Francis Julius Bellamy was born in Mount Morris, NY. His family was deeply involved in the Baptist church and they moved to Rome, NY when Bellamy was only 5. Here, Bellamy became an active member of the First Baptist Church; which his father was minister of until his death in 1864. He attended college at the University of Rochester, in Rochester, NY and studied theology and was part of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity. As a young man, he became a Baptist minister and, influenced by the vestiges of the Second Great Awakening, began to travel to promote his faith and help his community. Bellamy’s travels brought him to Massachusetts. It was there that he penned the “Pledge of Allegiance” for a campaign by the “Youth’s Companion;” a patriotic circular of the day. Bellamy “believed in the absolute separation of church and state” and did not include the phrase “one nation under God” within his original pledge. Francis Bellamy married Harriet Benton in Newark, NY in 1881. They had two sons: John, who lived in California, and David, who lived in Rochester, New York. His first wife died in 1918, and he later married Marie Morin (1920). Bellamy ran for Governor of New York, but lost. His daughter-in-law Rachael (David’s wife) lived in Rochester until Feb/Mar of 1989 when she died at the age of 93. No information is readily available on son John or his family in California or of any other relatives. David and Rachael had two children, David Jr. and Peter. Francis Bellamy spent most of the last years of his life living and working in Tampa, FL. He died there on August 28, 1931 at the age of 76. His cremated remains were brought back to New York where they were buried in a family plot in a cemetery in Rome.