The hitherto Methodist family joined the Quakers in 1838, and in 1841 John's energetic father, William Lamb Bellows, established a school at Camborne, on the other side of the county: this necessitated relocation.

[4] John Bellows and his younger brother Ebenezer[6] received much of their education from their father, both as pupils at the school and on the long country walks which they took together.

[1] Newton also kept a library: John Bellows was frequently sent on long errands, and perfected the art of reading while walking, books which his employer was happy to loan him.

[5] He was stranded for several days in the printing works by the serious flooding that affected Gloucester in 1852, later recalling inventive ways of passing bread on the end of an improvised delivery system involving a long handled broom through the upstairs window of the printing works in which he was stranded, and across to the upstairs window of a neighbouring property where the occupiers had run out of food.

In 1863, while distributing bibles at the docks in Gloucester, he met the daughter of a Norwegian ship's captain to whom he later became engaged: unfortunately his fiancée died before they could be married.

[4] He persisted, however, and succeeded in obtaining a substantial quantity of high strength light-weight paper from a Scots firm that had intended to supply bank notes to the Confederate side in the American Civil War.

The effectiveness with which Charleston was blockaded by the northern navy made it impossible to deliver bank notes, however, leaving the Glasgow firm with more high grade paper than they could use.

[1] "I candidly admit I don't know how to answer thy question: What would I do if my wife and child lived in Saarbrück and the French were to come and bombard the town?

The only way for us to get a really just view of such cases is to bring them home to ourselves, and I do so, thus: My house is attacked by a ruffian who would make 'no bones' of killing my wife and child if he could.

I should go back home with a feeling that would never leave me day nor night, that if there really is a Father of all, to whom all men on earth are alike dear— barring their wilful acts — He would look down on me as guilty of a very cruel deed; and no plea that I could bring that I had done it to protect my own wife and child, would alter it.

[5] ... from a letter dated 21 February [1871] addressed to Professor Max Muller in Oxford With extensive contributions from Max Müller, Bellows himself compiled several light-weight dictionaries during the second half of the 1860s which he then published: In November 1870 he traveled to the Metz region, distributing Quaker relief aid to surviving civilian victims of the recent Franco-Prussian War.

[8] The objectives of the mission, which received "every possible assistance from the [occupying] German authorities", were eloquently set out in a document which each member of the relief mission carried, its text set out in the English, German and French languages:[5][9] disease was rife, and on the final day of his Metz stay he was attending the funeral of a fellow relief worker who had succumbed to small pox.

[5] By 1870 it is clear that Bellows was also planning for a further dictionary project on a much more ambitious scale, having spent the previous five or so years learning the French language from scratch.

[5] The weeks spent in Lorraine seem to have pushed work on the project for a "pocket ‘French-English Dictionary’" further up his agenda, and he may have taken the opportunity of this visit to France to invoke further practical input from friends with mother-tongue French.

Some years after John Bellow himself had died his business, now controlled by his son William, was able, with help from a new generation of francophone friends, to produce an updated and expanded edition in 1911.

While the printing business continued to thrive, between 1873 and his death in 1902 he joined a succession of small teams of co-religionists, visiting France, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Canada and the United States of America.