When I visit a historic house, I am usually most interested in learning about the people who did the daily work to keep the place running. In a small house, that would be the family who lived there. Not many of those homes survive and few are open to the public. So most of the time, it’s a tour of a grand house. If I’m lucky, I get some insight to the servants and how they cooked, cleaned, and lived their lives. In my experience, it’s very rare to get much insight into the workings of a home in the southern U.S. where the upkeep was performed by enslaved individuals for so many years.
So I really appreciated the information provided on the self-guided tour of the Bellamy Mansion in Wilmington, North Carolina. We learned not only about the daily routines of the people who worked in the house complex, but also a bit about the talented craftsmen who built the mansion, which included conveniences that were state of the art in 1860.
Intentional Design from Basement to Belvedere
While the mansion is filled with ornate decorative details, the design was practical as much as aesthetic. The dining room is located in the basement, with half the room below grade to stay cool. It is on west side of the house, to get the most light during the dinner hour, while the kitchen is located in the opposite corner to get the morning light.
The house has three floors above the basement with a small square structure above known as a belvedere. With windows on all sides, it provided a lovely view even if was a pain to get to and not large enough to entertain in. But the primary purpose was not to look good but to keep the house cool. The belvedere was at the highest point in the building, and each floor was open in the middle around the stairwell, so when the windows in the belvedere were opened, they would pull the hot air up through the house and outside. In the days before air conditioning or even electric fans, this cooling feature was high-tech.
The house was built with a system to heat water on the kitchen range and pump water up to a tank on the third floor where it was dispensed to bathrooms. In addition, the house had gas piped to every room for lighting and servants’ stairs that are camouflaged to allow workers to move things like chamber pots without being visible to family or guests.
The Craftsmen Behind the Masterpiece
Shortly before restoration work was set to begin on the mansion in 1972, arsonists poured gasoline over all the floors and set the building on fire, severely damaging the interior of the home. While the fire and water damage destroyed many treasures, they uncovered a few that might have otherwise remained hidden.
For instance, a fallen piece of plaster included initials from some of the original artisans who built the house. Elisha Boone, a free black mason known in Wilmington for both his work and his prominence as an A.M.E. minister was one of those who signed his name in the walls. A plasterer named William Benjamin Gould signed his initials in beautiful script prominently displayed in the home today. Gould was an enslaved worker who had been hired out by the Bellamy family for his expertise. (Of course, he didn’t receive any of the money for his services.) A year after the home was completed, Gould and seven others commandeered a boat on the Cape Fear River and made their way to a blockading Union ship so they could join the Union Navy. He kept a diary of his time in the service and at the end of the war, moved to Massachusetts with his wife, raising eight children while running a thriving masonry and brick contracting business. Gould’s great-grandson published the diary in 2002, and it is offered for sale in the Bellamy Mansion gift shop.
In 1934, one of the Bellamy sons who had grown up in the house wrote out a list of the black artisans who had worked on the mansion, and their names, along with a few photos, are also on display, including carpenter Henry Taylor and construction foreman Elvin Artis. It is a small tribute, certainly, but so many talented craftsmen never receive any recognition at all, so it is nice to be able to salute some of the individuals who created the state-of-the-art complex in Wilmington.
Rufus Bunnell, the assistant architect wro drew the image above, observed that although many of the black craftsmen who worked on the house were “freedmen,” they were subject to “special laws” and under close observation by the day and night patrol.
Life in the Urban Estate
The Bellamy Mansion is the most prominent part of an urban ensemble. The full property included a large carriage house, poultry shed, two-story slave quarters, garden, coal cellar, work yard, well, and cistern. The carriage house now serves as the visitors’ center, but the slave quarters are left mostly bare as a reminder of the deprivations often suffered by those who worked in grand houses. There are, however, quite a few banners describing the daily lives and duties of the enslaved workers, which gives us an unusually personal glimpse into lives that have been mostly lost to history.
For example, one section described the early morning activities of the cook, maid, and coachman:
“At 5 o-clock every morning, Sarah readied coffee and began meal preparations in the mansion’s basement kitchen while Mary Ann collected chamber pots from the mansion and emptied them into the privies. Guy’s first job was to pump water from the backyard cistern to a holding tank in the mansion, which supplied water to the second floor bathroom.”
Rosella worked 16 hours a day washing linens and clothing for the household. Guy would serve dinner and Sarah washed the dishes. Joan tended the children all day. Although they were able to “retire” for the night at about 10 p.m., they were expected to be on call 24 hours a day. Just reading the descriptions of their duties was exhausting.
Ellen Bellamy
One reason historians know so much about the tasks of the enslaved individuals in the compound is that one of the daughters who grew up in the house, Ellen Bellamy, wrote her memoirs describing daily life in what she believed to be an idyllic age that was destroyed by “The War.” Ellen was nine-years-old when her family moved into the mansion in 1861. Of the eight children in the Bellamy family, she lived in the house longest, until her death in 1946. For the last 15 years of her life, she was confined to a few rooms, unable to manage the stairs or leave the house. From what I can gather from her memoirs, however, losing her own freedom did not seem to make her any more sympathetic to the plight of the family’s workers who were restricted by law as to where they could go, who they could spend time with, and where they could do business. Ellen was 88-years-old when she finished her memoirs, but she still seems as self-centered as a child in her view of the world. But I am grateful for providing information about regular life during irregular times so far removed from our own.
The Bellamy Mansion Tells Many Stories
There are heroes and villains in the story of Bellamy mansion, and you get their stories presented in a straightforward fashion so you can make judgments for yourself. For instance, Ellen’s brother John, was very active in the Democratic Party during the latter part of the 19th Century, and by simply quoting some of his priorities and objectives in his own words, the museum displays convey what I consider to be a small-minded, despicable individual. They don’t tell us every detail of what he did as part of the efforts to overthrow the elected biracial government in 1898. Instead, they quote his views and let the visitor judge his character. I appreciate that.
In a world where everyone seems to want to tell me how I should feel about the past, it’s nice to find a place where I’m allowed to exercise my own judgment. I applaud both those who worked to build the mansion, those who worked to keep it running, and those who work now to give us a view into its past.
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The Bellamy Mansion Museum is at 503 Market Street in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina and I highly recommend a visit if you’re in the area.
I have long been fascinated with the ways that people accomplished daily tasks in other places and times, so that usually means focusing on servants rather than masters. I explore the lack of understanding on behalf of the upper classes and the sometimes awkward interactions between classes in several of my books, including Deceptive Behavior, Restitution, Langley’s Choice, and An Excuse for Poor Conduct.