Family Tree (Bruce, Denison, Douglas, Harvey, Helmcken, Mackenzie, Maclean, Maclennan, McTavish, Stewart)

Edward William Bellamy was born in the summer of 1873 and was christened the following summer. In the 1881 Canada Census, he appears living with his mother and older half-siblings at Burnside Road.[1] Edward William Bellamy died in the winter of 1946.[2]

Although he was christened under the surname Bellamy, there is no evidence that Edward was fathered by Dr. George Bellamy. Dr. Bellamy had returned to England in mid-1871—approximately two years before Edward’s birth. This conclusion is further supported by the obituary of Edward’s older half-brother, Francis Karl Bellamy, which states that Francis was “…the last and youngest member of the family of the late Dr. George Bellamy.”[3]

Recent research proves that Eliza Jane’s first seven children (George, Edith Winnifred, Arthur, Hugh Gerald Seymour, Gertrude Ellen Wilhemina, Alice Mary, Francis Karl) were fathered by George Bellamy, while her five youngest children (Edward William, Katherine Demaris, Herman, Ethel, Irene) were fathered by Kenneth McKenzie IV of Craigflower Farm. Despite this, all five of these younger children used the Bellamy surname throughout their lives, and their true paternity appears not to have been openly discussed within the family.

Notably, although Edward William was christened Bellamy, the four youngest children were christened McKenzie on the same day—20 February 1893—at St. Mark’s Church. None of them subsequently used the McKenzie surname and instead continued to go by Bellamy.

George Bellamy had returned to Portsmouth in 1871 to take up another post with the Royal Navy at His Majesty’s Dockyard, where he died and was buried in 1875.

Kenneth McKenzie never married Eliza Jane and died in 1906. Later that same year, on 11 April 1906, Eliza married James Herbert Willis, who was twenty-one years her junior. Given his age, James Willis cannot have been the father of any of the five younger children.

1. Canada Census 1881, British Columbia, District No. 190, S. District D Victoria City, page 7, lines 9-17, http://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=census&id=18317371&lang=eng
2. Province of British Columbia, Death Record, reg. no. 1946-09-003096, https://search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Image/Genealogy/9d6925de-87ff-4815-b0ca-c1c497e8b1be
3. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bellamy-2882