Slave Quarters History

Slave Quarters, 1972

On the northeast corner of the lot stands the original brick slave quarters—a rare survival of a once important urban building type, and one of the best preserved examples in the country. Such buildings were generally referred to as servants’ quarters or “negro houses.” A March 1860 deed cited the John D. Bellamy “kitchen or negro house” at the corner of the Bellamy property. The neatly but plainly finished brick building typifies urban slave quarters in the late antebellum South—one room deep and three rooms wide, with stepped parapets rising above the roof and a windowless back wall along the property line. Typical of its era, it combined several purposes, including a laundry room and privies on the first floor, as well as servants’ chambers. Like the carriage house’s combination of stable below with chambers above, and like many others of its time, the slave quarters had on the first floor uses that generated smells or heat in close and probably unpleasant proximity to the slaves’ residential quarters above. Ellen recalled that “once all the rooms were occupied by our servants, except one large one, on lower floor that was fitted up for a wash room.”7

Like the carriage house, the slave quarters were designed to complement the main house: the brick walls (which were initially painted a light reddish color) feature simple projecting pilasters, and the openings repeat the pattern of the main house, with square-headed windows below and arched ones above reinforcing the uniformity of the complex. Like the main house, the building was fitted with movable-louvered blinds, which provided adjustable degrees of shade, ventilation, and privacy for occupants of the slave quarter and the main house. The remarkably unchanged interior is the most intact of surviving urban slave quarters in the state and among the most intact in the South. Most of the rooms are relatively spacious and well lighted and ventilated, and they are finished with plastered walls and ceilings, locally produced yellow pine mantels of simple Greek Revival style, and doors and other millwork of factory-made northern white pine.

The woodwork was painted white, and the plastered walls were eventually whitewashed. The main entrance opens into a small vestibule from which the stair rises. Flanking the vestibule are a chamber on the west end and the laundry room in the center. Both rooms have fireplaces and chimneys on the back wall. It is not known which slave occupied the first-floor chamber, though some observers speculate that it might have been Sarah, the cook, who was
the most prestigious of the domestic slaves. The laundry room still contains the iron wash pot set into a brick base with a fire box for hot coals and a large fireplace. A closet for drying clothes was also warmed by the fire.

Separated by a solid brick wall from the laundry room are two privies to the east. Unmentioned (and perhaps unmentionable) by Ellen in her account, these two rooms have five seats each, all with hinged wooden lids. Both are ventilated with movable window sash, louvered blinds, and vents up the chimney. Having such facilities in the lower story of a slave quarter was not unusual in the urban South. It is not known which household members used which room, although in general genteel women preferred the privacy of chamber pots or water closets. On the second floor of the slave quarter there are three chambers. The two end rooms are the most comfortable, for each has a fireplace and cross-ventilation and light provided by windows on the front and end walls. A smaller middle room has windows only in front and no fireplace. All three rooms have a good view of the main house and the work yard. In 1861 these rooms were occupied by the Bellamy slaves. After the war they were used by free servants and later rented to tenants.8

The rear walls of these two buildings formed tall, windowless barriers, linked by a tall brick wall to define the rear property line. This wall is especially high because the ground level of the Bellamy lot is about eighteen inches higher than the adjoining property. Parapets also rise at the ends of the building, but these walls have windows at both ends, with the eastern end window overlooking the neighboring lot. At one time, a tall brick wall also extended south from the slave quarter along the east property line. These enclosing walls contrast with the open side along Fifth Avenue and the front along Market Street, which were defined only by a a low iron fence, and that not until after the war. Post holes in the ground show that there was also a wooden fence cordoning the northeast quadrant of the yard in front of the slave quarters, which shielded this part of the yard from public view and could have restricted slaves’ comings and goings. One section of fence ran north from the back corner of the main house to the property line, and the other section ran back from the house and had a gate onto the paved area behind the main house. Historians of urban slavery see the walls and windowless enclosure of slave quarters mainly as devices to control slaves’ activities and views. In Wilmington, as Rufus Bunnell observed, “Many of the large residential grounds were (in those days of slavery) shut away from the streets by high walls of open or paneled brickwork coped on top and having gates in them that could be closed and locked. In many cases they were quite attractive looking. It was much more common further down south.” At the Bellamy property, where the slave quarters had good views of adjoining property, and the brick walls enclosed only two sides, the reasons for the walls are unclear. Possibly Dr. Bellamy was simply following local or Charleston precedent in defining his premises, or perhaps he wanted privacy or fire protection from neighboring lots. Whatever the reasons, the arrangement defined the Bellamy compound emphatically in the contrast between the great, open portico in front and the sheer brick walls behind.9

Walks through the Bellamy House
7. Bellamy, BWTT, 26–27. New Hanover Co. Deeds, March 5, 1860, transcript in BMM. (Although the deed mentions the kitchen and negro house, there is no subsequent mention of the building’s being a kitchen; such a dual purpose may have been an original intent or the assumption of the surveyor.) This account derives from Sandbeck, “Bellamy Mansion Slave Quarters: Historic Structures Report.” Jones, “The African American
Experience within the Bellamy Household.” On types of urban slave houses, see John Michael Vlach, “‘Without Recourse to Masters’: The Architecture of Urban Slavery in the Antebellum South,” in Carter L. Hudgins and Elizabeth Collins Cromley, eds., Shaping Communities, Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture VI (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 150–160, including (156) examples with laundry rooms and privies on the ground floor.
8. There is no documentation as to which servants occupied which rooms, or which of the privy rooms was used by whom.
9. In the later nineteenth century, Sanborn fire insurance maps noted on the Bellamy rear wall, as in some other instances in town, that there were brick walls with “no opng” (Sandbeck, “Bellamy Mansion Slave Quarters,” 187). Wade, Slavery in the Cities, 59–62, describes the purpose of the walled compound as “seal[ing] off the Negroes from outside contacts,” and “compell[ing] slaves to center their activity upon the owner and the owner’s place,” both symbolically and physically (59).

Excerpt from:
Catherine Bishir, The Bellamy Mansion, An Antebellum Treasure and Its People
Available now for purchase

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