School Days for the Bellamy Children

From Back with The Tide, the memoirs of Ellen Bellamy, John and Eliza's 5th of 10 children:

“In the tower of Market House was the old bell rung by a negro woman owned by the Gilberts; first in morning, the breakfast bell; an hour later the Turn Out, or school bell; same at dinner time and at 9 at night rung again, after which servants or slaves were not allowed in street without passes from their owners.”
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Shown here: The Market House in the middle of Market Street between Front and Water Streets had a tower with a 565-pound bell.

The decade prior to the Civil War found North Carolina, including Wilmington, teeming with schools. For those who could afford the tuition, there were private schools for small boys and girls, seminaries and secondary schools (often referred to as academies) for young men and women, and finishing schools for young ladies.
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A young ladies seminary in Wilmington in 1860, for example, provided students with instruction in English, modern languages, Latin, piano, singing, pencil drawing, and oil and pastel painting. It was believed that women needed to be educated to make them better wives and mothers, to raise intelligent sons and daughters, and to be more interesting companions to their husbands. Back then it was believed that an educated woman was also less likely to be manipulated into an illicit affair by a cunning man.

In 1853, George W. Jewett began the Wilmington Male and Female Seminary. Offering an English and classical education, usually taught in the Academies and High Schools of New England, from whence he came, Jewett promised that students would be thoroughly fitted for College, according to Wilmington, North Carolina, to 1861 by Alan D. Watson.​

In addition to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, more than thirty private colleges were founded in North Carolina before the Civil War, none of which were in Wilmington. Most were small, and some were short-lived, but several grew into colleges and universities that are well-known today.

UNC Campus circa 1855 from the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives.

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Ellen Bellamy as a school girl.

​Born in 1852, Ellen Bellamy tells us a lot about the family’s education in her memoirs: "My brother John and I had only gone to school here a short time before [the war] to Mrs. George W. Jewett, on corner of Third and Ann, and her husband taught the older boys in another room. My two older brothers [Marsden, born 1843, and William, born 1844] had been taught by him before going to Chapel Hill, where they were when the war broke out.”

John Bellamy Jr. as a young boy.

John Bellamy Jr., two years younger than Ellen, notes in his memoirs: "At the age of six years, I was first sent to a school in Wilmington, conducted by George Washington Jewett and wife. This Mr. Jewett was a ship carpenter by trade, from Augusta, Maine. He had received a very fine education in Maine, and was a particularly thorough Latin and Greek scholar, as I found years after, in the High School conducted by him in Wilmington."

John says he took great interest in historical events of that era remembering as a small boy in 1859 (just five years old) and 1860, things had come to such a pass that when a slave owner went to New York on business, he would be forced to hire and take a free negro servant with him, for a slave servant would be so tampered with by the abolitionists that he would leave his owner, and would never be recovered.

Young schools boys including John Jr. witnessed slave whippings and hangings.

"I recollect that my parents, although owners of hundreds of slaves, had to hire Betsey Keeter, a free negro woman, as nurse for their infant son [Chesley] when they went North. No abolitionist would attempt to interfere with a free negro; only the slaves would they entice away."
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John further recalls: "In my childhood days the stocks were erected, at the old courthouse on Princess Street between Second and Third, where criminals were punished by being given nine lashes on the naked back! I attended school just around the corner, and at recess would go to the stocks to see the criminals whipped. These stocks remained there until about the year 1870, when they were torn down and removed."
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The quintessential Southern Belle

Mary Elizabeth "Belle" Bellamy studied art at Barhamville Academy near Columbia, SC.

​Meanwhile, according to Ellen, "my eldest sister [Mary Elizabeth, born 1840] had graduated at Barhamville, a young ladies college a few miles from Columbia, S.C. Sherman burned the college when he set fire to so many lovely buildings in Columbia. Sister painted all those pictures hanging in our parlors downstairs."
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As noted in a 1996 article in a museum newsletter, at least five, and as many as eight, of Belle’s landscape and figure paintings graced the walls of the formal double parlor. Today, there are four of them, plus one reproduction, in the parlors, gifts of her great grandchildren. Extended family in South Carolina own some originals.
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At school as a teenager, Belle proved to be a quite capable student who was particularly apt in drawing and painting. 

Columbia’s Greek Revival architecture caught her imagination, especially the Col. Clarkson home at the corner of Bull and Blanding Streets. Based on the written descriptions of the Clarkson home, the Bellamy Mansion seems, upon first blush, to be similar in proportion and detail. As the story goes, Dr. Bellamy was contemplating the construction of his new Wilmington home and Belle made a drawing of the Clarkson house suggesting it would be a suitable design for their new residence. Unfortunately, the precise similarities between the structures will never be known. The arrival of William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops in 1865 saw the Clarkson house consumed by fire. Beyond Belle’s initial inspiration, it is difficult to pinpoint her continuing role in the design of the house.

Belle also had some input into the interior decor of the house. In 1860, she accompanied her parents and infant brother Chesley to New York as they purchased new furniture and interior appointments. Her sense of style may well have figured into the selection of their fashionable new furniture and fabrics. It was on that trip that a freed slave woman was hired to accompany the family, as mentioned above from John Jr.’s memoirs.

In The Education of the Southern Belle, Christie Anne Farnham describes the course offerings at Barhamville, which covered four years of study in addition to a preparatory as well as a postgraduate year for resident graduates. Ornamental studies (offered at extra expense) were popular -- piano, guitar, vocal music; drawing, oil painting, water colors; French, Italian, Spanish, Latin and occasionally German; even embroidery remained among the optional courses. Natural philosophy, logic, history, astronomy, evidences of Christianity, and geology was taken by third-year students; and in the fourth year of study, students were taught philosophy, Butler's analogy, Kame's elements of criticism, arithmetic, bookkeeping, belles lettres, and Milton. 

The ideal southern lady was educated, gracious and fragile making her more attractive to the men who courted her.

None of these were designed to widen opportunities for women but merely to better prepare them to assume their traditional place in society as wives and mothers.
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The prevailing southern ideology emphasized the ideal of the southern lady as gracious, fragile, and deferential to the men upon whose protection she depended. Interestingly, despite the intended purpose of an education for women, the antebellum South was well ahead of the North, which remained wary of female colleges.

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Floral College and post-war school days

Floral College (drawing courtesy of Robeson County History Museum).

Newly graduated, Belle joined the family during their stay in Floral College, a Presbyterian girls school near the depot village of Shoe Heel (now Maxton), initially to escape an outbreak of Yellow Fever in 1862 and thereafter to remain safe from the war. Ellen remembers: "I loved that little village -- life was so sweet and different there. We entered a select private school, just a short walk around, my brothers John [born 1854] and George [born 1856], and I, taught by Mrs. Maria Nash, widow of Rev. Frederick Nash, a Presbyterian minister. I loved my teacher and feel that I learned a great deal during our few sessions there."

Established in 1841 in Robeson County, Floral College is distinguished as the first female college in the state to confer degrees. The school thrived until the beginning of the war, when it was forced to close in fear of being unable to provide safety to students. While the Bellamys assumed it to be a safe haven from Union soldiers, Sherman's troops marched right to the door of Floral College! 

After the family's return home to Wilmingtonin 1865, Ellen wrote, "though we were shocked by the terrible experience of War, life went on and things became somewhat normal. I picked up my studies as a Parlor scholar at Cousin Laura Rankin Rothwell’s school, she having secured an assistant, Mr. Steinberg, who taught Latin, French; his career was short. I was glad, I had determined not to recite another lesson to him. He was too fresh to suit me, a German too."

Laura was a cousin of Ellen’s mother Eliza. When Eliza and John were married in 1839, the plan was for cousin Laura to accompany the newlyweds on their honeymoon in Europe as a companion to Eliza, who was not yet 18 years old. That trip was never taken due to the sudden death of Eliza’s father.

At her school on Third Street between Grace and Princess, with pupils ranging from a primary department for very small girls to young ladies of perhaps 20, Mrs. Laura Rothwell was known to be a strict disciplinarian, apparently not afraid to use the switch.

From the diary of a Wilmington resident Nicholas W. Schenk (1830-1916): "Miss Laura from my memory was too strict and sometimes cruel -- whippings abundant. My seat was in a sort of crib in the middle of the room -- prayers every morning and singing -- I recall a verse -- as it still sounds in my ears -- While I live -- I do not think -- I will ever learn to drink -- Brandy -- Whiskey -- Gin or Rum -- or anything to make drunk come. Washington Temperance Society -- in full blast those days -- may explain the song. Miss Laura was a teacher for 67 years!"

Spare the rod, spoil the child." Bellamy teachers, including Miss Laura and Master Jewett, regularly delivered whippings with a birchen rod to children who misbehaved.

After the war, the Bellamy boys were sent to their respective schools except the two baby brothers [Chesley, born 1859 and Robert, born 1861], according to Ellen. We don’t know much about sister Eliza in her younger years; however brother John Jr. went on to a high school in Wilmington headed by Hamilton McMillan where he “won the prizes in almost every class that I was in,” he tells us, “and besides, got a prize for being the best orator in the school. In the latter part of 1865 or 1866, Mr. George W. Jewett began a High School at the corner of Second and Chestnut Streets. The school continued for several years; then, there came to Wilmington, from Virginia, one of the finest teachers and characters I ever knew, in the person of General Raleigh E. Colston, a distinguished Confederate Brigadier-General, who established a military school in the city [in 1868], called the Cape Fear [Military] Academy. I rose from private to corporal, and through the various grades, to captain.”

Chesley Calhoun Bellamy.

As the Bellamy sons completed their educations and launched their careers, they returned to Wilmington to establish themselves in their professions and businesses, writes Catherine W. Bishir in The Bellamy Mansion. Chesley, who entered Davidson College, died while still a college student in 1881, just shy of 21 years old. The eldest son, Marsden, completed his legal studies and began practicing law in Wilmington in 1866, excelling as a trial attorney.

William, who followed in his father and grandfather’s footsteps, inaugurated his medical practice in Wilmington in 1870 and was a founder of the local hospital.

While reading medicine under their father, and preparing to go off to medical college, Ellen tells us that the ironing room in the basement of the house was fitted up for Willie and became known as The Office. She recalls his bringing home the skeleton of a woman he had dissected in New York and one time standing up the ironing board, similar in shape to a coffin lid, and laying the skeleton on it, frightening the servants who passed through.

1902 engraving of John Jr. by Thomas Fleming from the U.S. House of Representatives Collection.

George, who preferred farming, settled down on the other side of the river at Grovely Plantation in Brunswick County, according to Bishir, and entered politics with such success that he became known as the Duke of Brunswick. Robert, the youngest of the boys, entered the wholesale pharmacy business and finance.

​John Jr., studied at Davidson College, then at the University of Virginia law school in 1873 and 1874, beginning his practice in Wilmington in 1875, where he soon became the city attorney. Promptly turning to politics, John ran for a seat in the state legislature in 1875 only to be defeated by a black Republican, Alfred Lloyd. He served in the North Carolina Senate in 1891-92 and in Congress from 1899 to 1903.

Educating a Future President

John Jr. attended Davidson College, graduating in 1873 at age 19, where he had distinguished himself as a scholar. His serious approach to study impressed Dr. Joseph Ruggles Wilson, the new pastor of First Presbyterian Church (in 1874) and father of Thomas Woodrow Wilson, then 17, and a student at Davidson College.
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Tommy made quite an impression in town by riding around on a two-wheel bicycle with an immense front wheel (thought to be the first in Wilmington) and proving that he wasn’t a “goody two-shoes” by participating in mild pranks.

Dr. Wilson asked John Jr. to tutor his son, Tommy, who had suffered from a childhood learning disability. The two young men soon became inseparable.​

A young Thomas Woodrow Wilson, fondly known to the Bellamy family as "Tommy."

The two boys found that they shared many common interests including an affection for Sir Walter Scott’s romantic novels. Young Wilson became a frequent visitor in the Bellamy Mansion.

​In the summer of 1880, a sickly Woodrow Wilson returned to Wilmington. This visit brought him back into contact with John Jr., now a practicing attorney who had earned a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1875. At Woodrow’s request, John tutored him in law. Woodrow went on to become president of Princeton University, New Jersey governor and the 28th President of the United States serving from 1913 until 1921. Eliza and Ellen Bellamy visited him at the White House in 1914.

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The Doctor and his "Dame"

South Carolina College circa 1850 [from the University of South Carolina archives]. Offering a traditional classical curriculum, the College became one of the most influential colleges in the South before 1861, earning a reputation as the training ground for South Carolina's antebellum elite.

John D. Bellamy and his wife Eliza were born of privilege and both were schooled in exclusive institutions. John [born 1817 in All Saints Parish, South Carolina] studied at Marion Academy and Rice Academy, and then at South Carolina College in Columbia.

By age 18 he headed for Wilmington, where he began his medical training by studying with an experienced physician, Dr. William James Harriss. The doctor was a prominent citizen of the city and served as mayor. 

In 1837, John left for Philadelphia to study at the University of Pennsylvania Medical College, which still exists today.
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Eliza [born 1821] was an intelligent young woman who studied at private schools in Wilmington and Pittsboro, North Carolina, and also in New Haven, Connecticut. Per local historian Diane Cobb Cashman's research, Eliza was described as rather a plain girl but blessed with a bright inquiring mind, serious nature, and sweet disposition. 

After 'dame' school, she went to be schooled in Pittsboro in Chatham County. Dame school was a broad term for a private, usually elementary, school with a female teacher during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. These elite schools offered a "polite" education, including reading, writing, English, French, arithmetic, music and dancing, to children of wealthy families.

​After Eliza's schooling at Pittsboro Academy, according to Cashman, "she was sent for further education in New Haven, Connecticut. She traveled back and forth on a small sailing vessel, an adventure in itself. While at New Haven she developed a serious interest in botany. Perhaps it was a mutual interest in science that first kindled the romance with John.

A botanical illustration which Eliza may have studied of a ficus -- edible fig -- plant.

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Wilmington's First Public Schools

What about the less privileged school-aged children or those with no privilege at all?

Despite an authorization of public schools by the North Carolina Constitution of 1776, it was not until 1839 that a public education system was finally approved for all counties in the State. As a result, several public schools were established but they were not widely patronized and so were of poor quality.
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The city of Wilmington opened its first public school, named the "Union Free School," in 1857 on 6th Street between Nun and Church Streets [the name Union was applied to any school in which private and public interests were involved]. It was not until after the Civil War in 1868 that the public school system was revived, but it was slow in developing, according to New Hanover County...a brief history by Lawrence Lee.

Postcard showing The Union Public Schools.

Amy Morris Bradley (1823-1904), was influential in starting free schools for white children in Wilmington. She was born in East Vassalboro, Maine. She started the Union School, the Hemenway School, and Tileston School and taught many prominent Wilmingtonians, such as Henry Bacon (architect of the Lincoln Memorial and Reflecting Pool) and Woodrow Wilson.

Early in our nation’s history, the Quakers were instrumental in educating the enslaved. However, Southern slaveholders generally opposed literacy for those they subjugated and laws were passed making it illegal to teach a slave how to read or write in fear that they might forge passes or convince other enslaved people to revolt.

Free blacks used a variety of strategies to acquire an education. In many southern cities, they were prohibited from attending public schools. In fact, after 1835, the North Carolina General Assembly denied access to public schools "to any descendant of Negro ancestors to the fourth generation inclusive.

It was not until 1873 that Wilmington saw its first public school for blacks. According to A Guide to Wilmington's African American Heritage by Janet Seapker and Beverly Tetterton, the Freedmen's Bureau began at Williston in 1865 as an elementary school for African Americans. The American Missionary Association operated the school on South 10th Street, which was named in honor of the Massachusetts benefactor, Samuel Williston. Williston Graded School became the city's first black public school when it was purchased in 1873 by the city's Board of Education.