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

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.