family: Mary Elizabeth (Belle) (1840–1900) would be the first, followed by Marsden (1843–1909), William James Harriss (1844–1911), Eliza (Liza) (1845–1929), Ellen Douglass (1852–1946), John Dillard Jr. (1854–1942), George Harriss (1856–1924), Kate Taylor (1858-1858), Chesley Calhoun (1859–1881), and Robert Rankin (1861–1926). As a young man, John Dillard Bellamy, Sr. inherited a large piece of his father’s plantation in Horry County, South Carolina at about age 18, along with several enslaved workers. John soon moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, to begin studying medicine with Dr. William James Harriss. He left for two years in 1837 to study at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and he returned to Wilmington in 1839 to marry Eliza, Harriss' eldest daughter and take over Dr. Harriss’ medical practice following Eliza’s father’s untimely death in July. After their wedding, Bellamy took over Dr. William James Harriss' medical practice in July 1839. The Bellamys lived in the Dock Street home of Eliza’s newly widowed mother, Mary Priscilla Jennings Harriss. Upon his death, Dr. Harriss left behind his wife, along with seven children and fourteen enslaved workers who were also living at the household. John and Eliza welcomed four of their own children into the Dock Street home before they moved across the street in 1846 to the former residence of the sixteenth governor, Benjamin Smith. It was here, from 1852 to 1859, that the next five of the Bellamy’s ten children were born. By 1860, as the Bellamy family prepared to move into their new home on Market Street, their family included eight children, ages ranging from one to nineteen. Along with the ten members of the Bellamy family, nine enslaved workers also lived at the household. In 1861, Robert Rankin was the last born of the children and the only one to be born in the mansion on Market Street. Dr. Bellamy’s prosperity continued to grow through the second half of the nineteenth century and by 1850 he was listed as a "merchant" on the census. His medical practice was successful; however, the majority of his wealth came from his operation of a turpentine distillery in Brunswick County, his position as a director of the Bank of the Cape Fear, and his investment, as director and stockholder, in the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. Grovely Plantation was "an almost ten thousand acre" produce plantation on Town Creek in Brunswick County, now a present-day Brunswick Forest development, on which