Dr. Bellamy raised livestock and crops such as "wheat, oats, corn, and peanuts." In 1860, he had 82 enslaved workers living in 17 "slave cabins" at Grovely, while the family lived in a "comfortable and pleasant" home that was "no stately mansion." Grist Plantation was a turpentine plantation in Columbus County, near Chadbourn, North Carolina. Dr. Bellamy kept 24 enslaved men between the ages of 18-40 living in 9 slave cabins. The work was extremely difficult for the enslaved workers but very profitable for Dr. Bellamy. According to John D. Bellamy, Jr. his father told him concerning the home at 5th and Market the "amount of its cost was only one year's profit that he made at Grist." Dr. Bellamy was an extremely wealthy man as indicated by his land and slave holdings. In 1860, he owned 114 enslaved workers in North Carolina spread across three counties. Only 117 other men in the entire state owned between 100 and 199 enslaved workers out of a slave owning population of almost 35,000, meaning John D. Bellamy was in the upper echelon and of the planter class. The sons of Dr. John D. Bellamy followed in their father’s footsteps and became successful students and career men in and outside of Wilmington. Marsden, the eldest of the sons, became a prominent trial attorney in Wilmington. William developed a successful medical practice of his own, just as his father and grandfather had before in Wilmington. George became a farmer and took over Grovely Plantation, land that his father had purchased in 1842 in Brunswick County, North Carolina, later going on to serve multiple terms in the North Carolina Senate between 1893 and 1914. The youngest son, Robert, became a successful businessman in the pharmaceutical industry. John Jr. attended Davidson College, and the University of Virginia Law School, and eventually became a successful politician in the conservative Democratic Party. From 1899 -1903 John Jr. represented North Carolina as a United States Congressman, and served as the Dean of the North Carolina Bar Association from 1926 to 1927. Chesley Calhoun unfortunately died at the young age of twenty-one, while studying at Davidson College. Only one of the four daughters of Dr. and Mrs. John D. Bellamy grew to marry and have children. Mary Elizabeth (Belle) married William Jefferson Duffie of Columbia, South Carolina on September 12, 1876. They had two children, Eliza (Elise) Bellamy Duffie, and