Ellen & Lina: Stewards of the Bellamy House

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.