We recently went to Wilmington, North Carolina. Founded in the 1730s along the Cape Fear River, the city became the state’s largest by the Civil War. Although Wilmington never rebounded after the war, the port city still boasts many historic sites and house museums.
The Historic District encompasses over 200 blocks and includes a riverwalk, restaurants, shops, businesses, and residences. One of the most famous residences is the Bellamy Mansion, built on Market Street in 1861. While my family decided to tour the battleship USS North Carolina, I opted to visit the Bellamy Mansion instead.
Bellamy Mansion Grounds and History
Admission, located in the Carriage House behind the mansion, includes a self-guided tour with a complimentary smartphone audio tour. Bellamy Museum also offers premium guided tours for an additional price. Unfortunately, the guided tours weren’t offered the day of my visit. However, the self-guided audio tour proved informative, and I enjoyed wandering through the rooms at my own pace.
Dr. John Bellamy hired James F. Post to build the 10,000-square-foot mansion in 1859. This was to be the family’s townhouse. Although trained as a physician, Bellamy spent the majority of his time as a planter and merchant. His plantation, Grovely, sat on the other side of the river with a “staff” of 82 enslaved workers to grow 2,400 acres of crops. Dr. Bellamy also owned Grist, a turpentine plantation with 24 enslaved workers about 70 miles away. One of his sons recalled that “one year’s income from Grist paid for the construction of Bellamy Mansion.” Dr. Bellamy, his wife Eliza, and their eight children moved into the Bellamy Mansion in early 1861, accompanied by nine enslaved workers.
Enslaved People’s Quarters at Bellamy
Visitors begin the tour at the Slave Quarters, located next to the Carriage House. The pink-brick, two-story “Negro House” with green shutters appears nicer than most slave cabins I’ve seen on various plantation tours. This original structure is supposedly typical of what slave quarters in urban areas looked like – a structure only one room deep, but two to three rooms wide.
Because of the 1860 Census, historians know the names and ages of the nine slaves who served at Bellamy Mansion. The slave quarters housed eight females, five of whom were just girls ranging from one to 14 years old. Guy, the only male enslaved person, probably slept in a hayloft in the Carriage House.
Despite living in a two-story home, the slaves didn’t have real beds, just a mat on top of a wooden platform. Also, since there were no windows on the large back wall of the house, occupants couldn’t enjoy a cross-breeze during the hot summers. Work was most difficult for the slaves who assisted with cooking, laundry, carting coal, building fires in the Main House, providing childcare for the Bellamy children, cleaning out the chamber pots, and more.
Next to the steep staircase is the laundry room. Rosella, a slave who lived here with two of her children, washed and laundered clothes for 16 hours each day. The room (and the sleeping chambers) above would have gotten extremely hot.
Outside, I looked back at the Slave Quarters and saw two open doors at the far end. These were the Privies. One was used by the enslaved workers, while the other was used by the Bellamy family. Mary Ann, the 14-year-old slave and daughter of Joan, the nanny, would have to empty chamber pots from the Main House into the Privy every morning. Imagine the smell — and this smell would have drifted above to the sleeping quarters.
The Mansion
Dr. John Bellamy used enslaved workers and free skilled Negro workers to build the 22-room mansion. Construction took about 18 months and was funded by his profitable turpentine plantation rather than by his income as a doctor and banker. When they moved into the mansion in February 1861, John and Eliza brought their brood of children. Another son, Robert, was born a few months later.
Basement Level
Today’s mansion guests enter the 10,000-square-foot mansion at the back of the house, just like the enslaved people did, at the basement level. Set just four feet below ground, this English Basement offers plenty of daylight to perform tasks such as cooking and ironing. The first room I entered was the kitchen. This surprised me because I thought most people built kitchens away from the house.
Bellamy Mansion’s kitchen is located in the main house because the Bellamy family had a “hotel-sized” cast-iron stove rather than the more dangerous open hearth. Additionally, bricks lined the kitchen, making it mostly fireproof. In the center of the kitchen, a table displayed popular food items that the slave Sarah would have prepared. Note that the stove behind the table isn’t original; it’s from 1870 and was donated by a relative when the house opened for tours.
The adjacent Ironing Room was where Rosella would have sorted and ironed the Bellamy family’s clothes. There was a display of old irons, including the heavy box iron and the smaller sad iron, which would have been left over the fireplace to heat up.
Directly across the central hall lies the Formal Dining Room, the largest single room in the entire mansion. Dr. Bellamy selected this spot in the house because it would be cooler for guests and close to the kitchen. Guy, the male enslaved person, served the food that he and Sarah had plated in the adjacent Butler’s Pantry. This pantry contained original built-ins filled with dishes, glasses, and tea cups. Dr. Bellamy was a teetotaler, so alcohol wouldn’t be served.
While I could take the cypress stairs up to the Main Level, the slaves could not. Instead, they would have used the outdoor, spiral stairs at the back of the house.
Main Level
At the Main Level, I could see how guests in 1861 entered the Bellamy Mansion. They would have climbed up the outdoor stairs, flanked by 25-foot high Corinthian columns, and rung the bell at the intricately carved front door. The house boasts two popular architectural styles: Greek-Revival and Italianate.
Inside, they would have stepped to the right of the central hall into the Formal Double Parlor. Heavy brocade draperies, red in the front parlor and green in the back parlor, hung above the windows. These tall pocket windows could be opened fully to let a cross-breeze cool the mansion’s occupants.
In addition to the wall-to-wall carpet, the rooms boast intricate plasterwork on the ceilings. William Benjamin Gould, a master plasterer and enslaved person, did most of the work. Shortly afterward, he escaped to freedom and joined the Union Navy. The lighting fixtures are called gasoliers, which illuminated the rooms using coal gas.
On the other side of the central hall is the Family Parlor. The carpet and plasterwork are less detailed, but you can see how the windows stretch from the floor to the ceiling. Behind this room is the Library, which details the many people who built the mansion, including William B. Gould, mentioned above, and Henry Taylor, a carpenter.
Upper Floors
The second floor boasts four large bedrooms. Two of these rooms have small step-in closets with pegs to hang clothes. The other two bedrooms connect via a shared “walk-in” closet. The museum uses the second floor space for traveling exhibits, so there is no furniture. On my visit, the exhibit was Legends and Landmarks: Paintings and Drawings by James C. Horton. You can see some of the artwork on the walls in the picture below.
A surprising find was the bathroom located at the back of the house on this level. A commode chair, a piece of furniture that looked like a chair, hid a chamber pot from view. The women in the house would have used this instead of the Privies across the yard.
But more astounding was the bathtub. I can’t explain the actual mechanics, but an underground cistern collected rainwater that came from the roof. Guy, the enslaved man, would pump water from the cistern into a tank located on the Children’s Level above. Through a series of pipes, this tank provided water for this bathtub – truly a luxury for the 1860s.
I climbed to the next level, where the Bellamy children lived. Although technically an attic, the Children’s Level still featured plenty of light from the short windows.
Ellen Bellamy, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. John Bellamy, moved into the mansion when she was just nine years old. She lived in the house until her death in 1946. In her memoirs, “Back with the Tide,” written in her eighties, she fondly recalled playing in the raised space in the front pediment of the house. Originally used to store trunks, this space later served as a “stage” for the children’s performances.
Bedrooms graced both sides of the central hall, and many had fireplaces. Interior windows from the bedrooms to the central hall allowed light and created a cross-breeze.
The tank, which stored water from the cistern, was also located on this floor. A spigot from the tank allowed water to fill small portable bathtubs. Just think, people only bathed about once a week and had to wash their entire body and hair in these small tubs. Hopefully, Eliza Bellamy shared her luxurious plunge tub on the lower level with family members.
The Belvedere
There was one more set of stairs going up. This led to a cupola area surrounded by windows. Called the Belvedere, the room gave views of Wilmington above the treetops.
The Belvedere isn’t just a cute sunroom on top of the house. It also served as a fairly high-tech (at the time) ventilation system. When the windows were open, the Belvedere pulled up the hot air from the lower levels and pushed it outside. I could even see the ventilation slats in this room.
Conclusion
Bellamy Mansion is a treasure trove, having been occupied by the same family for 85 years, except for the brief period when Union forces occupied it during the Civil War. After Ellen Bellamy’s death, family members opened the house to the public for friends. However, the house fell into disrepair, and in 1972, arsonists damaged the mansion’s interior.
After years of trying to raise money for restoration, family members donated the house to Preservation North Carolina in the late 1980s. It opened to the public as the Bellamy Mansion Museum of History and Design Arts in 1994. To date, Preservation North Carolina has undertaken many renovations, including the rebuilding of the Carriage House in 2001 and the full restoration of the Slave Quarters in 2014.
For more information about the Bellamy Mansion and Museum, click the website here. You can click here to hear the audio tour and see a floor plan of the house.