HISTORY OF THE LONGHUNTERS IN THE BLEVENS FAMILY

[W. Welshman]

NEED INFO BLEVENS LONGHUNTER

The Blevinses were an old Welsh family who emigrated in the 1600s to Rhode Island and were later prominent in the vanguard of the settlement of Tennessee and Kentucky. William (The Elder) Blevins, a long hunter in Pittsylvania County, married Agnes Walling/Walden, the sister of Elisha Walling (for whom Walden’s Ridge is named), and Blevinses were among the signers of the Watauga Purchase on March 19, 1775. Jonathan Blevins (about 1763 – about 1830), like his twin brother Richard, was a Revolutionary War soldier in the Upper New River Valley. During the shift of the Cherokee population southward in the 1820s and 1830s, the two brothers bought land in Marion Co., Tenn. Elections were held in Jonathan’s house on the stage road in District 4, Cave Springs, between Sequatchie River, Walden's Ridge and Cumberland Mountain. Jonathan was married to Charlotte Muse, the daughter of Richard Muse, a wealthy land agent who disposed of over 2400 acres of land in Montgomery/Wythe/Grayson Co., Va. before settling in what became Campbell Co., Tenn. Most of Jonathan and Lottie Muse’s children avoided the Trail of Tears, though a cousin also named Richard Blevins (about 1785 – after 1850) seems to have embraced it, discarding his white wife for two Jones sisters and moving west to Cape Girardieu, Mo., finally ending up in Texas. Two sisters Lucretia (Creecy) and Mahala Jane (Linny) married two brothers, James and Isaac Cooper, but the two couples were divided in the commotions of the 1830s and 40s, with Lucretia Cooper and her family migrating to Marion Co., Ark., and Jane Cooper and her family managing to remain in the East, in Deerhead Cove. The children of Jonathan’s twin brother, Richard (about 1763-after 1839), who was married to Hannah Osbourne, changed their name to Blevans and pursued a different survival strategy, some moving west to Missouri after spending a few years in Marion Co., Tenn. and Jackson Co., Ala. Throughout all their moves, the Blevins were careful to support other members of their circle. For example, Richard Blevins served as character witness for Jacob Troxell in Marion Co., Tenn. in 1832, before Jacob too moved on to DeKalb Co., Ala., and William Blevins gave an affidavit in 1850 for his widowed sister Jane Cooper in Dade Co., Ga. Jonathan (Jont) Blevins (1779-1863) married Catherine (Katie) Troxell, the daughter of George Jacob Troxell and his Cherokee wife Cornblossom (his brother Tarleton married her sister Mary Polly Troxell), and he was the commander of road work near the Little South Fork River in Wayne Co., Ky.

During the Civil War, many of the Blevins men, most of them railroaders like their Cooper cousins, joined the U.S. cavalry of Tennessee. Afterward, they and their Cooper relatives were forced to leave Deerhead Cove and move to New Hope across the state line on the other end of Sand Mountain. The men are usually described as having been fairly tall, lean, of dark complexion, with dark hair and either blue, green or yellow eyes – a physical type similar to Moroccan Jews. Many Blevinses are buried either in Cagle Cemetery in Deerhead Cove or New Hope Cemetery on Sand Mountain.

Blevins DNA proved to be E3b, the second most common Hebrew male lineage after J and a gene type found frequently in Moorish and Berber families (WSWJ).

http://www.rkinnie.com/oldsite/prod.html

http://www.angelfire.com/co3/Skaggs/stories/long.html

The next set of reading is very interesting, especially the very last paragraph...

http://www.donnneal.com/blevins-taylor.html

http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/rea ... 1161059257

The next reading gives details of what they wore and is really good reading...

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.anc ... nms044.htm

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journey. He didn't name the mountains or the gap. He called it Steep Ridge and left it Steep Ridge. The gap was named by one Wallen or Walden, a long hunter, after his native Cumberland County, Virginia.  Indians called Cumberland Mountain Ouassioto, or Wasseoto. On early maps Cumberland River is called Shawnee.

 The house site of Dr. Walker was acquired by Deaton-Smith Post No. 69, the American Legion, and donated to the Kentucky Park Commission.

 In 1751, Christopher Gist commenced a trip of exploration from the "Old Town on the Potomack River in Maryland." Gist may have touched the north tip of old Knox County. However, since he returned home up the north fork of the Kentucky River it is not thought that he was on Knox County soil.

 A party of long hunters, so called because they remained away from the settlement on hunts for twelve months or longer. Skaggs, Newman, Blevins, Cox and Wallen (for whom Wallen's Creek in Harlan County is named), entered Kentucky Cumberland Gap (it belonged to Kentucky until 1859, Tennessee archives) in 1761.

 In 1766 Captain James Smith, who later settled in Bourbon County, Joshua Horton, Uriah Stone, Wm. Baker and a mulatto slave came through the gap.

 From South Carolina in 1767 Isaac Lindsey, who is said to have named Rockcastle River, led a party through the gap toward the central part of the state. During this year John Findlay made a trip beyond Cumberland Mountain.

 Daniel Boone, piloted by Finley, made his first trip to and through Cumberland Gap in 1769. He later made several trips, and in 1775 blazed the famous trace.

 Another band of long hunters, James Knox, John Rains, Kasper Mansco, Abraham Bledsoe, John Baker, Joseph Drake, Obakian Terrell, Uriah Stone, Henry Smith, Edward Cowan, Thomas Gordon, Humphrey Hogan, Cassius Brooks, Robert Crockett and others came to Kentucky through Cumberland Gap in 1769.

 On March 17, 1775, Colonel Richard Henderson, Nathaniel Hart and others bought a track of land from the Cherokees, which included the territory in Kentucky between the Ohio, Kentucky and Cumberland Rivers, as far east as the Cumberland Mountain. It was called Transylvania Colony. Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, refused to recognize the colony and the trade with the Indians, but assumed the benefits and granted the buyers a tract of land twelve miles square on the Ohio below the mouth of Green River. It was for Henderson, Hart and Company that Daniel Boone blazed the Trace, later known as the Old Wilderness Road.

 Within the bounds of the present City of Middlesboro, (according to the late Judge Aires of Pineville), was made the first entry of land that was made under any title in southeastern Kentucky, and the first that was made in Kentucky under the title of Richard Henderson and his Associates.