BELLAMY MANSION MUSEUM

Restoring the Bellamy House Windows

2/1/2026

Imagine maintaining a home with 112 windows! The majority of those at the Bellamy site are double-hung windows with separate upper and lower sashes raised and lowered by heavy weights inside the window casings on each side. And, they were installed 165 years ago! Over time, wear and tear has caused the sash cords on some of the windows to snap.

The job of fixing the windows is no easy task. Last year, six windows were targeted for restoration. In the photos shown here, Bellamy Museum volunteer handymen Angelo Cimini and Steve Long carefully removed the exterior window trim in order to take out the original windows. Once the windows were removed, they opened the access panel deliberately built into the window frame that houses the window weights. This system allows the windows to open smoothly and easily by counterbalancing the weight of the sash via a rope over a pulley. When the window goes up, the weight goes down.

The weights for these particular windows were made of cast iron, measuring approximately two feet in length and weighing between 15 and 20 pounds each.

Window Weight System
In the Bellamy house windows, there is space for two weights on each side of the window. One weight was used to lift the lower sash, and the other allowed the upper sash to be lowered. While none of the windows currently allow the top sash to move, evidence shows that when the windows were new, both sashes were operable.

New sash cord (rope) was carefully measured and attached to each weight. The rope was then routed through the pulley located in the upper portion of the window frame and secured to the window sash itself. This was done by tying a knot and nailing the rope into a designated slot on the side of the window.

Reinstallation and Finishing
After the new ropes were installed, the windows were placed back into their frames. The exterior trim was then reinstalled, caulked, and painted to complete the restoration and ensure weather protection.

Challenges in the Library Windows
The most difficult windows to repair were those located in the library. It was evident that these windows had been rebuilt following the 1972 fire in the house, as the original access panels for the window weights were not recreated at that time. Angelo and Steve had to cut new access panels and, fortunately, the original weights were still present in their cavities.

After replacing the ropes, another issue became apparent: the windows had been reframed without restoring the original weight pockets. As a result, these windows are only able to open partially. Despite these challenges, and that of care for the delicate single pane glass, the restoration work preserved as much of the original window system as possible while improving functionality and extending the life of these historic features.

Since the 1970s the National Park Service has published its Preservation Briefs. These form a how-to library for fixing the many and varied elements of America's historic buildings. The schematic above is taken from the brief on wood windows, which you can read through this link:
https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1739/upload/preservation-brief-09-wood-windows.pdf

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Ambrotypes: Immortal Impressions of the Nineteenth Century

2/1/2026

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The word ambrotype comes from the Greek ambrotos, meaning “immortal,” and typos, meaning “impression.” The name is fitting. These fragile photographs—made on glass and easily broken—were intended to preserve a likeness forever. In their quiet, ghostly beauty, ambrotypes represent a pivotal moment in the history of photography and in how people chose to remember themselves and their loved ones.

Ambrotype of an unknown child (source: Bellamy archives).

What Is an Ambrotype?
An ambrotype is a positive photographic image created using the wet plate collodion process. Technically, the image on the glass is a negative. However, when the glass plate is placed against a dark background—often black varnish, velvet, fabric, or painted black glass—the transparent areas appear light, transforming the image into what looks like a positive photograph.

Ambrotypes are known for their soft tonal range and ethereal quality. Faces often appear luminous, almost floating against the dark backing. Because the image is formed directly on glass, each ambrotype is a one-of-a-kind object. Many were housed in small hinged cases lined with velvet, similar to daguerreotypes, making them both intimate and portable keepsakes.

Popularity and Historical Context
The ambrotype was introduced around 1854, when James Ambrose Cutting patented a version of the process in the United States. It quickly gained popularity and remained widely used throughout the 1850s and 1860s. During this period, ambrotypes filled the gap between the earlier daguerreotype and later photographic formats such as tintypes and paper prints.

By the 1870s, ambrotypes fell out of favor. Newer photographic methods were cheaper, faster, and more durable, making them more convenient for both photographers and consumers. Despite their relatively brief period of popularity, ambrotypes played a crucial role in expanding photography beyond elite circles.

Who Owned Ambrotypes?
By the mid-nineteenth century, photography was no longer reserved solely for the wealthy elite. Ambrotypes were less expensive than daguerreotypes, making them accessible to working- and middle-class families. For many people, an ambrotype was the only photograph they would ever own.

Farmers, laborers, and their families often commissioned a single portrait to document themselves or their household. Soldiers departing for the American Civil War frequently had ambrotypes taken to leave behind with loved ones, while sweethearts and engaged couples exchanged them as tokens of affection. Children’s portraits were also common, commissioned by parents who wanted to preserve an image of a child at a particular stage in life.

Wealthier individuals also embraced ambrotypes, particularly in the 1850s when the format was considered modern and fashionable. For them, ambrotypes served as both status symbols and tools of legacy, preserving family lineage in a tangible form.

Ambrotype of John and Eliza Bellamy's eldest child Mary Elizabeth, nicknamed "Belle."

Ambrotype believed to be the Bellamy's 9th child, Chesley Calhoun, who died just shy of his 22nd birthday.

Ambrotypes and the Bellamy Family
Given the prominence and social standing of the Bellamy family, their ownership of ambrotypes is unsurprising. For wealthy families in the mid-nineteenth century, ambrotypes were both fashionable and meaningful. They preserved likenesses at a time when photography was still novel, capturing individuals at specific moments in their lives and allowing those images to be passed down through generations.

These photographs freeze time, offering modern viewers a direct visual connection to the past. They serve not only as family heirlooms but also as historical documents, reflecting how people wished to be seen and remembered.

An ambrotype of Frederick Douglass from the Civil War period. Held in the Smithsonian collection.

Enslaved People and Ambrotypes
Enslaved individuals were photographed during the ambrotype era, but they rarely owned these images. Most ambrotypes depicting enslaved people were commissioned by enslavers, often to document what they considered property or to portray enslaved individuals in carefully staged, sentimentalized roles.

Some ambrotypes were created for abolitionist purposes, intended to humanize enslaved people and support anti-slavery efforts, particularly in the North. After emancipation, formerly enslaved people increasingly sought portraits of themselves and their families. These images served as powerful assertions of dignity, identity, and belonging in a society that had long denied them those rights.

Before the Civil War, enslaved individuals generally lacked the money and legal standing to commission their own photographs. Even when portraits existed, ownership usually rested with the person who paid the photographer. Rare exceptions may have occurred in urban areas, but they were not typical.

A Connection to Poverty
While ambrotypes are often associated with wealth and status, they can also tell stories of hardship. One such example is this ambrotype of young Ellen Bellamy. According to a box found with the photograph, the image was gifted on Christmas Day in 1935 to Ellen’s niece, who shared her name.

At the time, Ellen was struggling financially and could not afford traditional holiday gifts. She repurposed this once-coveted photographic object as a meaningful, frugal present. In doing so, she not only celebrated the holiday but also preserved a family image that would be cherished for decades.

This illustrates how ambrotypes could transcend their original context, becoming symbols of memory and enduring familial bonds.

How Ambrotypes Were Made
Creating an ambrotype required skill, speed, and precision. The process began with thoroughly cleaning a glass plate, as even the smallest speck of dust would appear in the final image. The photographer then coated the glass with collodion, a syrupy mixture of cellulose nitrate dissolved in ether and alcohol, combined with iodide salts.

While the plate was still wet, it was immersed in a silver nitrate bath, making it sensitive to light. This step had to be completed immediately before exposure, which is why the method is known as the “wet plate” process. The plate was then placed into a camera and exposed while still wet. Exposure times ranged from a few seconds to several minutes, depending on lighting conditions.

After exposure, the image was developed using chemicals such as iron sulfate or pyrogallic acid, revealing the photograph. A fixing solution—often potassium cyanide or sodium thiosulfate—was applied to make the image permanent. Once washed and dried, the glass plate was backed with a dark material so the negative image would appear positive.

Ambrotype of Lizzie Taylor, a Bellamy family relative.

Storage, Display, and Cost
Because ambrotypes were made of glass, they were delicate and required protection. Most were stored in small, hinged cases, often lined with velvet and covered in leather or paper. These cases might be displayed on mantels or side tables, tucked into drawers or family bibles, or even worn as lockets in miniature form.

The cost of an ambrotype varied depending on size, presentation, and embellishment. Small ambrotypes—such as locket-sized plates—typically cost between 25 and 50 cents in the mid-1800s, while standard sizes ranged from about 75 cents to two dollars. Larger plates, ornate cases, or hand-tinted images could cost five dollars or more, a significant expense at the time.

Prices were influenced by the size of the glass plate, the quality of the case, whether the image was hand-colored, and the reputation or location of the photographer. Urban studios and well-known photographers often charged more, while traveling or rural photographers offered lower prices to attract customers.

The information in this article was adapted from an interpretive plan prepared in the spring of 2025 by UNCW graduate student Melissa Howdershelt for her practica in Public History. The plan included a concept for constructing an exhibition using ambrotypes from the Bellamy Mansion Museum's collection, with the goal to educate its viewers.

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Meet Elvin Artis: Bellamy House Foreman

1/1/2026

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Elvin Artis (1820-1886), a free black house carpenter, served as the carpentry foreman on the Bellamy Mansion project circa 1859-1861.

James Post’s assistant architect, Rufus Bunnell, wrote in his diary about Artis, saying: “...strange to ever keep in mind, that almost to a man these mechanics (however seemingly intelligent), were nothing but slaves and capable as they might be, all the earnings that came from their work, was regularly paid over to their masters or mistresses. A very few, as for instance, the mulatto 'Artis' on the Bellamy house construction, were freedmen made thus by will or purchased freedom; but even those were restricted by special laws made for freed negroes and were also subject if deemed necessary, to observation by the day and night patrol.”

Elvin Artis’s family traced their free status to the colonial period, and some of his ancestors served in the Revolutionary War. Elvin married Liza “Lizzie” (Green) around 1840, and between 1842 and 1858 the couple welcomed eight children, including three daughters -- Elizabeth, Jane (“Janie”), and Josephine. Two sons -- Hildred and Eldred -- were twins, and their other three sons were Champion, Sylvester, and John.

Elvin Artis was not a stranger to John D. Bellamy when he began work on Bellamy’s townhome in 1859. In fact, Artis bought property from John D. Bellamy in 1845 near Love Grove and Smith Creek -- north of Oakdale Cemetery. In 1859, Elvin bought property on lot 282 from John D. Love, at the corner of 7th and Brunswick Streets, and his family resided in a home there for over fifty years. Today, the lot where the Artis home stood is empty.

Elvin’s first wife, Liza, died sometime in the 1860s, and he married Caroline “Carrie” (Mitchell), a woman at least 15 years his junior, in March 1867.

The city contracted Elvin for various projects throughout the 19th-century:

Elvin also ran a prominent Wilmington barber shop and hair salon off and on during the 1860s, '70s, and '80s. He advertised barbering and tonsorial services for both men and women, and he ran his business during the early 1870s from the Purcell House Hotel on Front between Market and Princess. The Purcell House Hotel was advertised as Wilmington’s only first-class hotel at the time.

While Elvin Artis never entered politics, it was not from lack of trying by his contemporaries. In 1882 he declined being nominated representative for the Greenback party’s county convention as he had, “no aspiration to attain political honors.”

All of Elvin and Elizabeth’s sons married between 1862 and 1871. Two of Elvin’s sons, Eldred and John, became barbers and worked with their father, and John was also listed as a carpenter on the 1870 and 1880 censuses. Champion was a local carpenter and fireman. Hildred moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he, too, was a barber. Two daughters -- Elizabeth and Jane -- married between 1868 and 1877. Josephine does not seem to have ever married.

Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church.

Elvin died at age 66 on June 7, 1886, and his funeral was held at his home followed by services at Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church where he and his family were members. His widow, Carrie, was listed as a “nurse” on the 1910 census, and one of their granddaughters, Mary E. Nixon, was living with Carrie and was listed as a “trained nurse.” Carrie passed away in 1918, and she is buried at Pine Forest Cemetery.

Prepared by Leslie Randle-Morton, Bellamy Museum historian and former Associate Director.

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Bellamy's Eldest: Not Just A Southern Belle

12/1/2025

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Mary Elizabeth Bellamy, nicknamed Belle, was born on November 27, 1840. She was the first child of Dr. John Dillard and Eliza McIlhenny Harriss Bellamy and, in typical Southern tradition, was named after her maternal grandmother Mary Jennings Harriss, and paternal grandmother Elizabeth Vaught Bellamy Williams.

Not much is known about Belle's childhood, except that she would have gone to private school as a youngster and then attended finishing school (generally from age 16 to 19), which was designed to prepare wealthy White teenage girls for marriage by teaching them the skills considered necessary to attract an affluent husband and manage a fine household.

Belle attended the South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute, commonly known as Barhamville Academy, located on the outskirts of Columbia. Beyond learning social graces and upper-class cultural rites, students at Barhamville had a set curriculum for each year with courses ranging from algebra, ancient history, botany and chemistry to art, music, literature and language. They were taught by highly regarded faculty attracting the elite of the South. Its graduates included the Hon. John C. Calhoun's daughter Anna Maria and the future mother of President Theodore Roosevelt, Martha Bulloch.

The school charged $200 a year for room and board (about $8,000 in today's dollars). 'Belle' Bellamy was described as an excellent student who had merited letters of praise from Dr. Elias Marks, the school's headmaster, and she had also demonstrated a special talent for sketching and painting.

Belle's discerning artistic eye was probably drawn to the Greek Revival styles that were so much of the Columbian architecture, yet virtually unknown in North Carolina's Lower Cape Fear region, including Wilmington.

Sister Ellen tells us that Belle was "impressed by the beauty of the Clarkson home on the corner of Bull and Blandings Streets" -- Belle's best friend and schoolmate was Elizabeth Clarkson, so she had spent some time in the Clarkson house.

This lithograph of Barhamville Academy was created in 1860 by Eugene Dovilliers, a professor of art at the school who may well have instructed Belle. The academy itself was founded in 1828 by Dr. Elias Marks, a wealthy physician and Charleston native. Born into a Jewish family, Dr. Marks was influenced by his childhood nurse, an African American Methodist woman, and converted to Christianity at a young age. He founded his school for women as a Methodist institution and named it for his recently deceased wife, Jane Barham. Image courtesy Historic Columbia collection.

Ellen noted "as my father was contemplating this house [on Market Street] she made a drawing of it and assisted Mr. Rufus Bunnell, the architect, in modeling this after that manner." Belle's brother John also noted in his memoirs that her "plan of the building was turned over by my father to James F. Post, contractor and builder." The final design of the Bellamy Mansion, aside from being stylistically similar, is in no way an exact duplicate of the Clarkson home, which fell victim to Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's fiery Civil War march through the South.

No known image exists of the Clarkson home.

At left: Artist's rendering of the Bellamy home. Above: Bellamy Mansion, circa 1874.

Belle also had some input into the interior decor of the new house. In 1860, nearing her 20th birthday, she accompanied her parents and infant brother Chesley on their trip to New York City to look at samples of building materials and select furnishings for their soon-to-be completed 22-room mansion on Market Street. Her sense of style may well have figured into the selection of their fashionable new furniture and fabrics.

Finally, there are Belle's paintings from her days as a student at Barhamville Academy. Several of them were hung when the Bellamy family moved into their new home in 1861 and they adorn the walls of the formal parlors to this very day (see more below).

Belle was clearly a keenly educated and mature young woman as the Civil War began. Providing a suitable home to entertain prospective suitors for Belle and her younger sisters Ellen and Eliza may well have factored into Dr. Bellamy's decision to build such an opulent home. The war significantly altered that vision for the Bellamy daughters. In North Carolina, 40,000 men had lost their lives. For those who survived, the shattered post-war economy made it impossible to pursue education or to eke out a decent living. The crop of perspective beaux who would be suitable husbands to the Bellamy girls was winnowed by war. In the 19th century, girls married young so it might have been difficult for Belle to watch the years slip away.

Five years after the war ended, Belle turned 30 years old, a confirmed spinster in that age. Dr. Bellamy had put the mansion at 503 Market Street in Belle's name -- according to the deed, she paid one dollar for the property -- and the 1870 census showed the value of Belle's property and personal estate totaling almost 15 times that of her father.

Belle was not only beautiful and well-educated. She was rich! As a single girl, she was quite a catch, according to the 1870 census.

In the meantime, Belle maintained many of her social connections to South Carolina. At just two months shy of her 36th birthday, she married William Jefferson Duffie on September 6, 1876, in the Bellamy Mansion. Duffie was a widower, more than a decade older than Belle, with eight children (ranging in age from three to 18). The newlyweds located in Columbia, where the groom had a "great mania for buying up land" and his purchases included the site of Barhamville Academy (which burned in 1869). Duffie was a devout Presbyterian and treasurer of the Presbyterian seminary. He published and sold books, sheet music and stationery.

In 1878, at age 38, Belle safely delivered a baby girl whom she named after her mother Eliza. She bore a second child in 1880 named after her sister Ellen. Belle, who seems to have gone by "Mary" as an adult, was a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia.

Beautiful Belle, the only Bellamy daughter to marry, died in January 1900 at age 59 after a protracted illness. Her obituary in The Wilmington Messenger noted that she had been very sick at home in Columbia and decided to come to Wilmington to her mother's home "for the special purpose of placing herself under the treatment of her brother, Dr. W.H. Bellamy." Belle died in the Bellamy house where her funeral was held thereafter, and she was buried at Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington. In 1908, the Duffie family disinterred Belle's remains from the Bellamy plot and took them to South Carolina, where she was laid to rest beside her husband who passed away in 1901.

Belle's Paintings

We are fortunate to have several of Belle's paintings hanging on the walls of our formal parlors from her days as a student at Barhamville Academy in the late 1850s, early 1860s.

In mid-19th century America, a lot of the artwork was influenced by a romantic view of the coexistence of humans and nature. A school of painting was founded in New York by English-born Thomas Cole, called the Hudson River School. It produced works of art that depicted American landscapes. Rather than serving as a backdrop, pastoral scenes of nature increasingly became the subject of paintings. We see these influences in Belle's paintings.

At least five, and as many as eight, of Belle's landscape and figure paintings graced the walls of the formal double parlor. Today, we are fortunate to have four originals, plus one reproduction, of them in the parlor, gifts of her great grandchildren. It is impressive to think that this teenage girl's creativity and talent reaches through the years for us to enjoy today.

This is one of the original paintings that hung in the mansion, later gifted by Ellen upon her death to Belle's great granddaughter Ellen Scoville in Columbia, SC. Shortly after the mansion was reopened as a museum in 1994, Mrs. Scoville donated this painting back to us. "Dr. Bellamy" is handwritten in pencil on the back of the frame.

"Landscape with Bridge," oil on canvas, c. 1860, indicates the primed and stretched canvas was purchased from colorman W. Schaus of New York, who may have imported it from England.

"Landscape with Distant Boats on Lake," oil on canvas, was donated by Bellamy family relative Marjorie Taylor of Lexington, SC. There is handwritten notation in pencil on the back of the frame: "M. Bellamy April 20 185?" (indiscernible but likely to be 1855, 6,7, or 9)

"Landscape with Boat": This painting is oil on canvas, c. 1860, and reveals the word "Bellamy" in pencil on the top stretcher bar. Experts from the NC Museum of Art Conservation Laboratory indicate the paint is generally thinly applied over a pencil underdrawing.

“Boy With Dog": It is believed there may have been eight of Belle's paintings initially adorning the mansion's walls; however, some may have been destroyed by the 1972 fire and this one (ours is a reproduction of the original) remains in the possession of Belle's great granddaughter Mary Schlaefer of Columbia.

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Echoes of the Enslaved: Discoveries at the Bellamy Slave Quarters

11/1/2025

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This is an updated version of a piece on the slave quarters renovation from the Fall 2014 issue of Preservation NC magazine:

Our historic buildings often hold mysteries just waiting to be uncovered. The slave quarters at the Bellamy Mansion Museum in Wilmington is no exception.

Back in 1993, when the entire property was conveyed by Bellamy Mansion, Inc. to Preservation NC for restoration and operation, we knew little about the small, handsome building in the back northeastern corner of the property. The building had severely deteriorated through the years, and its counterpart on the northwest corner, the carriage house, was long gone. Only a stack of bricks remained of that.

While there are no windows at the back of the Bellamy Museum slave quarters, there are more than enough on the front of the building to provide the enslaved people who lived and worked there a constant reminder of the family and the house they served across the back yard.

The Bellamy slave quarters in 1994 prior to restoration with some of its secrets soon to be discovered.

In Wilmington, when the slave quarters building was constructed in 1859, such structures were often termed “negro houses.” This Italianate style dependency is a rare, intact example of an urban slave dwelling, and includes sleeping quarters, laundry room, and privies.

A 1994 grant enabled us to research both the slave quarters and carriage house to learn more about the property's African-American legacy. Research historian and author Peter Sandbeck completed a historic structures report on the slave quarters, while teacher and African-American history specialist Alice Eley Jones researched the people who would have lived in those buildings. These studies, together with extensive archaeological research, and more than $1 million in private support, led to the reconstruction of the missing carriage house in the early 2000s; landscaped grounds and gardens; and in 2014 the restored slave quarters.

From the beginning, the slave quarters has parceled out its secrets. Alice Jones predicted that we would find cowry shells and coins in the ground in front of the slave quarters entrance -- and we did. For centuries, cowry shells were used as African currency, and they were considered symbols of wealth and fortune.

We learned that the slave quarters were built prior to the main house, and were probably used as a residence for the enslaved and free Black craftsmen who worked on its construction.

While repointing the east wall of the slave quarters, Wayne Thompson of Heritage Restoration found three pieces of broken white china that had been placed in mortar joints to fill space. Wayne also found some fired glass, shells, sticks and animal bones embedded in the mortar. Whether they are part of a ritual or accidental inclusion is open for more research. (We have a blog by UNCW's Dr. Lynn Mollenauer exploring this question here.)

South Asians and Africans considered cowrie shells beautiful objects of personal adornment, yet they were also used as "packing peanuts" for imported porcelain from China. European slave traders bought slaves using cowrie shells as currency. Source: Monticello.org.

The building had badly deteriorated because of many decades of roof leaks and termite damage. Any element that was intact and stable was left unaltered. Alongside that, areas of the original 1859 plasterwork and new 2013 plasterwork stand side-by-side, with no effort to disguise the difference. However, the restoration process went as far as to match the fineness of the sand, source of lime, and variety of horsehair in the plaster to get it as true to the original as possible.

It is likely that this collection of seemingly mundane items is a ritual concealment.

While the first slave quarters restoration project yielded the mentioned discoveries, more were to be found during the second round of work. Most notably was a precious find under a floorboard in the corner of the first story bedchamber. Archeologists discovered a cache of small objects, including buttons, a bead or two, an animal’s jawbone, a shard of pottery, and parts of a child’s doll.

Perhaps the most striking discovery at the end of our restoration projects has been the sheer beauty of the two complementary buildings behind the Bellamy mansion. Finished with a pinkish slaked lime wash and dark green shutters to mimic their likely original state, the slave quarters and carriage house are now unabashed examples of 1859 Italianate style.

One can't overlook the irony that the beauty of these buildings contrasts with the evil of slavery. And yet, the survival of these buildings has allowed us both to learn more about the full history of the site and to teach visitors more effectively about our state's complicated heritage.

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Bellamy Carriage House: Some answers to a mystery

10/1/2025

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Edited from Preservation North Carolina's Fall 1998 quarterly magazine

In 1998 Preservation NC printed a newsletter and it ran the story, “An Unsolved History Mystery.” The staff-written piece examined what was known and not known of the design and function of the Bellamy's carriage house, which was likely built alongside the slave quarters around 1859 and was demolished by the City due to disrepair in 1946. An accurate understanding of the structure’s exterior elevation and fenestration has always been hampered by a marked lack of photographic evidence. While the “magic “ image that shows the structure clearly and in its entirety has not yet surfaced, researchers have found some other enlightening photographic evidence. This imagery coupled with archeological finds gave us a much better idea of how the building looked and worked.

In reviews of visual information, only obscured bits and pieces of the building peeked out from behind a wall shrubbery and trees. By enlarging and enhancing the contrast of these images, we could accurately project the location of a few windows and doors. Another photograph indicated that the structure was slightly shorter than the existing slave quarters. Based on this general information and the existing 18’x 65’ foundation walls, we assembled the equivalent of a pretty good police sketch of the structure. Some details remained unknown.

Other photographs that surfaced briefly in the 1990s did answer some lingering questions. A descendent of a property owner immediately north of the carriage house was visiting from New Orleans and just happened to have some old photographs taken in the back yard next door. They, unfortunately, did not leave the image for our archive but it showed the back of the building and that its roofline was symmetrical, with parapet steps on the back wall on both the east and west ends. Staff previously assumed that the carriage house was a mirror image of the slave quarters, which is a building with a parapet back wall on one end and flat on the opposite. Another image showed that the second floor of the structure had arched windows, a feature that was assumed, but previously had no evidence to support. Additionally, a lattice fence was apparent in this image. It ran parallel to the face of the entire structure.

An archeological exploration of the carriage house interior yielded a wealth of information about how it was used. Almost the entire floor was paved with irregular geometric blocks of dross (the term “dross” is our working name for the material, records of the product are virtually non-existent). These blocks are a concretion of turpentine resin and sand. To our knowledge, the use of this product was limited but it can also be found in the breezeway under the main house. In addition to this unusual floor, evidence of five or six horse stalls emerged in the east half of the building. The west end was a slightly lower interior elevation and likely was used to park the carriage. A wooden ramp led up from this lower area to the stalls. Adjacent to the ramp is a pargeted brick interior cistern. We believe that an interior gutter collected rain in this 3’ deep container to water the horses. The second floor above the stalls was likely dedicated to the storage of hay and straw. One artifact from this area was part of a horse stall feeder system patented in 1857. The west end upper floor was probably the living quarters of the coachmen or stable workers. Quantities of excavated wall plaster and housewares support this theory. Also discovered was evidence of exterior tinted lime washes, ranging from white to dirty yellow to a pinkish-buff color. As with the slave quarters exterior, when those were applied is unknown.

It seems possible that in its early years enslaved workers Tony Bellamy and Guy Nixon may have stayed in this building from time to time with the animals and supplies. While we may never learn everything about this structure, staff in the 1990s certainly knew much more than when PNC took on the project. Using this limited but helpful historical information, Preservation NC raised funds for building’s reconstruction as an interpretive/educational center for the site. Costing over $300,000 it was completed in 2001 and still serves as our visitor center. It retains the footprint of the original building, the parapet walls on the roof, and a fake door on the western end mimics what would have existed on 5th St. Unlike the original, we do not keep horses, a carriage, or a cow inside. The current museum restrooms between the carriage house and slave quarters were originally the site of a poultry shed. The back yard featured an herb garden, fig tree, coal chute, cistern and well. It was very much a working space. The back wall between carriage house and slave quarters was rebuilt during the 2001 project. The original wall was partly to keep the compound sealed in. This had obvious implications for enslaved workers on site in the early 1860s as the carriage house, the wall, and the slave quarters had no windows, gates, or doors facing north. That fact prevented unseen escape and, along with those parapet walls on the buildings' roofs, also acted as a firebreak.

The reconstruction of the carriage house on the original footprint in 2001.

As the rebuilt 2001 carriage house and original 1859 slave quarters appear in 2025.

A notion of the original carriage house sketched in the 1990s.

A draft layout of the first floor of the 2001 reproduction carriage house as it was built for offices and a visitor center.

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Ellen & Lina: Stewards of the Bellamy House

9/1/2025

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Ellen Bellamy as an elderly woman (circa 1930s). She never married and lived at 503 Market from 1861 to 1946.

In 1946, Ellen Douglass Bellamy passed away at the age of 94. Her memoir, published as Back with the Tide, was a reminiscence on her childhood. Having lived most of her life in the Bellamy house, Ellen's final wish was clear - the home should remain in the family, preserved exactly as she remembered it in her youth.

She wanted her father’s portrait, her sister Belle’s paintings, and the treasured silk damask parlor draperies — by then stored in the attic — kept safe.

Ellen, aged 9, soon after moving into her new home.

At Ellen’s side for more than fifteen years was Sarah Adaline “Lina” Stallings. Architect Talbot Hamlin, who visited in 1945, called her “companion, nurse, secretary, errand boy, and friend for five decades.” Known to her family as "Aunt Babe," Lina never married but was beloved by her many nieces and nephews.

Lina Stallings died at age 77.

Lina as a young woman (undated photo).

Born in 1873 in Brunswick County, Lina was the youngest daughter of William and Penina Stallings. She had two older sisters, Arnetta and Theodocia, who both married cousins from the Sellers family and between them raised 14 children.

Lina came to the Bellamy home in the early 1930s, moving into the role of Ellen’s housekeeper and companion. She had only an eighth-grade education, as did Ellen, but her sharp wit, practical skill, and loyalty made her indispensable. She handled correspondence, errands, and household affairs, while providing company for a woman who refused to modernize her surroundings. “Miss Ellen wouldn’t have the house either cleaned or painted, or the garden touched,” Lina told one visitor. “She wanted it all exactly as it was when she was young.”

Even the draperies, Lina told the Durham Morning Herald in 1947, had “never been taken down, not even to be cleaned.” That same year, the Sunday Star News described the mansion as “seemingly doomed by the decadency of time” and portrayed Lina as “tiny, demure, and aged,” pointing “with pride…almost reverently” to Dr. Bellamy’s portrait. She described the Bellamy household’s strict rules—no alcohol, no Stars and Stripes—and summed up Ellen’s character as “honest beyond imagination… If she owed you anything, you would get it, and if you owed her anything, she’d get it too, or kill you.”

When Ellen died, Lina stayed on for 18 months “because Miss Ellen asked [her] to,” welcoming occasional visitors. But by the fall of 1948, illness forced her to leave Wilmington and return to Brunswick County, where she lived with her favorite niece, Bessie Stallings Hewett, in Supply.

In her will, Lina left Bessie her gold necklace set with diamonds and gave $10 to each of her other nieces and nephews. She died on April 6, 1950; her obituary ran the next day in the Wilmington Morning Star.

Preserving the Mansion
After Ellen’s death, there was talk of selling the house to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, but the deal never happened. By then, the carriage house had been condemned by the city and demolished. Most of the furnishings were divided among family members. Serious renovations were needed across the site.

In 1951, Ellen’s nephew Emmett Bellamy and niece Eliza Bellamy Williamson arranged an auction that transferred the property to the next generation — Lillian Maxwell Bellamy and Emma Bellamy Williamson. Decades of preservation work and fundraising followed, culminating in April 1994 when the Bellamy site opened to the public — physically much as Ellen wanted, but reimagined as a museum dedicated to telling the complete story of its past through the main house and adjacent slave quarters.

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"Night soilers." One of history's worst jobs.

8/1/2025

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In 1860-61, John D. Bellamy, a medical doctor, had his family home built at 5th and Market sts. It featured gas lighting, a rainwater recycling cistern, a freshwater well, and various methods of abating summer heat. What he didn't have was access to a decent sewer system. Wilmington was the largest city in the state, but it took many decades to address the issue. In lieu of a citywide system, the main Bellamy house had one bathroom with water provided from an indoor tank, multiple chamber pots, and two privy rooms in the slave quarters with five toilet seats per room above a deep pit. It's likely that enslaved workers used one of these privy rooms, and the other was for white males. The women of the family used the chamber pots and commodes, which were then emptied by workers into the privies. Over time, those privies had to be emptied.

The privies are the two rooms on the ground floor to the right in the museum's slave quarters building.

A Recurring Problem

In a 1947 Wilmington Morning Star article reminiscing on his 42-year medical career, Dr. John B. Cranmer remembers the state of city sanitation. "In 1905 Wilmington was far from a clean city. The surface of the ground was literally one big cesspool. There were 7,000 surface closets in the corporate limits ... When the scavenger carts came around at night to clean these closets, the stench was horrible for blocks around. The water supply of the city - from the Northeast River - was untreated, unfiltered and often contaminated."

The 'closets' were privies and outhouse toilets, and the doctor further remembers how animals were kept in yards and how flies swarmed in the days before a sewer system or window screens. Unsurprisingly, disease was rife. Cranmer noted, "When Dr. Charles T. Nesbitt, County Health officer, made the bold published statement that 'any one who had typhoid fever had taken something into their mouths that had passed through someone else's bowels,' the town went wild with indignation but they held out their arms by the hundreds for typhoid inoculation." As well as typhoid, hookworm, tuberculosis, malaria, and much else were common.

Historic tunnels were drains

The 1769 CJ Saulthier map below shows early Wilmington and many of the streams that run from the ridge that is now 5th Avenue down to the Cape Fear River.

Wilmington has a series of tunnels, dating from its earliest years. The largest is named Jacob's Run and passes not far from the Bellamy site (read about Jacob's Run in the Star News here). These tunnels run across downtown to the river and have been mythologized as routes for escaping slaves or hideaways for smugglers (visit another Star News story here). More prosaically, however, they were actually culverts for the streams and rudimentary drains.

Efforts to improve sanitation in the decades after the Civil War included regulations requiring privies to be cleaned every two weeks, with fines imposed for non-compliance. In 1877, the North Carolina State Board of Health began regulating privies, focusing on disease prevention and proper sewage disposal. (Chronicling America, NCPedia)

These historical sanitation practices reflect the broader public health challenges faced by North Carolina communities and towns across the country before the advent of modern sewage systems. In the early twentieth century they began to appear in urban areas but rural regions would have to wait into the 1950s and 1960s for indoor plumbing and municipal systems. Specific records of "night soilers" - workers who collected human waste from privies and cesspools in the nineteenth century — are scarce locally but the jobs were often performed by African-American workers during Reconstruction.

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The Bellamy privies were housed in two chambers, one for white men and boys and the other for male and female enslaved workers.

Getting The Scoop On … Well, Poop!

Our lead volunteer interpreter, Wade Toth, shares some frequently asked questions by visitors to the site. As you might imagine there's a lot of interest, and a little dark humor, in the slave quarters' privies. Questions include: “Why 10 seats?” “Didn’t they have to be cleaned out?” "How did that work?" “Where did they put the waste once it was removed?” “Was toilet paper used?”

An explanation for the ten seats, five in each of the two privies, was to spread the waste out more evenly. Some visitors are surprised to find out that the nine-foot-deep pits were not connected to any sort of 1860s sewerage system, but rather they had to be cleaned out by hand periodically. A typical one-hole privy would perhaps need cleaning two to three times a year. The Bellamy privies may have needed less frequent cleaning given the size.

The job of hand-removing the waste was left to the workers called 'night soilers' or, with grim irony, 'honey dippers'. 'Night', since it was a job done in the darkness, and 'soil', since waste was covered with dirt to conceal odors and because of its possible use as manure. Once removed and carted away, waste from city privies could have been taken to a remote spot outside Wilmington for dumping or burial. The town was spatially compact and beyond 10th Street it quickly became rural farmland. Another possibility was to dump waste directly into the Cape Fear River and allow the tides to sweep it into the ocean. (Here’s a little known factoid: In the 1980s, a home on South Front Street still had its flushing toilet empty directly into the Cape Fear River.)

Using waste from privies as fertilizer for crops may have been frowned upon in nineteenth century urban areas. However, the “ick” factor presumably would have been considered and not our modern knowledge of disease-carrying pathogens associated with human waste. That's not to say that it wasn't used as fertilizer when deemed necessary.

Pictured right is the pit below the privies under the museum's slave quarters. Light is coming through one of the five toilet holes. Five more in the adjacent room, meaning ten in total, mirror this setup and the wall to the left separates the underground space into two. The arched clean out you see at the bottom of the pit extends a little beyond the width of the wall at the front of the building.

The two rooms mirror each other above and below ground. Therefore, there are two clean out arches. Night soilers would have to dig a deep trench at the front of the building down to those arched openings to dig out the contents. Approximately where the arches are below ground in the front wall are marked by red dots on the image above.

To the right is an image of one of the privy rooms with five wooden toilet seats and covers. The walls are plaster, some of which is original. The exposed brick is the support for a fireplace upstairs.

This building was completed in 1859 and seven enslaved females, including three children, lived here. An adjacent carriage house would have contained one or two enslaved men at various times. The main house was completed in 1861 and soon contained eleven family members, most of them children. Clearly a population of that size would create a good deal of waste. All of the occupants besides Sarah, an enslaved housekeeper, left to escape a Yellow Fever epidemic in 1862 until a post- Civil War return in 1865. The on-site population dwindled after Emancipation and, later, as the family dispersed to their own homes. An indoor plumbed toilet was likely part of house-wide upgrades in the first decade of the twentieth century. The slave quarters was rented sporadically up to the 1930s.

Left: close up of the arched privy pit clean out. Above: artifacts excavated from the privy and gardens in the twentieth century.

Toilet 'Paper'

In Washington, DC, in the mid-nineteenth century human waste was dumped into a marshy area adjacent to the White House and a mere seven blocks from where the city obtained drinking water. Some historians believe that possible contamination of the drinking water may have contributed to the untimely death of President William Henry Harrison in 1841. On that note, think of the dangers of disease-carrying pathogens and the closeness of the Bellamy privies to the fresh water well! After all, as yet there was no germ theory, no knowledge of viruses, and no understanding of groundwater contamination.

Obviously, some form of toilet paper, or perhaps cloths, for cleansing was used at the Bellamy site, but exactly what was used is not known.

The Chinese were known to be using paper 1,400 years ago, but this option would have been expensive for most Americans. People would have instead used whatever was cheap or free. Items such as hemp, rags, moss, hay, wood shavings, Spanish moss, magnolia leaves, pine straw, and plant husks were the toilet paper equivalents.

American Joseph Gayetty introduced his Gayetty’s Medicated Paper to consumers in 1857. The sheets of paper were boxed flat, embossed with his name, and moistened with aloe which allowed him to market the product as an anti-hemorrhoid agent. It could still be found in stores into the 1920s. Less than 20 years after Gayetty’s product hit the shelves, the Scott brothers of Philadelphia produced rolls of toilet paper. The product was cheaper in that it was a roll, not pre-moistened, and lacked the embossing - but often contained wooden splinters. Ouch.

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Hiring Out in North Carolina

7/1/2025

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William Benjamin Gould, an enslaved plasterer who worked at the Bellamy site around 1860-61, was 'hired out' by his enslaver, Nicholas Nixon, for the construction project. A piece of plasterwork by Gould, inscribed with his initials and which features on the museum tour, was hidden until a 1990s renovation. It revealed both his skilled work and his singular story.

Hiring out was a common practice that could result in free and enslaved Black workers, including those hired out, appearing together on many types of work in antebellum Wilmington. In fact, enslaved artisans were central to the construction of much of the architecture of the antebellum South across the building trades. A large proportion of these men were hired out as part of an economic system that operated in most slaveholding states. Using North Carolina as an example, the following article explores their work, their experiences, and their often overlooked importance in building American towns.

The article Hiring Out: Enslaved Black Building Artisans in North Carolina is shared by kind permission from its author, architectural historian Catherine Bishir, and publisher, the University of Minnesota Press. The press publishes Building & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

The article is available for free until the end of August 2025 and can be read through this link: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/911886. After that, should you be interested in reading more from Buildings & Landscapes, or if you want to learn about the Vernacular Architecture Forum, click here for more information: https://www.upress.umn.edu/journals/buildings-and-landscapes/

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"The Origin of Juneteenth: When Freedom Reached Texas at Last"

6/1/2025

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President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." While it didn't abolish slavery nationwide, it led to the eventual passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, which permanently outlawed slavery in the United States.

Extending freedom to enslaved people in Confederate states depended on military victories by the U.S. Army and an ongoing presence to enforce them.

Actual progress happened more than two years later, on June 19, 1865, when U.S. Army troops led by Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, where Granger announced and enforced federal orders proclaiming that all enslaved people were now free in Texas -- the last state of the Confederacy with institutional slavery.

How was Texas the last holdout? When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, enslavers in Mississippi, Louisiana, and other Confederate states fled with humans they considered their chattel for Texas, a state that afforded them greater chances of escaping the Union’s reach, according to Mitchell S. Jackson in Juneteenth: A Primer. "That dark exodus (all told, 150,000 enslaved people), initiated by those who paid Old Abe’s proclamation no damn nevermind, included processions so large that some witnesses described them as the second coming of the Middle Passage."

By 1865, there were some 250,000 enslaved people living in Texas in 1865, none of whom knew that their freedom had been granted two years prior.

Read Jackson's primer here.

When Granger arrived in Galveston, he assumed command of the Department of Texas and the almost 2,000 members of the 13th U.S. Army Corps. He and his men marched through Galveston reading the then assassinated president's General Orders, No.3:

"The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."

Jackson wrote that the president’s order was read in various places -- at an antebellum home in the center of town, at Union headquarters, at the Custom House, at the courthouse, at the local AME Church, and, in time, at the farther-flung properties of enslavers. "Their audiences were sometimes stupefied to silence over freedom that must’ve seemed chimeric, but were more often animated into hoots and hollers and hallelujahs."

He added: "Some waited, as was advised, to learn of the new employer-employee relationship. But there were also a number of freed people who grabbed whatever they could carry and, with the quickness, footed right off their plantations. That mass leaving became known as 'the scatter.' Those who opted for that alacritous pursuit of freedom faced peril. Some of them were caught on roads and beaten or bushwhacked or lynched.

"Even after Granger and the blue coats galloped into Galveston, scores of should’ve-been-freed Blacks were hoodwinked into working months or even years more for their enslavers; victims of, among other factors, the state’s large size, and the obstinance and audacity of its lost-cause racists, as well as a lack of enough Union troops to enforce the order."

Austin American-Statesman – June 19, 1900.

A celebration of freedom in 1900.

Before it was inaugurated as Juneteenth, the unofficial freedom holiday was often called"Jubilee Day" and celebrated by thousands of people with music, prayer and feasting. It was held on the day the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, January 1, but later corresponded with the date of General Granger's order on June 19. During the Jim Crow era, those revelers had to move their socializing to the banks of rivers and lakes because segregation laws left them without public venues. Nonetheless, in 1872, enterprising local leaders raised $1000, purchased a 10-acre plot of land in Houston, and built their own public space: Emancipation Park.

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History.

Juneteenth, which combines the words June and nineteenth, was unofficially celebrated by African Americans as early as 1866 and in 2021 was declared a national holiday. Today, Juneteenth is a day acknowledged as the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of legal slavery in the U.S.

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When did slavery end in North Carolina?

Despite its expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. While it did apply to enslaved people in the states that had seceded from the Union, North Carolina did not officially recognize it. And like Texas, the freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory.

African American workers on a Cape Fear rice plantation, etching, date and artist unknown. Courtesy, Library of Congress

In Wilmington, NC, with its easy and safe access via the Cape Fear River, the port city was a popular destination for slave ships. Wilmington was actively engaged in slave trading and slave auctions were regularly held on the steps of the county courthouse. Although it lacked the large slave market of cities such as Richmond and Charleston, it still conducted a noteworthy interstate slave trade, according to James Redpath's Roving Editor: Or Talks with Slaves in the Southern States. The firm of D.J. Southerland and James C. Coleman, with a second office in Mobile, AL, was the leading slave trading company in Wilmington in the 1850s and early 60s. The 1860-61 city directory identifies the firm as a "negro mart."

In a July 2020 StarNews article entitled "Wilmington has a long history of injustice, exclusion of Black residents," historian Chris E. Fonvielle Jr. explained that slaves made up the principal workforce in every industry in Wilmington. And it wasn’t just individuals who held slaves. “Institutions of all kinds owned slaves in Wilmington, including railroad companies and even churches." He added: "The town relied on slaves' abilities in carpentry, masonry, and construction, as well as their skill in sailing and boating, for its growth and success.”

John D. Bellamy.

Bellamy's 10,000 square-foot townhome on Market Street in Wilmington.

Then identified as a "Negro House," the Bellamy slave quarters housed the enslaved domestic workers.

One of Wilmington's wealthiest citizens, John Dillard Bellamy, was among the largest slaveholders in North Carolina with 115 enslaved men, women and children spread across three eastern counties -- Brunswick, New Hanover and Columbus. His townhome on Market Street was built primarily by enslaved Black artisans and served mainly by enslaved women and children. Bellamy's turpentine operation thrived from the back-breaking work of young enslaved Black men and boys, and his sprawling Grovely plantation on the banks of Town Creek were tended by some 80 enslaved workers. As with other slaveholders across the Confederate states, not a single Bellamy slave was freed as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation. (And, by the way, the proclamation did not apply to slaveholders in the states that remained loyal to the Union!)

In a June 23, 1864 advertisement in the local newspaper, Bellamy offered a $1,000 reward for the capture of five of his enslaved workers from his Brunswick County plantation. He provided their names, ages, dispositions and skin color to aid in their apprehension, in addition to the locations where they may have gone. Such ads were quite common and continued nearly three years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

By the end of the Civil War in 1865, over 360,000 enslaved people in North Carolina were freed, thanks to the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ratified in North Carolina later that year on December 4.

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Restoring the Bellamy House Windows

Ambrotypes: Immortal Impressions of the Nineteenth Century

Meet Elvin Artis: Bellamy House Foreman

Bellamy's Eldest: Not Just A Southern Belle

Echoes of the Enslaved: Discoveries at the Bellamy Slave Quarters

Bellamy Carriage House: Some answers to a mystery

Ellen & Lina: Stewards of the Bellamy House

"Night soilers." One of history's worst jobs.

Hiring Out in North Carolina

"The Origin of Juneteenth: When Freedom Reached Texas at Last"

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