Bellamy Bridge 
Marianna, FL     

Source: http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/bellamybridge.html
& Dale Cox

A few miles north of Marianna, the Chipola River flows silently beneath the rusting framework of an old iron bridge. Historic in its own right, Bellamy Bridge is one of the last surviving such structures in Jackson County. It takes its name from previous spans that crossed the river at this point, but it is undoubtedly best known as the centerpiece of a fascinating Florida legend.

The Bellamy Bridge ghost story is Jackson County's most enduring legend. Several residents of the county, all in their eighties and nineties, indicated in 1986 that they were told the story by their parents, who had heard it from their own fathers and mothers. This would date the origin of the legend to at least the late 19th century. The story also first began to appear in print at about the same time, indicating that it was common knowledge by the beginning of the 20th century. This is a reasonable timetable, since the legend revolves around a young woman named Elizabeth Jane Bellamy, who died in 1837. Her overgrown and often-vandalized grave is a few hundred yards south of Bellamy Bridge in the edge of the river swamp.

 

 

 

As the story goes, Elizabeth was the young bride of Dr. Samuel C. Bellamy, a prominent member of early Florida society. Enamored of his young bride, who had promised to love him forever, Samuel built a large columned mansion for her in Marianna. The wedding date was set for May 11, 1837, and guests, it is said, began to arrive a full week before the wedding. The two were wed in the rose garden behind the home, but their happiness was short-lived. There are two stories of what happened next. The first holds that while dancing a waltz during the elaborate reception, they moved too close to a burning candle. The other claims that exhausted from the rigors of the day, Elizabeth sank into a comfortable chair to rest. Her dress somehow came into contact with a lit candle. The young bride's elegant gown burst into flames and before the groom or any of their guests could react, she ran from the house in panic and was engulfed by fire. She lingered for days but ultimately succumbed to her injuries and was buried beneath a grove of trees near today's Bellamy Bridge.

The grave, however, could not contain the love and devotion that had grown between Samuel and Elizabeth. The young groom went nearly mad with grief, turned to the bottle and ultimately committed suicide. He refused to ever live in the beautiful mansion he had constructed for his bride, and for many years the finest home in Marianna remained dark and vacant. Elizabeth, local residents say, was unwilling to leave her true love behind. An apparition began to appear on dark and foggy nights, wandering the swamps around the small cemetery where she was buried.

 

 

It is a fascinating tale and a unique reminder of the time when story-telling was a leading form of entertainment among residents in Northwest Florida. The story is certainly old, but could it be true? Because Samuel and Elizabeth Jane Croom Bellamy were prominent and identifiable figures in early Florida history, the answers have been out there for years, just waiting to be found.

The exact point at which Elizabeth Jane Croom became romantically involved with Samuel C. Bellamy is not known. The two families had lived near each other in North Carolina and the two may have been close friends for many years. Certainly following the courtship and marriage of her sister Ann to Samuel's brother Edward, the bonds between the two families tightened. As Elizabeth reached her mid-teens, she was courted by Samuel, who was her senior by nine years. Samuel was at medical school in Pennsylvania for part of this time, so much of the courtship was probably carried out by correspondence.

The true history of their marriage, however, departs significantly from the legend. Family correspondence indicates that Samuel and Elizabeth were married in North Carolina on July 15, 1834, three years before the date of the supposed Florida wedding. The couple soon moved to Jackson County, Florida, however, where they settled on Samuel's newly acquired Rock Cave Plantation northwest of Marianna. The estate included hundreds of acres of cultivated land and was farmed by the forced labors of more than 80 African slaves. King Cotton was then booming and planting was an extremely profitable venture in Florida, especially for individuals with the means to put together large gangs of slave laborers to clear the fields and cultivate the cotton. The little family grew. Samuel and Elizabeth had a baby boy in late 1835, giving him the name Alexander after several of Samuel’s ancestors.

The bottomlands of the Chipola River were indeed ideal for the production of cotton, but they were also breeding grounds for vast swarms of mosquitoes. Deadly fevers, including malaria, ravaged the growing population throughout the early history of Jackson County. The young Bellamy family was not spared. According to a December 6, 1836, letter from Hardy Bryan Croom, Elizabeth’s half-brother, to his wife, the fevers had hit particularly hard that fall. Samuel, Elizabeth and baby Alexander were all suffering from what likely was malaria. The deadly fever was often described by doctors of the time as the “intermittent and remittent” fever because patients often improved, only to relapse and in many cases die. Samuel C. Bellamy, in fact, did recover from the fever, but his wife and child did not. According to an obituary in the Tallahassee Floridian, eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Jane Croom Bellamy, as her tombstone records, died on May 11, 1837. She was not the victim of a tragic wedding night fire, but died instead of a mosquito-borne fever. Eighteen-month-old Alexander, according to the same
obituary, died seven days later.

Elizabeth and the baby were laid to rest at the family cemetery on the Chipola River plantation of Samuel's brother, Edward, near today's Bellamy Bridge.

 

Despite the legend to the contrary, the loss of his wife and child did not end Bellamy’s useful life. After a time of mourning, he turned his attention to business and politics. He served as a delegate from Jackson County at the 1838 Florida Constitutional Convention and also found employment as an appraiser for the Union Bank. He borrowed money from his employer, in fact, to finance the construction of a magnificent mansion in Marianna nine months after Elizabeth's death. This was the home that legend holds he built for his young bride, but she never actually saw the home as it was financed and constructed well after her untimely death.

Samuel, however, lost his fortune during the 1840s when the Union Bank collapsed due to extravagant lending practices and he was unable to pay his loans when they were called due. His brother, Edward, took possession of Samuel's Jackson County properties. Samuel later sued for their return, but died at his own hand in 1853 before the case was decided. According to newspapers of the time, he slashed his own throat at Chattahoochee Landing, ending a life plagued by despair and alcoholism.

The story of the lives of Samuel and Elizabeth Bellamy is tragic almost beyond belief, and it is not difficult to see how a ghost story could have grown from the terrible circumstances. But how such a story could have evolved into the form it takes today is difficult to comprehend. Elizabeth did not die on her wedding night and the cause of her death was fever, not fire. Yet the story is so intensely believed in Jackson County that it has become an accepted part of local history. The answer, surprisingly, may be found in the writings of a 19th century novelist named Caroline Lee Hentz.

Mrs. Hentz lived in Marianna during the final years of her life and is buried at St. Luke's Episcopal Church. In one of her books, she tells the story of a wedding night tragedy that bears a striking resemblance to the story of Elizabeth Bellamy as told in the Bellamy Bridge legend:

…Turning away she threw herself into a large easy-chair in front of the fire, and in spite of the excited state of her feelings and the extreme want of sentiment evinced by the act, she fell asleep in her downy nest. She had been up almost all the preceding night, on her feet all day, and had been dancing with such extraordinary enthusiasm, that the soft cushion and gentle warmth of the room soothed her to instantaneous repose. How long she slept, she knew not. She was awakened by a sense of heat and suffocation, as if her lungs were turned to fire. Starting up she found herself encircled by a blaze of light that seemed to emanate from her own body. Her light dress was one sheet of flame, the chair she left was enveloped in the
same destroying element.

The unfortunate bride in Marcus Warland lingered near death for several days before dying in the arms of her groom. It was not long before slaves on the plantation soon began to report seeing her figure, dressed in a white gown, roaming the area around the grave. The name of the family in the book, as you might have guessed by now, was Bellamy. The bride, however, was a young slave named Cora instead of the darling daughter of Southern aristocracy.

Because Mrs. Hentz lived the final years of her life in Marianna, it was long assumed by many local residents that she based Marcus Warland on events she observed in Jackson County. Her use of the name "Bellamy" in her tragic story quickly became associated with the lonely grave of Elizabeth Bellamy near Bellamy Bridge.

In truth, however, the story was not set in Jackson County, but rather in a rural area near Columbus, Georgia, where Mrs. Hentz resided before moving to Florida. In an author's introduction to the book, she explained that the story was based on real events that took place
near Columbus:

The description of Mr. Bellamy’s plantation is drawn from the real, not the ideal. The incident recorded of Mrs. Bellamy, of her endeavouring to rescue the mulatto girl from the flames at the risk of her own life, occurred during the last winter in our city. The lady who really performed the heroic and self-serving deed is a friend of our own, and we saw her when her scarred and bandaged hands bore witness to her humanity and sufferings.

And so, it is easy to see, that the Bellamy Bridge legend is actually a combination of the real and the imaginary. The story took root in the literature of a 19th century novelist who wrote of a
real-life event that took place near Columbus, Georgia. The story, over time, became associated with a forgotten grave in Jackson County, Florida, however, and lives on to this day.

None of this, of course, proves that there is not a ghost at Bellamy Bridge. Many local residents, in fact, swear to have seen something there. Although she did not die in a tragic wedding day fire, perhaps Elizabeth Bellamy roams the quiet cypress swamps to this day.