Job Smith Bellows was born on December 13, 1833, in New York to James and Maria Bellows. His father was a farmer who owned $6,000 of real estate and $800 of personal property by 1860. The family eventually moved to Washington, Indiana, and Bellows attended school there. By 1850, he was working as a laborer. He married Mary Helen Williams on November 29, 1860, and they had at least two children: Elva, born around 1862; and Cora, born around 1866.

 

They moved to Michigan in the early 1860s, and Bellows enlisted in the Union army on September 2, 1864. He mustered in as a private in Company F of the 12^th Michigan Infantry the following day. In December 1864, he wrote that the “prospect of peace is cheering.” He and his comrades “long to greet our friends once more, but above these desires are the longings for peace, and the restitution of our glorious union.” Bellows vowed to continue fighting until “there shall not be a traitor left upon northern or Southern soil.” He mustered out on September 9, 1865.

 

Bellows settled in Porter, Michigan, after the war, and he earned a living as a gardener. He applied for a federal pension in May 1888, complaining of rheumatism and “inflamed eyes.” The family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, in the 1910s, and his wife died of cancer on August 1, 1918. Bellows died of “valvular heart disease” in Elkhart on April 14, 1922.

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