Are We There Yet?

Of course we’ve all heard those words before, perhaps countless times from the back seats and typically as we head out for summer vacation. It’s a phrase that’s been around for as long as there have been children and cars. But let’s imagine what summer vacations were like for the Bellamy children long before paved roads, let alone cars, even existed.

Grovely and points north and south

“By the time Ellen and John D. Bellamy, Jr. were old enough to appreciate Grovely’s bounty, their family had formulated a set lifestyle geared to the season,” according to local historian Diane Cobb Cashman. “May and June found them at Grovely [a plantation in Brunswick County purchased by their father in 1842]. Then, as the oppressive heat that spawned ‘the sickly season’ [Yellow Fever], as well as the horrible stench that came from neighboring plantations’ flooded rice fields, came upon them, they moved to higher ground at Salem, Red Springs, and Laurinburg or caught the salt breeze at Smithville [Southport] or the Sound for the duration of the summer.” Pittsboro in Chatham County was also “a favorite summer residence for many of Wilmington’s old families.”​

Circa 1860 map showing towns like Salem and Pittsboro at top left where Wilmington families sought cooler temperatures; Lake Waccamaw just south of Whitesville and Smithville on the coast were also popular summer spots, and of course the Sound areas along the coast were most desirable for their balmy breezes and white sands.

​Ellen herself in her memoirs fondly remembered time spent at Grovely. “How I loved it as a child. I remember so well our dwelling house -- no stately mansion but comfortable and pleasant in a big yard between two lovely magnolias and a long row of Lombardy poplars in front. We usually spent the months of May and June there; no later as it was not considered healthy in late summer, being on the creek [Town Creek], and we would then go to Salem or some higher climate.” Ellen also referenced “spending the summer at Smithville, now Southport” as a young girl.

Grovely was situated on Town Creek, which begins as a backwater stream in Brunswick County at the eastern edge of the Green Swamp flowing southeast passing US 17 and NC 133 before emptying into the Cape Fear River.

Meanwhile, back in Wilmington...

When in Wilmington, John Bellamy Jr. recalled that as a boy, "my companions and I would go down [to the riverfront] ...where vessels loaded with naval stores would sail to New England, and they would return with shiploads of ice, in large blocks! These were unloaded on elevated platforms and run into ice-houses especially made for that purpose; the boys would eagerly pick up the broken lumps of ice and use it—greatly relished in hot weather!"

Bellamy's assistant architect Rufus Bunnell helps us envision summertime in antebellum Wilmington in several of his diary entries: “Everything droops,” he wrote. “Up climbs the mercury, the heat mastering the old town.”

An Atlantic Coast Line locomotive at Lake Waccamaw 1896; photo from the North Carolina Collection.

An excursion steamer on the Cape Fear River. Photo courtesy of New Hanover Public Library.

​On a sultry summer day in 1859, Bunnell noted that the stores were all closed and the city seemed partly deserted. Taking a walk after breakfast with some friends, “we saw an excursion steamer well loaded down, cross the Cape Fear River and land its passengers for a train of waiting cars in the great wooded and marshy district over there, bound for Lake Waccamaw.” Vacationers could access the beautiful waters of this large, shallow freshwater lake in northeastern Columbus County near Whiteville by railroad, as well as by steamboat.

Ex·cur·sion: a short journey or trip, especially one engaged in as a leisure activity.
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Travel by paddlewheel steamboat on the Cape Fear and its tributaries was a popular way to go in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These vessels transported many passengers, much freight, goods and mail, and offered many romantic travels along the river and even to several Carolina beaches.

​In an 1860 Wilmington Daily Herald article describing “Moonlight Excursions,” it was reported: "It has been a long time since we have had a really good excursion down the old Cape Fear by moonlight, and we take pleasure in announcing to our readers that the fine and commodious steamer Flora Macdonald will leave here to-morrow night for the above purpose. We are requested to state that two bands will be in attendance, one a full brass band, for the benefit of every one, and the other a string band, so that all who feel disposed can add to the pleasures of the trip by dancing.”

Bunnell gives us another reference to summer leisure for wealthy Wilmingtonians in a July 1860 post from his diary. During his stay at “Howards’ [boarding house], he “walked down to the post office and finding no letters went out on the wharves to see an excursion steamer leave for Smithville [Southport], a village 30 miles down the Cape Fear River.”
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Smithville, established in 1792, was renamed Southport in 1887. In James Sprunt’s Chronicles of the Cape Fear River, he wrote: The daily steamers to and from Charleston afforded the passengers at Smithville and Wilmington, and also the planters along the river, who boarded them from small boats, comfortable and speedy service. Prior to the war, Smithville, being so easily accessible by steamer, was the favorite summer resort of Wilmington families.

Summers by the seaside

​Returning to Bunnell’s diary entries, he observed that many Wilmingtonians summered at the Sound “out on the Atlantic coast.” From the early part of the 19th century, well-to-do North Carolinians came to the ocean to escape the summer heat, breathe the salt air, and bathe in the ocean. It was widely believed that the supposedly healthy beach environment protected residents and visitors from the ravages of such diseases as malaria.
The Sounds, including Greenville, Masonboro and Wrightsville, were popular summer colonies for Wilmington residents, according to Historic Architecture of New Hanover County, North Carolina. “Originally intended to be used for rice culture and the manufacture of salt in the 18th and early 19th century, these plantations along the marshes had, by the mid-19th century, become retreats away from Wilmington. 

Louis T. Moore photo of Airlie-On-The-Sound on Bradley's Creek.

​"The area near Wrightsville, above the north bank of Bradley’s Creek, was especially desirable. It was away from the swarms of mosquitoes that populated the adjacent regions, and the views across the Hammocks (later renamed Harbor island) and Banks Channel to Wrightsville Beach were as dramatic then as today.” In 1886, Bradley’s Creek was the perfect setting for a new home belonging to Sarah Green and Pembroke Jones to be named Airlie in honor of Pembroke’s family home in Scotland; Sarah dubbed it Airlie-on-the-Sound.
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Meanwhile, just a few miles south in Masonboro, lumber magnate and one of Wilmington’s richest citizens Oscar Parsley purchased a home known as Finian in 1852 (later destroyed by fire in 1931). We know O.G. Parsley as a friend of John D. Bellamy, who encouraged the doctor and his family to join him in Floral College with other families taking refuge from the war. Ellen wrote that “the Parsleys and our family lived most pleasantly together, my two older sisters being devoted friends of the Parsley girls."

Masonboro was also the summer retreat of William White Harriss, Wilmington physician, businessman, and civic leader, as well as his son George. William was Eliza Bellamy’s brother and George her nephew.

Postcard image of yacht racing from Wrightsville Beach Museum website.

​Per Historic Architecture of New Hanover County, the trip from Wilmington to the Sound was arduous before the end of the 19th century, and so families remained at their coastal retreats during most of the summer months. Responsibilities for overseeing the operations of the estates were eased by recreational activities such as fishing and sport sailing. So popular and competitive had the latter become by mid-century, that a group of residents established the Carolina Yacht Club at Wrightsville Beach.

Organized in 1853 and still a social stronghold, the Club is second in age along the eastern seaboard only to the New York Yacht Club.​
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By the late 1880s, a beach train traveled from Wilmington to Wrightsville Beach. In the early days, the fare was 25 cents, which included the rental of a “bathing costume.” 

By the end of the 1880s, Wilmington and the coastal communities of Wrightsville and Wrightsville Beach had been linked by rail, affording residents of the City access to the ocean and a style of life rare in other areas of the nation. With the construction of Lumina pavilion by Tidewater Power Company president Hugh MacRae in 1905, a day at the beach ended with music and dancing every night on the huge dance floor overlooked by a spectator balcony, and movies once a week.

The original Lumina pavilion finished in 1905 at Wrightsville Beach; photo courtesy of Lower Cape Fear Historical Society.

Silent movies were shown on an outdoor movie screen in the surf at Lumina, with spectators sitting on benches on the ocean side of the pavilion. The movies appealed especially to children for they were most often comedies or westerns. Photo courtesy of New Hanover County Public Library.

​“Out of the darkness, the lights at Lumina were dazzling,” recalled Lillian Bellamy Boney, a great granddaughter of Dr. Bellamy, in a 2009 Wrightsville Beach Magazine article. In its heyday, Lumina pavilion was a hot spot for big bands like Paul Whiteman, Cab Calloway, and Jimmy Dorsey [sadly, it was demolished in 1973].
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By the first decades of the 20th century, the automobile had become widespread, and bridges spanned the waterways along the major routes across Hanover County.

Ellen Bellamy certainly witnessed much progress in her lifetime (1852-1946), from travel by horse and carriage, ferries, steamboats, trains and trolleys to cars, buses and airplanes. She said it herself as she wrote later in life: “It is such a pleasure to have [my brother John] during the summer to take his mid-day meal while his family are summering on Wrightsville Beach only a short distance away in these days of fast travel.”

A Different Kind of Summer

​Even after the era of enslavement ended, beach vacations were not necessarily common among Blacks in the south. In fact, Jim Crow laws barred Blacks from visiting the beaches frequented by Whites. That is until 1922 when two African Americans - Rowland and Nathan Freeman - developed a resort called Seabreeze (also known as Sea Breeze or Freeman’s Beach) on the east side of U.S. 421 just north of Snow’s Cut and Carolina Beach.

Alexander and Charity Freeman.

The land was bought in 1855 by freed slaves Alexander and Charity Freeman and inherited by their son Robert Bruce Freeman. At his death, he parceled this land in tracts, designed to be self-supporting waterfront properties, to a number of relatives, according to the StarNews. Even then, black people were forbidden from even traveling through Carolina Beach to get to Seabreeze, so the Freeman family bought a boat to ferry people back and forth to the resort. ​​

​Following Seabreeze, Simpson’s Hotel was built in 1925 and then the Monte Carlo, all of which led to bathhouses and music clubs known as “jump joints.” By the 1930s and 40s, blacks from all parts of North Carolina flocked to Seabreeze to finally enjoy surf and sun. Read much more from Federal Point historian Rebecca Taylor about the area here.

Unidentified visitors at Freeman Beach circa 1945.

There were multiple dance halls, including this one on a pier

A plan of Seabreeze

Places to stay at Seabreeze

Where Seabreeze and Freeman Park are in relation to Carolina Beach today. Snow's Cut, linking the Intracoastal Waterway and the river, was finished in 1931 and turned what had been the end of the New Hanover County peninsula from Federal Point into Pleasure Island.

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​Also in the early 1930s, the town of Atlantic Beach - known to some as the ‘Black Pearl' - was formed as a vacation getaway for black families. This small coastal area in South Carolina grew to become a popular vacation destination, and black-owned businesses thrived in this close-knit community nestled in the heart of North Myrtle Beach. Many Atlantic Beach residents are descendants of the Gullah-Geechee people, former slaves from the West Coast of Africa who lived and worked in the coastal area from around Jacksonville, Florida to as far north as Wilmington. You can read much more on Gullah-Geechee heritage here.