A Reflection of Family Love: The Diary of Belinda Elliot McLellan

Belinda Elliot McLellan

           Rutherford B. Hayes Library & Museums

Far from home, Mary McLellan Fitch, once again, opened her mother's diary, given to her some years before her mother's death in 1873.  Mary and her husband the Reverend George Fitch had left Fremont, Ohio, to travel to Shanghai, China, as missionaries only a year after their marriage.  Mary's mother, Belinda Elliot McLellan, a first cousin of President Hayes, had nearly destroyed the diary she had kept for 20 years, believing it to be of little value. Instead, she gave the diary to Mary, who found, again and again, comfort in her mother's poems, prose, and prayers.  

Belinda Eliot had married Robert Bolton McLellan in Vermont. She recorded in her diary how the couple had come to Fremont, Ohio. Belinda and her husband, then suffering from depression and physically unwell, had accepted the invitation of her half brother, John R. Pease, to begin a new life in Ohio.  She recorded in 1852 on that "first Thanksgiving in Ohio, we have now been here nearly five months,  all the time living with brother John's family, who has made us very welcome and happy here. Still we have had the feeling of strangers in a strange land! But Fremont now begins to seem like home in many respects."

John R. Pease

Rutherford B. Hayes Library & Museums

Deeply religious and continuously concerned for the Christian upbringing of her daughters, Belinda depended on  Fremont's Presbyterian Church and its minister Reverend Bushnell to deepen her faith.  But is was John Pease, who helped his much-loved younger half-sister adapt to life in Ohio.  

First Presbyterian Church, Fremont, Ohio

Courtesy of First Presbyterian Church

He advised her husband in business prospects, gave Belinda a piano, money, presents, a lot and two others for her daughters. His daily visits to the McLellan home on his way downtown to his hardware store brought much good cheer and laughter to the household. 

John R. Pease, Oakwood Cemetery, Fremont, Ohio
Courtesy Find a Grave

On January 3rd, 1860, Belinda was at John's bedside when he died after severe suffering from tuberculosis.  She described in detail how much she loved him.  His help had even made it possible for her daughters to attend the Lake Erie Female Seminary in Painesville, Ohio.  And, they did not disappoint. Mary and her sister Jennie graduated at the head of their class.  They went on to serve as teachers.  Later Mary and Jennie married the Fitch brothers.  

Mary McLellan Fitch

Died in Shanghai, China 1918

Courtesy of Find a Grave

When Belinda died, President Hayes wrote in his diary that his cousin "was possessed of talents of a high order, excellent education, and a temper and disposition almost perfect.  In the small circle of her intimate friends she was dearly loved.  A poet of some excellence and a superior prose writer - she was religious - her piety a reality"  Mary, in a notation in Belinda's diary, paid to her mother the highest of tributes, "May Christ make me like her insomuch as she was like Him."  Today, Belinda's diary is part of the Hayes Manuscript Collection.