"Tommy" Wilson and His Friend John D. Bellamy, Jr.

The following is adapted from a research report by Wilmington historian Diane Cobb Cashman. Ms. Cashman was deeply immersed in the life of the Bellamy family and “the mansion that bears their name,” as she wrote in her, “History of the Bellamy Mansion,” presented to Bellamy Mansion, Inc. in 1989. Her local work rested on Bellamy family letters, family stories, diaries and, in this instance, on biographical works about President Woodrow Wilson.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), was the 28th U.S. President. He led the nation through World War I, established the Federal Reserve and Federal Trade Commission, and championed the League of Nations - an action that won him the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize. His "New Freedom" platform included antitrust reforms, child labor laws, and the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote. At the same time, Wilson is frequently criticized for overseeing the widespread segregation of the federal bureaucracy and holding white supremacist views. In 1915, to take one example, he promoted the explicitly white supremacist film, Birth of a Nation, by showing it at the White House.

Much is written about Wilson’s political career, but his younger years included living for several years in Wilmington, NC, where his father, Dr. Joseph Ruggles Wilson, was installed as pastor of the city’s First Presbyterian Church. His experience may well have helped to shape the future president’s personality, views, and character. ​

Wilson was born in Virginia five years before the start of the Civil War and raised in Georgia and the Carolinas. ​Biographers agree that during Wilson’s Wilmington years, his “best friend” was John D. Bellamy, Jr. As a result of that friendship, the future president spent a significant amount of time within the circle of the Bellamy family and as a guest within their home at 503 Market St.

John D. Bellamy, Jr. (1854-1942)

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)

Pastor Joseph Wilson joined First Presbyterian on November 1, 1874, when his son Thomas was 18. At the time, the prestigious church had about 300 members and among the most prominent were Mrs. Eliza Bellamy, wife of Dr. John Dillard Bellamy, and her family. When the Wilsons moved to Wilmington they were a source of interest and curiosity. Dr. Wilson, reputedly a brilliant preacher, was described as a “man’s man,” who was usually wreathed in smoke from his old fashioned long stemmed clay pipe and who was known to indulge in a toddy from time to time. In 1861 he had been one of the founders of the Southern Presbyterian Church of the United States as the Civil War caused a schism in that denomination. He had also been a minister in Augusta, Georgia and a professor in the Columbia Theological Seminary in South Carolina before moving to Wilmington.

Dr. Joseph Ruggles Wilson, pastor of First Presbyterian Church.

​His wife Janet "Jessie" Woodrow Wilson was reported as aloof, suffered from chronic ill health, and at times offended members of the congregation (including Mrs. Bellamy) when she did not disguise her obvious disdain for some of the local customs. Their eldest son, who was known at that time as “Tommy,” had dropped out of Davidson College after completing the 1874 term and moved with his family to Wilmington in November while in the process of transferring to Princeton (then the College of New Jersey).

It didn’t take long for the bespectacled, dreamy, and introspective young college student to learn that in Wilmington there were very few people of his age who shared his interests or had the benefit of a college education. When John D. Bellamy, Jr., an 1873 Davidson College graduate, returned to Wilmington from the University of Virginia where he was by then studying law, he met Tom Wilson. The two had not overlapped at Davidson but were now in the same Sunday School class at the First Presbyterian Church. Dr. Wilson encouraged his son to associate with the 20 year old Bellamy and he may have even suggested that the law student might prove to be a person who could tutor him.

John Bellamy Jr's life was to be an eventful one. He would be a leader of the 1898 white supremacist coup and massacre, a US Congressman, a delegate to the 1924 Washington disarmament conference, a political backer of North Carolina A&T University, and deeply engaged in the civic leadership of Wilmington.

In 1875, according to one biographer, “He [Woodrow Wilson] spent a year at home studying Greek, and living a rather sedentary though not secluded life. He found the circle limited in which he could move with satisfaction. The South was sending few boys to college in those days of the seventies. Their fathers had perished in the war and many of their elder brothers. Much of their property was gone and young men in their teens were needed at home. Tommy fell in with young John Bellamy … And such a friendship sprang up between the two as inevitably arises when boys of like tastes have leisure to devote themselves to each other. It was their habit to take books and go out in the pine woods and read — sometimes aloud to each other, sometimes sprawling on their backs, flipping the pages, chasing the story. So they read through half a dozen of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. They called their excursions ‘reading raids,’ which were really high old intellectual times, and in them the boys went through ‘The Bride of Lammermoor,’ ‘Old Morality,’ ‘Quentin Durwood,’ ‘The Pirate,’ and a few other of Scott’s stories.

Wilson’s official biographer, Ray Stannard Baker, elaborated on the reading outings: “The one friend was John D. Bellamy, a little older than young Wilson, one of the few men in town who had any intellectual interests. Mr. Bellamy recalls vividly reading along Scott’s ‘The Pirate’ with young Wilson. They would walk over to what then was called in those days Delgado Mills, which had been a camp for Confederate troops during the war. There were fine trees about, and the young men would lie on mounds which had been formerly covered by ammunition magazines and take turns in reading aloud.

“Mr. Bellamy says that Wilson was never content with the mere reading of a story. He wanted to discuss it at great length. He wanted to compare characters and make up his mind which he liked best ... Bellamy also remembers the eagerness with which young Wilson discussed various famous men. He admired Cromwell and Gladstone, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, and questioned why it was that they were great.”

John’s sisters, Ellen and Eliza Bellamy (pictured), also recalled that Tom Wilson like to sit on the piazza of the Bellamy mansion and discuss the historical events that had taken place either in the house or near the site.

​He was intrigued by the story of the patriot Cornelius Harnett, who as a captive of the British, had been brought to Wilmington and passed down the road in front of the house. ​He was fascinated that the yellow fever victims had passed by the house as their corpses were taken to Oakdale Cemetery, and interested in the visit of Supreme Court Justice Salmon Chase to Wilmington.

David Bryant, a Black butler who served the Wilson family while they were in Wilmington, also recalled the close relationship of Bellamy and Wilson: “When I wanted to find Mr. Tommy…I would go to his room, and generally he would be sitting with his elbows on his knees and his nose in a book. He just had two friends in those days — John Bellamy and the old Doctor. If he wasn’t reading a book with one, he was talking about the book with another.”

Bellamy and Wilson did not spend all their time talking books. They both were drawn to the wharves that lined Wilmington’s Cape Fear River and studied the various ships and memorized riggings and sails.

There were also times when the “serious” students indulged in silly pranks. At the Bellamy house, the two went through Mrs. Bellamy’s prized 1849 edition of Godey’s Ladies Book and drew spectacles over the eyes of all the ladies.

The two young men “haunted each others’ houses” during the summer of 1875 and at times considered their conversation with the girls made them “raging social lions.”
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John Bellamy Jr. also idolized Tom’s father, the Rev. Wilson, but neither he, his sisters, nor his mother had much time for Mrs. Wilson. One time when both the Wilsons and the Bellamys were on a Cape Fear River steamer excursion, Mrs. Bellamy graciously offered to share some of her cake, since everyone on board the boat, except the Wilsons, was enjoying a picnic lunch. Mrs. Wilson almost recoiled in horror and said to Mrs. Bellamy, “I couldn’t eat it for anything — not here on deck!” Mrs. Bellamy took Mrs. Wilson’s response as a personal criticism of her manners and was deeply offended.

On another occasion, Mrs. Wilson fell ill. Dr. Wilson sent Tom over to the Bellamys with the request that someone come and sit with his wife. Ellen Bellamy, who often performed nursing duties, agreed to go. She and Tom sat up all night in Mrs. Wilson’s bedroom while Dr. Wilson slept in his study downstairs and a servant snored in a chair at the foot of Mrs. Wilson’s bed.

​​The next morning one of the Wilson's married daughters arrived from Columbia and sent Ellen Bellamy home. After Mrs. Wilson recovered she made it known that she was highly displeased that an unmarried woman had spent the night in a room with her son. Ellen was never invited back to the Wilson’s home. The two insults cut deeply into the friendship that had once prevailed.

In the fall of 1875, Tom Wilson went to Princeton. When he returned to Wilmington during breaks he seemed to have developed a somewhat condescending attitude to the local boys who weren’t a part of the Ivy League picture. He began spending more time with local Princeton graduates and his private shorthand notebook contained disparaging comments about former friends including Alex Sprunt, Jr. and John Bellamy, Jr. He also had changed his tastes while he was in the North and returned to Wilmington as a person who no longer enjoyed Sir Walter Scott’s fiction but preferred Thomas Macaulay’s history. Although he had once been devoted to the Confederacy and its heroes, he now convinced his father not to speak at the Ladies’ Memorial Association Confederate Memorial Day program at Oakdale Cemetery because he had decided secession was wrong. All of these changes in attitudes probably cut into the bonds of what had once been a significant friendship.

Although Wilson still dropped by to see John Jr., he seemed resentful that Bellamy had become a practicing lawyer while Wilson was still in college. Or perhaps Bellamy felt that he had outgrown the highly opinionated Princeton student. We can't know the factors that went into winding down the friendship, but it is interesting to note that when Wilson went off to law school, it was to Bellamy’s alma mater, the University of Virginia.

The Wilsons remained in Wilmington until 1884, but Thomas Woodrow spent less and less time in the port city and his close friendship and intimacy with the Bellamy family eroded.

After graduating from Princeton in 1879, Wilson completed a PhD in political science at Johns Hopkins, taught at several universities and, in 1902, became president of Princeton. In 1910, he was elected Governor of New Jersey. Eventually, the two men who had once been so close were almost enemies. Both were southern-born Democrats with seemingly similar views on race but, although he was requested to do so, John D. Bellamy, Jr. did not support Wilson when he ran for president in 1912. After Wilson was elected, however, Ellen and Eliza Bellamy went to visit him as President in the White House.

Wilson’s biographers consulted with the Bellamy family to piece together the life of the President when he was an adolescent in Wilmington. There is little doubt that in the formative summer of 1875, the future president spent a significant amount of time within the bosom of the Bellamy family at the Bellamy Mansion.