Bellamy Mansion and Downtown

After visiting the railroad museum we drove to a place called The Cotton Exchange that is a small shopping center put into some old buildings.  We walked around the stores there before we went into more of downtown to find some lunch.  We ended up stopping at a small Greek place that had fairly good food before we headed on to visit the Bellamy Mansion.

Bellamy mansion was built in the mid 1800s and contains some very pretty and interesting architecture.  We had a lot of fun touring the house and the fairly small, but pretty, grounds.  There is also a building behind the main house that was originally slave quarters and is now open to the public, along with the house.  It was very interesting to see the drastic differences between the main house and the slave quarters.  Even though I have always know the living situations were drastically different, it was very different to see an example in person.

We truly enjoyed touring the property and imagining that we could take some of the elaborate ideas from the house and put them in to our own residence someday.  Yes, that will probably never happen, but it is fun to see where Drew and my likes and dislikes overlap.  We all had fun touring the property and we were very glad that we took the time to make this stop.

The small shopping center we stopped to walk through.

There was some really interesting architecture in The Cotton Exchange and Alden had fun looking around.  he especially liked this little fountain.

More of The Cotton Exchange

This was where we stopped for lunch.  Alden had no interest in my food, he just wanted his water, but Anders wanted to try my food.  It was pretty good.

The back of Bellamy Mansion.

Alden had a lot of fun looking at different things in the house, like this spinning wheel, and was very curious as to what these things were used for.

This was their kitchen, and it made me very grateful for our modern kitchen with all of our appliances.

This was a formal dining room that was downstairs.  My favorite thing about the room was the windows because they made the room feel light, open and there was a very pretty view of the yard.

They had a second, informal dining room, and then we headed up to the main rooms.

Alden loved finding all the small little alcoves with sitting areas.

Drew and I both found the gold molding in this room to be very elaborate and pretty, but also over the top for our tastes.

Alden had fun finding all of the chairs and looking at this piano.

He found another small alcove.

The upstairs of the house was mostly dedicated to the children's rooms.  There was a neat little stage at the front of the house that the kids apparently used to play on.

There was one small, enclosed room on the roof that gave you a very pretty view of the town and the surrounding property.

These were the other two building behind the main house.  One was the slave's quarters and the other was the carriage house.

I carried Anders through the house so that he wouldn't touch anything he wasn't supposed to.

Then we went and walked through the slave quarters. which were very basic in comparison to the main house.

It was interesting because I think Alden felt like the rooms in here were really small after being in the main house.

The kitchen

The grounds around the house were beautiful and we enjoyed walking through them after we had finished touring the houses.

This was the front of Bellamy that, as you can see, looks very impressive and includes a huge porch.  We had a lot of fun touring the house and we are glad that we took the time to make this stop.  Even Alden enjoyed touring the property and asked lots of questions about how things worked or why they didn't have modern conveniences.  It was a fun learning experience for him.