John Bell Ketring
Police Officer
Edward PoppettJohn Ketring was born in Linden, Tennessee, in 1860, and came to San Bernardino via Tombstone, Arizona, in 1882. In 1886 Mr. Ketring married Clara Campbell-Ketring, and they made their home at 1142 W. 7th Street in San Bernardino, where they raised two children. On February 3, 1905, Clara died, and Mr. Ketring went on to marry his second wife, Mina Gunn-Ketring, with whom he had a daughter.
Prior to becoming one of the original members of the current San Bernardino Police Department, Officer Ketring operated a grocery store at 555 W. 3rd Street, with fellow future San Bernardino Policeman and Mayor John Henderson. In 1905 Mr. Ketring became a member of the San Bernardino Police Department, where he remained as an officer for several years.
Officer Ketring died on April 2, 1947, and is buried at San Bernardino’s Pioneer Cemetery.
According to Lewis Ketring Jr., John Bell Ketring arrived in San Bernardino in early 1882. Lewis remembers as a child that his great-grandfather was very evasive about his life after leaving Linden, Tennessee, and prior to arriving in San Bernardino. Lewis says that John Bell was “mysterious and evasive.” When asked about his early years, he would become very defensive and say that that was another life and another place and change the subject.
Lewis researched information that places John Bell in Arizona prior to arriving in San Bernardino in 1882. He found that when John Bell Ketring arrived in San Bernardino, he lived in Nicholas and Virginia Earp’s boarding house. Lewis has a suspicion that John Bell may have known the Earp brothers in Tombstone, and that when Morgan Earp was killed, he (John Bell) assisted Virgil and James Earp in the transportation of Morgan’s body to San Bernardino for burial in Colton. That would explain his acceptance into the boarding house and possibly an introduction to Walter Shay by the Earps and his subsequent employment as a San Bernardino policeman.
Lewis also believes that after leaving Linden, John Bell may have assumed an alias (“Turkey Creek Jack Johnson”) and used that alias while living in the New Mexico and Arizona area. John Bell’s father was Frances Johnson Ketring, and Lewis feels that this is too much of a coincidence.