ETHELDRED BLALOCK

Everybody had trouble with Dred Blalock's first name. It was Etheldred, pronounced ee-thel-drid, with emphasis on the first syllable. His nickname, Dred, didn't help matters much - it seemed to bother people, too. A newspaper article relating his building skills, referred to him twice as Dred Blalock and several other times as Fred Blalock. It seemed as if the copy editor couldn't believe that name was right. Some of his children spelled the last name BLALOCK while others spelled it BLAYLOCK.

Dred Blalock was the father of twenty or more children by three different women. There are people who attribute as many as twenty- nine children to this man. Twenty can be documented and three more, who cannot be documented, are told about in stories handed down through the generations.

These twenty known children and their descendants are called the first, second, and third families by many of the descendants and other people acquainted with the history of this family.

Dred was married first to Mary Anderson on September 8, 1838 and their descendants are commonly known as the first family. Five of the eight children have descendants; two died in childhood, and another had no children.

Mary Anderson Blalock died on December 1, 1849, and Dred was married for the second time on June 18, 1850 to Mary Campbell. Dred and Mary Campbell had six children in the next nine years, and they and their descendants are known as the second family. Each of these six children has descendants. The children of the first two families were raised together as one family by Dred and Mary.

Dred Blalock fathered another family of children by a widow, Hester Minerva Stroupe Burnette while remaining married to Mary Campbell Blalock. These children and their descendants are known as the third family. Six children from the third family survived and have descendants. There are stories handed down through the generations about three more children in this family; one was a little girl who died when she fell from a tree, and the other two were twins, sex unknown, who were either born dead or died shortly after birth.

One can only speculate as to the reasons for Mary Blalock's tolerance of this relationship between her husband and Minerva Burnette. Whatever her reasoning might have been, she not only tolerated the situation, but according to oral family history, she and Dred helped provide for these children with food and clothing.

There are stories told of Dred's trips to the mill to have a load of corn ground. He and Mary would take what cornmeal they needed for their family and then take the rest to Minerva and her family. Dred would bring a bolt of material from Cathey's Store. Mary would cut off enough to make dresses for her girls and send the rest to Minerva for her daughters. Mary worried that Minerva's children might not always have enough to eat and made gingerbread to give them when they came by. These stories and others are still told by descendants of these families.

Minerva lived in a log cabin on the old Mountain Grove road, about a mile from Dred and Mary's home in Smoky Cove. She was a Buncombe County native and one of a large family of children born to David, Jr. and Mary Stroupe. She was married July 11, 1856 in Buncombe County to Alfred Burnette, a son of Wade and Martha Burnette. In 1860, Minerva and Alfred were living with Alfred's parents in Haywood County in Forks of Pigeon Township.

One of the more intriguing stories about Dred's relationship with Minerva involves the Civil War service of Alfred Burnette and Dred Blalock. This story, as it has been handed down, says that Alfred and Dred served together in the same company during the war and that Alfred asked Dred to take care of Minerva if he didn't survive. The story has it that Alfred was killed in battle and that Dred did, in fact, take care of Minerva.

Historical facts support this story. Dred volunteered for service at the age of 44 on July 29, 1861 when Company F of the 25th Regiment was formed. This company was known as "The Haywood Highlanders." He was appointed 1st Lieutenant on June 29 and served in that capacity until he was defeated for re-election when the Confederate Army was reorganized on April 28, 1862. At that time, he was granted a discharge, and he went home, where he remained for the duration of the war.

Alfred Burnette joined Company F on August 14, 1861 when he enlisted at Camp Patton, near Asheville, at the age of 26. The unit was training at that time and moved into the coastal area of South Carolina, near Charleston, a few weeks later. Alfred was sick with an unspecified illness for four months and was discharged for that reason on January 20, 1862. He also went home, where he remained until the Conscript Act was passed.

He reported to Company I of the 34th Infantry Regiment at Camp Vance and enlisted on May 25, 1864. Only one month later, on June 24, he was shot in the left knee in a battle between Bellfield and Petersburg, Virginia. He died as a result of this wound on July 17 in a Petersburg hospital.

These facts support the story, and other documentation does, also. In the old Cathey Store ledgers, there are item charged to Dred's account and listed as "goods for the Widow Burnette." Thus, Dred did look after Minerva, just as the old stories say, but many questions still remain unanswered. Was there really a pact between Albert Burnette and Dred Blalock? If so, was it suggested or implied that an intimate relationship between Dred and Minerva be a part of the pact?

The most puzzling question, of course, concerns Dred's wife, Mary. Why was she willing to tolerate such a situation? Did she feel some kind of obligation to honor an alleged pact between the two men, especially to this extent? Was she afraid to try to stop it? Did she care so little for Dred that she was glad to be rid of him - at least part of the time? One can only wonder about Mary's acceptance of the situation.

Tom Cathey remembers the mill. It was three stories high. Wheat was milled on one floor, corn on another, and buckwheat on a third. The machinery was placed on each separate floor so that grain being ground on one floor would not sift through into what was being ground on the floor below.

The mill was built by a master builder, a genius, we are told. He was called "Fred" Blalock. Every piece of machinery in the mill except the mill rocks was made of wood, hand carved, designed so that there was only one belt in it, that a joint running from the second floor to the third floor.

All of the rest were gcog wheels. "Fred" Blalock would design the cog wheels, how they would sit, fit together, move....then take the designs to Col. Cathey. Col. Cathey would work out the exact mathematical calculations. For example, when he would want a cog wheel to make a certain speed, Col. Cathey would figure the exact size the wheel would need to be to attain the speed - then Fred Blalock made it to those specifications. Of course, there was the great water wheel that set the machinery in motion.

As is the case when anyone is doing most anything, there are always those standing around who can tell him how he ought to do it! So it was with the water wheel. When "Dred" Blalock started to build the water wheel, he was designing it for an "undershoot." Many of those standing around told him he was crazy, for the water was swift enough to turn the machinery using an "overshoot."

But "Dred" Blalock wouldn't have any of their advise. He said, "No!" With an "overshoot," the buckets would fill unevenly, causing the machinery to operate with a jerky, uneven motion. He would have none of that. Therefore, he built an "undershoot" so the buckets filled evenly, with exact amounts of water, making the machinery work smoothly.

......to be continued