John Bellus

Black male, born around 1902 in Alabama. He died on 10 January 1932 at Pensacola Hospital, Pensacola, FL, at the age of 30. He was married at the time of his death, to Della Bellus. While his last residence was given as 716 E. Chase St., Della (who was the informant on the death certificate) gave her address as 411 W. Jackson. The death certificate indicated John had lived in Pensacola for 15 years. His occupation was given as stevedore, ship work. He died of pulmonary tuberculosis and was buried in the Escambia County Poor Farm cemetery.

John has proven difficult to find: He appeared in the Pensacola City Directory for 1931 as John Belles, married to Della, a laborer residing at 110 N. Cevallos St. He did not appear in any directories prior to that, though it is possible that he is listed under a variant spelling of his name I have not located yet.

In the 1930 U.S. Census for Pensacola, John Bellas was living at 110 8th Ave. He was 29 years old, and married to Della. He married at the age of 18. This census said he was born in Mississippi, with the birthplaces of his parents given only as the United States. (This probably means that John was not the informant on the census, and the informant did not know where his parents were born, only that they were not foreign-born.) He was a laborer on the railroad; he rented his home; and he was not literate. Della was 30 years old and had married at the age of 19. She was born in Alabama to two parents born in Alabama, and worked as a laundress for a private family. She was not literate. There is one son in the household, Charlie C., who was 16 years old and attended school. The census indicated he was born in Alabama to two parents born in Alabama, which contradicts John’s place of birth being Mississippi. He was also old enough that he would have been born well previous to John and Della’s marriage.

These two sources are the only ones I can find where I am sure I am looking at the right people. Della and Charlie disappear after John’s death; I would not be surprised to find she reverted to her maiden name (as I have found to be the case at times with widowed women of color in this era), or perhaps remarried quickly. In either case, Charlie must have taken whatever name she did.

The house at 411 W. Jackson St., which Della gave as hers on the death certificate, was associated with Hattie McDowell, a woman of color, in 1931. I can find Hattie in other city directories up into the 1940s but I have not yet located her in the census to find out any more about her. It is possible she was a relative of Della’s with whom she lived during John’s illness. The house at 716 E. Chase St. was associated with Lillie McCaskill, a woman of color who worked as a laundress. Depending upon how long it had been since John lived there, Lillie may have been the new resident or she may have rented rooms before his illness. Lillie, too, has been proven elusive.

As always, research continues.

SOURCES:

Florida Certificate of Death, Florida Deaths, 1877-1939. Database. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 14 June 2016. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.

Ancestry.com. U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.