Bellamy's Eldest: Not Just A Southern Belle

​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.
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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.