My middle name is Bellew, and both my father and my uncle had Bellew as a given name. It was my Grandmother's maiden name; she was Anna Lorna Bellew. The name is Norman French, derived from "Bel Eau", beautiful water, and is to be found in the Roll of Battle Abbey among the followers of William the Conqueror. The family was recorded in Yorkshire in the 1100s, but soon moved to Ireland where it became a well-established land-owning family belonging to the minor aristocracy. Several Bellews married girls called Plunkett, who were surplus daughters of various Lords Louth. Apparently, the Bellews built a castle at Bellewstown in Co. Meath in 1472-79. I don't think the castle still exists, but Bellewstown certainly does, and is famed throughout Ireland for its horse racing. The Bellews managed to finesse their way through the Irish troubles fairly well, though some of them had trouble with Oliver Cromwell; one Bellew was killed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and another was made Baron as a result of it - clearly by picking the right side! In more modern times, a distant relative, Sir George Bellew, was Garter Principal King of Arms, the senior in the College of Heralds, at the time of the Coronation.
My branch of the family moved from Ireland in the early part of the 19th Century, and mostly served in India. Henry Walter Bellew, Lorna's grandfather, was killed in the Khyber Pass in 1842, but he left a widow and five children behind him. His sons, Patrick Francis (my great-grandfather) and Henry Walter, had distinguished careers in India. They were both surgeons in the Indian Army, and Patrick Francis later became Deputy Assay Master of the Bombay Mint in 1870. His brother, Henry Walter, rose even higher to be Surgeon-General in the 1880s; he was a prolific author and traveller, wrote the first dictionary of the Pukkhto or Pukshto Language language (spoken in Afghanistan) in 1867, and was reportedly using oxygen to treat altitude sickness in Afghanistan in the 1870s. This drawing of him dates from 1850, when he was but a lad of 16 (drawn by a relative I can't identify).
I think that Patrick Francis and family had returned to England by the time Lorna was born in 1884, though her elder brother, Donald (who later won the Victoria Cross in World War 1) was born in Bombay in 1882. Maybe not, because the Census of 19892 has her living in Devonshire with her grandmother, so perhaps her Dad was still managing the Bombay Mint. She grew up in Devon, and in 1904, at the age of 20, she went to Norway as a lady's companion to the wife of the pioneering railway engineer and steel magnate James Livesey (1831-1925). There she met Hans Andreas Dahl. But that's another story.
I got my information mostly through Google; if you have trouble finding stuff for yourself, I have a few links I can let you have - just ask.
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