We are proud to announce that the restoration of the slave quarters is finally complete. A lime wash was applied, shutters have been installed, and staging put in place. All three are important to the authenticity of the space. The shutters, lime wash, and staging are the final touches that now allow visitors to look on the slave quarters as they were in 1859. The shutters tie the slave quarters to the house architecturally and exemplify the cohesive themes that are evident throughout the property. The aesthetic touch on the slave dwelling is of course not for its residents’ benefit but for the family in the big house who would view the structure daily from across the yard. The lime wash bore both utility and a visually pleasing aesthetic. When dried the wash would give the slave quarters a light pink coloring that would fade over time to a peach hue. The function of the lime wash was to protect the brick and mortar from wind and water, which would otherwise erode the structure more quickly. With the outside of the house now looking as it did the day it was completed, around 156 years ago, the interior needed its last couple of touches in order to provide the same authenticity. With the plaster and wood restorations complete in the downstairs the upstairs rooms were feeling a bit empty. In order to remedy this, staging was done; palate beds and other items were put into place. The pictures accompanying this story will give an idea of the changes I have attempted to convey. To get the full experience come on down and visit the newly completed slave quarters yourself. They are part of our guided tours and are open for self-guided tours as well during our regular hours. |
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by Wade Toth During Family Fun Day 2014, more than 1,700 children and adults attended our fun-filled event, and some of those children stopped by one of the craft tables to help make a gift for the youngest of children in the neo-natal unit at the Betty Cameron Women’s and Children’s Hospital of New Hanover Regional Medical Center. Volunteer Martha Rutter created designs on paper that children could select from, and they used crayons to color in the images. Volunteer Laurie MacFarland used a hot iron to transfer the colored images to fabric quilting squares. The children created enough squares to make three large crib quilts. Martha, Laurie, and Marci Williams then sewed and quilted the squares together and added colorful stripes and backing. Some of the children signed their squares which were then stitched onto the quilts. The photograph above shows the three quilts which were on display during the Christmas Stroll in December. The quilts were presented to the hospital in January 2015, as a gift to the newest and youngest from the Bellamy Mansion. Children attending both Family Fun Day and the Christmas Stroll made ornaments that decorated a large Christmas tree in the lobby of Betty Cameron Women’s and Children’s Hospital at New Hanover Regional Medical Center during this past holiday season.
The Bellamy Mansion will present the tree annually to the hospital as a way to cheer up patients, staff, and those visiting patients. Volunteers Marcia Bruder and Wade Toth spent one December morning setting up the tree and adding lights and the handmade ornaments. Many compliments were received from hospital staff and visitors. The Bellamy Volunteer Committee and hospital administrator, Barbara Buechler, made this partnership possible. During each of the children’s events at the Mansion this year, children will have an opportunity to again make additional ornaments. On June 7, at our Environmental Day event, children will be making tree ornaments from items found in nature such as sea shells and pine cones. During February the museum welcomed a returning exhibit to the gallery level of the mansion. Grand Illusions: Historic Decorative Interior Painting in North Carolina was originally curated by Laura A. W. Phillips and created by former Bellamy Director Beverly Ayscue. Not displayed for many years it was set up by UNCW intern Tessa Cartrette and Site Manager Bob Lock. Grand Illusions was stored in a Preservation North Carolina property in Shelby, NC until being brought back to the Bellamy. It is a traveling exhibit that was funded by The Midgard Foundation of Asheville and organized by PNC and North Carolina State University Visual Arts Center.
Grand Illusions is a 24 panel exhibit that highlights the unique and historical interior decorating techniques used throughout North Carolina’s architectural heritage. Over 500 buildings in North Carolina display the techniques shown in Grand Illusions - the Bellamy Mansion being one of them. The exhibit captures the techniques used to decorate the interior of North Carolina’s historic homes and shares in the importance of their impact on North Carolina architecture.
John was in his 11th year when Fort Fisher fell and President Lincoln was assassinated. He says his father had already toughened him for war by making him and his younger brother George go barefoot during the winters so that when time came for them to go to Virginia, they would be able to stand the exposure of the battle fields.Voted Best Orator in high school and rising to the rank of Captain at Cape Fear Academy, John Jr. then entered Davidson College as a sophomore in 1871 where his mother was "hoping and expecting she would make a Presbyterian clergyman out of me."Despite his mother's disappointment, John decided to study law at the University of Virginia. He says nearly all of the universities of the Southern states were closed at that time. "Even my sisters had to economize and wear one less dress in order to save money [for my education.]" John was graduated at Charlottesville in 1874, receiving diplomas in the Schools of German, Medical Jurisprudence, History and Literature, and Junior Law, and a year later his Bachelor of Law degree. That summer, he became a friend and tutor to "Tommy" Woodrow Wilson -- future President of Princeton University, Governor of New Jersey, and 28th President of the United States.
Believing that life in Wilmington had been returned to "a reign of justice and peace," John and his wife Emma M. Hargrove, daughter of Colonel John Hargrove, of Granville County, NC, with their children Eliza, William, Emmett, Mary and Marguerite, acquired (and upgraded to an exuberant Queen Ann style) their home on 6th and Market Streets, within a few doors of his mother, sisters and brother Robert.
The US Postal Service recently announced that its popular Black Heritage series will continue in 2015 with the release of a Forever® stamp honoring architect and educator Robert Robinson Taylor (1868–1942), who helped expand opportunities for African Americans in fields that had largely been closed to them. He was also the son of Henry Taylor, a slave carpenter who helped build the Bellamy Mansion. The stamp's release date will be announced soon.
In describing the distinguished lineage of the Taylor family of Wilmington, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. finds it difficult to recall a black family tree with more “firsts” in African-American history, starting in the depths of slavery. Arguably the most notable among them is Robert Robinson Taylor, born here in 1868. He was the first African American to graduate from MIT and one of the first professionally trained black architects in the United States. As described by architectural historian Ellen Weiss, he forged a long career as an architect at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and a close friendship with the school’s founder Booker T. Washington. In 1943, shortly after Robert’s sudden death in 1942, a Wilmington public housing complex formerly called New Brooklyn Homes was renamed for Robert Robinson Taylor. In 2015, a Forever stamp by the USPS brings perpetual national prominence to this Wilmington native.
Family tradition states that he was one of the carpenters who erected and finished the Bellamy Mansion in 1859-1861. Taylor's role was carried through family memories, and in 1999 his granddaughter Gladys Whiteman Baskerville and her extended family held her 100th birthday celebration at the mansion to honor the family legacy. After the war, Taylor operated a grocery business on Nutt Street while continuing in the building business. In 1868 he received $1,800 for constructing the Hemenway School and improving the schoolyard. Active in civic life, Taylor was a member of Giblem Masonic Lodge, the second black Masonic lodge in the state; he served on the finance committee to erect the lodge building in 1871, and it is probable that he was involved in construction of the building, which still stands. He was a founding member of Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church and was active in the Republican Party. He was buried in Pine Forest Cemetery. The Taylor Family Tree Henry and his wife Emily lived at 112 North 8th Street in a home that Henry built for the family, including their four children—John Edward, Anna Maria (Whiteman), Sarah Louise (Shober), and Robert Robinson—all of whom distinguished themselves. John Edward Taylor remained in Wilmington and became a prosperous businessman and the first black man appointed Deputy Collector of Customs in the city, a position he held for 25 years. Anna Maria attended Howard University, as did her future husband, Dr. James Francis Shober, the first black physician with an M. D. degree to practice in North Carolina; a native of Winston-Salem, he spent his career in Wilmington. Sarah Louise Taylor likewise attended Howard University and married John Henry Whiteman, a prominent Wilmington businessman.
Grandma Harriss remained a daily presence in the lives of the Bellamy children even after Eliza and John moved out in 1846. Their new home where they bore six more children was across the street in the former residence of Governor Benjamin Smith. The couple moved again in 1861 to the mansion on Market Street where the last of the Bellamy children was born.
What a nice surprise to read about our dedicated volunteer coordinator and ace guide Wade Toth in the January 27 issue of the Star News! Here is the article in full by D.J. Bernard:
GUIDE LEADS BELLAMY MANSION JOURNEY Walking into the Bellamy Mansion Museum in downtown Wilmington is a profound journey back into the antebellum South. And guiding you on the trip is the museum's chief volunteer, Wade Toth. Toth is the backbone of the volunteer program at the historical mansion, which has been preserved to replicate the world of the Bellamy family. Physician and planter John Dillard Bellamy began construction of the house in 1859 to house his wife, nine children and nine slaves. Toth is particularly passionate when describing the life of the Bellamy slaves, who were housed in separate quarters restored in 2013. The main house was built using slave labor and their craftsmanship is seen in the decorative plasterwork throughout the house. "I want to interpret the entire property, not just the Bellamy family but also the other group of people who lived here," Toth said on a recent chilly winter day. "We are telling stories of both blacks and whites." Toth said the U.S. census in the 1860s did not list the names of slaves, so finding out who the slaves were in the Bellamy mansion took some digging. But Toth has managed to bring the slaves' reality to life during his tour of their quarters, which are in a separate brick building behind the house. Not many urban slave dwellings still exist and Toth's tour emphasizes the close quarters and having to live next to a privy and steaming wash room. Toth has been with the Bellamy House since moving to Wilmington from New Orleans in 2007. In the Big Easy, the former educator, who was a dean of students in Louden County, Va., before retiring, gave tours of another antebellum home and is well versed in Southern history. "I like to think of what I do here at the Bellamy House as an extension of my career in education," Toth said. Toth especially likes engaging children and the occasional tourist who looks like he was dragged into the house. "I ask them to look around the house and compare it with their houses today. What do you see that you have in your own homes?," Toth said. When they point out something that seems ordinary, like the mirrors in the parlor, Toth points out that the mirrors served a double role. Before electricity, people put up large mirrors to reflect candles to create more light in the room. "My joy is helping people find out what went into the house, the technology and the people. I like to take what people know and give it context," Toth said. In addition to giving tours and training volunteers, Toth serves as a liaison to the museum's board of directors. He dedicates his time to training and coordinating more than 150 active volunteers. "My role is to recruit, retain and recognize," Toth said. Toth said volunteers do much of the work at the mansion, from gardening to putting up Christmas decorations to organizing concerts. He wants them to know they're valued. Every year the Bellamy House has a catered dinner for all volunteers, along with a lecture series, free walking tours in downtown Wilmington and evenings at Thalian Hall with free performances and wine and cheese. "They've given so much to the mansion," Toth said. "We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for volunteers."
After his lecture on his experiences staying in sixty such properties across the country, Joe McGill stayed in the Bellamy slave building. You can read about this unique experience from the students and others who stayed the night in the Star News article.
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20150201/ARTICLES/150139984?p=1&tc=pg
“Most of what we know about the layout of the garden pathways and beds comes from a grainy photograph that dates from the 1920s. Taken from the 5th floor of the Carolina Apartments across from the Bellamy Mansion, it shows a light-colored pathway running between a series of elliptical and circular beds. While it’s no Ansel Adams, this photo is singularly the clearest piece of visual evidence that addresses the design of the landscaping. However, this image does not aid in determining what plants formed those beds.”
Noffke continues by saying: “Fortunately, we do have a group of street-level photographs spanning nearly a century that show large pyracantha, yucca, palmetto, decorative grass, and possibly oleander. Today, the only plants surviving from the early landscape are yucca, palmetto, yew, some lilies, a myrtle, and five large magnolias. Narrative descriptions of the plantings are virtually non-existent. Yew and magnolias are mentioned, but little more. Some older Wilmingtonians remember the Bellamy gardens, recalling that the scheme included varieties of myrtle, moneyplants, and borders of candytuft.” |
About Us
The museum
offers tours, features changing exhibits, and provides venue space for
weddings and special events. 503 Market Street
Wilmington, NC 28401 910.251.3700 Tours: Tues - Sat 10am- 4pm Sunday 1pm- 4pm Categories
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