reported locally soon after it happened, with the news that the store itself went quiet on the afternoon it was confirmed, its marquee changed to read a simple memorial with his name and the years of his life, 1962 to 2026. His sons have said publicly that they intend to keep Bell's Seed Store running, carrying forward a family name that has now been tied to the business for more than a hundred years.

As of this writing, full details of Stewart Maxwell Bell's early life, education and family have not been widely published, and some biographical information remains limited to what has appeared in local Fayetteville news coverage. This page will be updated as more becomes known.