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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
 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.
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.”
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. 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. -----------------------------------------------------------
 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.
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.
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. 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/
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.
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."
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."
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.
________________________________________________________________________ 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.”
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!)
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.
Just 18 in 1839 and newly married to John Dillard Bellamy, Eliza McIlhenny Harriss Bellamy would have been well-trained in the role of a woman in the antebellum South. According to NC historian Alice Eley Jones, she was likely, "gracious, fragile and deferential to the men upon whose protection she depended; imbued with the proper manners and literacy required of a young lady in her station, as well as the necessary basic household skills like sewing, supervising the garden and putting up preserves.” Born in 1821 and growing up in Wilmington as the first of eight children to Mary Priscilla Jennings Harriss and her husband Dr. William James Harriss, Eliza has been described as a "rather plain girl but blessed with a bright inquiring mind, serious nature, and sweet disposition," wrote local historian Diane Cobb Cashman in her 1989 report on the "History of the Bellamy Mansion."
Interestingly, this was a memory Eliza shared with her family. Ellen wrote: "The Gallows Hill was where the Old Ladies’ Home now is, corner 9th and Princess [there was more than one Gallows Hill over time]; when the sheriff asked what crimes the woman had committed, replied; "'Nothing but killing old Mrs. Bradley' (her mistress). But as the town began to build up, the gallows was moved down to South Front Street, Dry Pond.”
For Dr. Bellamy, given his wealth and status as a "person of known disloyalty," gaining a pardon and regaining his properties were in the hands of General Joseph Hawley, who, together with his wife Harriet, and fellow officers occupied the Bellamy house until he was reassigned in June 1865. While there, the Hawley's received a visit from Eliza Bellamy hoping to reclaim her home. There are two versions of how that meeting unfolded. One was described by daughter Ellen in her memoirs and the other as recollected by Mrs. Hawley. Per Ellen: Mother found it "most humiliating, and trying, to be entertained by Mrs. Hawley, in her own parlor.... During the call, she offered Mother some figs (from Mother's own tree) which Aunt Sarah had picked -- our old cook, who had been left in charge of the premises" -- and presumably had offered her services to the new occupants. Eliza Bellamy played her role with panache, sharing the stance of many southern women who held up their gentility as flags unbowed by defeat. Per Harriet Hawley: "The lady [Eliza Bellamy] made herself as agreeable as possible, spoke of the General's occupancy and her own absence, much as people who had gone off to the sea-shore for the summer might speak of renting their town house till their return; intimating that she wouldn't hurry the General commanding for the world, and hoped that he would remain with his family until it was entirely convenient to remove, but suggested that she and her husband thought they would probably return in a couple or three months, when, of course, they supposed their house would be ready for them! Confiscation seemed to have no terrors for her; or, if it had, they were dexterously concealed under and air of smiling and absolute assurance." Dr. Bellamy finally received a pardon to regain possession of his home in September 1865. In a letter to her daughter Belle, Eliza wrote: "I never saw so much dirt in my life" and the basement, site of the kitchen and dining room, was "more like a hogpen than anything else." After refurbishing the house, Eliza turned her attention to the garden, where she put to use her longstanding interest in horticulture. Having lost one baby (Kate) in 1858, Eliza gave birth to Chesley the following year. Sadly, Chesley succumbed to an unknown illness in 1881 at age 22. Based on the symptoms described in his obituary, it is believed he died from viral encephalitis contracted from contaminated water. Eliza's husband died in 1896 age 79, while her first child, Belle, died at age 59 in 1900. Alongside these difficult and tragic experiences, Eliza was well-loved and cared for by her husband and family and mostly enjoyed a life of privilege. Daughter Ellen wrote in her memoirs: While at Grovely, "the fruit was in its glory and I would follow my father in the orchard culling the most choice which he always deposited in front of mother. He wanted the very best for her; he was always the most devoted husband and his love and attention never failed to the very end, although married 57 years.” “In civil and political affairs, American women take no interest or concern, except so far as they sympathize with their family and personal friends….” Catherine Beecher "A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and at School" (1845)
"By this time, the town was tense with a riotous atmosphere. A deadly quiet had spread over the city. Both blacks and whites remained at home behind closed doors or left town. Businesses and schools were closed. Churches provided shelter for many frightened blacks, while others fled into the woods and swamps surrounding the city. Martial law was proclaimed and military units were sent from cities around the state. Two hundred local white policemen were sworn in to keep the peace. The Mayor and Board of Aldermen were summoned to City Hall, where they were forced to resign. They were replaced by an all-white board of Democrats. The chief of police and the entire police department was forced to resign. Several prominent black and white Republicans were rounded up and forced to spend the night in jail. The next day, they were escorted to the railroad depot and made to board northbound trains. During the ensuing weeks all government jobs held by blacks, from fireman to City Hall janitor, were vacated and given to white employees." Following these violent events, John Jr. took his seat in Congress. In 1900 a North Carolina constitutional amendment creating a literacy test was passed. It was part a series of so-called Black Codes that disenfranchised Black voters and ended an era of Black political participation. Like most others among Wilmington's social and economic White leadership, members of the Bellamy family believed that life had been returned to "a reign of justice and peace," as daughter Ellen put it, at last.
Only a few years later, in October 1907, the Wilmington Messenger reported the death of Mrs. Eliza Bellamy, age 87, "the oldest living white resident of Wilmington."
 There are numerous types of magnolia and a sixth tree in our gardens is actually a dwarf varietal called 'Little Gem'. The grandiflora's glossy leaves, large white flowers, and dense oval seed pods distinguish it as both a botanical relic and an icon of the South. They begin to bloom in this area in late April and early May. In Southern U.S. culture, the magnolia is woven into the region’s identity. The magnolia's lush, highly fragrant, blossoms often evoke a romanticized South, appearing in literature, art, and music as emblems of longevity and tradition. Yet, the tree also exists in complex proximity to histories of slavery, segregation, and the rise of plantation culture.  In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, the presence of this tree sets a scene of beauty and tension, “The night was still. I could hear his heavy breathing, and I could smell the heavy sweetness of the magnolia blossoms.” William Faulkner's novels, often set in Mississippi, bring more beauty but often with elements of decay. Flora often sets a scene, such as, “The air was full of the smell of honeysuckle and magnolia and sweet shrub” in The Sound and the Fury. His 1841 essay, The Magnolia at Lake Pontchartrain, is direct, "Nothing at the south had affected me like the Magnolia ... I stood astonished as might a lover of music." In Eudora Welty's The Optimist's Daughter, the blooms become a metaphor, “The magnolia’s white flowers were like ghosts of summer in the tree.” For Zora Neale Hurston in Their Eyes Were Watching God, it's a reflection on femininity and resilience, “She was a wind on the ocean. She had come back with the sun and the magnolia trees.” Magnolia grandiflora have also been linked to the interesting idea of witness trees — living trees that have stood through significant historical events. The White House grounds have a number of these. For example, the Andrew Jackson magnolia stood for nearly 200 years until it was removed for safety reasons on April 7, 2025. Another magnolia from a seedling replaced it the next day. Jackson is reputed to have planted the original in memory of his late wife, Rachel, and the tree appears on the back of the $20 bill. Our area features bald cypress on the Black River that are thousands of years old. The spectacular live oak at Airlie Gardens is 500 years old. At the Bellamy site, our magnolias are over 150, a venerable age for the species. They feature in Wilmington's Heritage Tree program and receive much love and care at the museum. Many trees have silently borne witness to moments of national significance and remain in place. A black walnut stands on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, a white oak in Arlington National Cemetery, an American elm survived the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and is now part of a national memorial. At this museum, the magnolias will have been there for Wilmington's short-lived progress in Reconstruction, the accomplishments in World War Two, the 1960s downturn and the post-1990s growth. They saw the arming of a mob 100 yards away on November 10th, 1898 that denoted a racial massacre, part of the only successful coup in American history. The trees were there for the march from Williston school to the County courthouse on April 5, 1968, the day after Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. He should have been speaking at Williston at the time of his death. They would have reflected the firelight on March 13, 1972, when an arsonist set a blaze in the Bellamy house for reasons we still don't know. Trees can serve not only as biological survivors but as living testaments to history. A witness tree, by simply enduring, becomes a symbol of continuity, memory, and resilience. They can be fixtures of natural beauty and quiet observers.
By comparison, another Horry County taxpaying resident, John Rogers, owned 14,000 acres and enslaved 39 people. Although individual states, including North Carolina, had experimented with income taxation during the 19th century, it was not until 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln and Congress established a Commissioner of Internal Revenue that the country’s first income tax was levied to help with the mounting costs of the Civil War.
In reference to wealthy men like Dr. Bellamy, the Committee on Ways and Means, begun in 1789 and the the oldest tax-writing body in the U.S. House of Representatives, stated, "Owners of carriage valued at over $300, and gold watches and silver plate, are among those persons best able to contribute something to the support of the Government under whose protection they have been able to acquire articles indicative of wealth and assured means of support.” Luxury taxes had been repealed in 1817 after being levied to help raise revenue during the War of 1812, but with the escalating Civil War came the return of such excise taxes. During the Civil War specific items such as carriages, gold and silver plate, billiard tables, pianos, and even watches were all taxed as luxury items. Civil War excise taxes on luxury items were all repealed by 1871, except those levied on liquor and tobacco which remain to this day.
 This document is an 1866 Brunswick County tax assessment for Dr. John D. Bellamy. He was assessed a three cent tax for every pound of cotton produced. In 1866, Dr. Bellamy paid a total of $228.39 on 7,613 pounds of cotton produced at his Grovely plantation. The cotton tax was considered unfair and even illegal by many Southern men who paid it between 1862 and 1867. Some considered it unfair because it affected the deep South states more than northern ones, and its continuation after the conclusion of the Civil War left many Southern planters, like Dr. Bellamy, contemplating whether the cotton tax was even punitive in nature.
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