Sacred Ground: The Helen Blevins grave
BIG SOUTH FORK | On the banks of Parch Corn Creek, deep in the heart of the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area backcountry, is a single, solitary grave: that of Helen Terry Blevins.
It has been 111 years since Helen Blevins died. Her husband, Armstead Blevins, died 16 years before her. Today, little remains of their once-thriving homestead in this small but fertile valley just off the Big South Fork River.
But Armstead and Helen Blevins lived quite a life at Parch Corn Creek. And no matter how much the remnants of that life are reclaimed by nature, her headstone remains as a testament to the matriarch of the expansive family that once called this place home.
The Terry Family
Helen Terry was born June 8, 1832, the daughter of Elijah Terry and Sarah Baker.
The Terry family was one of the first to settle in present-day Scott County. In fact, there’s a monument at the Oneida Municipal Services Building that recognizes Elijah Terry’s brother, Josiah Terry, as the town’s first permanent settler.
Exactly when the Terry family arrived here isn’t clear. It has been written that Elijah and Josiah’s father, John Terry, arrived in East Tennessee in 1783, but it isn’t clear where he settled or for how long. He later moved to Indiana, where he lived the rest of his life.
John Terry, Helen Terry’s grandfather, was originally from Botetourt County, Va. (It’s worth noting, however, that Botetourt County was a huge area, originally encompassing all of Kentucky and part of West Virginia. A lot of Scott County’s early settlers have ties to Botetourt County.)
John Terry was the son of William Terry and Rachel Mordock. He was a Revolutionary War veteran, and married Esther Brown in 1781, in Botetourt County.
As noted above, it has been written that John Terry moved to Anderson County, Tenn. Part of Scott County was carved out of Anderson County in 1849. However, Anderson County itself wasn’t formed until 1801. Additionally, John Terry was listed in tax records in Pittsylvania County, Va. in 1785, so he probably had not moved to Tennessee by that time. In 1810, Terry was listed in the census for Wayne County, Ky. By 1820, he had moved on to Indiana, where he would spend the remainder of his life.
Josiah Terry, the firstborn child of John and Esther Brown Terry, was born in 1780. Elijah Terry was their fifth child, born in 1791.
Elijah Terry first appears in Campbell County, which the Oneida area was part of prior to Scott County’s formation in 1849, in an 1818 census index.
The Terry brothers — Josiah and Elijah — owned much of what is now Oneida proper, though it was called Pine Creek at the time. According to the research of historian H. Clay Smith, Josiah Terry lived about where Hardee’s is now located on the Four Lane section of Alberta Street in Oneida, while Elijah Terry lived first in the Stumptown area of south Oneida before later moving to the vicinity of what is now Burchfield Elementary School.
At some point, though, Elijah Terry apparently lived at Parch Corn Creek on the Big South Fork River. A Historic Resource Study published by the National Park Service in 2017 lists Terry as an early owner of the property there.
It was apparently at Parch Corn Creek that Elijah Terry died while on a hunting trip in 1870. It has been written that he was hunting with two friends when he died on a hill overlooking the creek and the river. The weather was harsh at the time, but his friends returned in the spring to bury him where he lay. His grave has not been located, however.
Elijah Terry’s wife was Sarah Baker, of the Baker family that settled at Capuchin Creek east of Winfield. They had at least seven children, of which Helen Terry — born in 1832 — was the second-oldest.
The Blevins Family
Armstead Blevins (sometimes spelled Armpstead) was the son of Jonathan Blevins Jr. through his second wife, Sarah Minton. Armstead was born in 1820.
Jonathan Blevins has long been suggested as one of the first white settlers of the Big South Fork region. The aforementioned Historic Resource Study suggests that Blevins arrived at Parch Corn Creek as early as 1815. But there’s little concrete evidence to actually link Jonathan Blevins to the Station Camp and Parch Corn areas until late in his life.
In any event, Armstead Blevins eventually wound up at Parch Corn Creek. He was listed as living in Wayne County, Ky. when the 1850 census was taken, and in Scott County, Tenn. when the 1860 census was taken. However, there is sometimes confusion in the old census records because the Tennessee-Kentucky border was supposed to be several miles south of where it wound up; it was supposed to have been located at about the Oak Grove intersection in Oneida. A survey team led by Dr. Thomas Walker of Virginia mistakenly placed the line too far south. An early 19th century agreement between the legislatures of Tennessee and Kentucky left the erroneous line in place, but the Big South Fork River settlements of Station Camp, Parch Corn and No Business were sometimes considered to have been in Wayne County for quite a few years thereafter. Adding to the confusion: Armstead Blevins’ marriage to his first wife, Margaret Carson, was recorded in Campbell County, Tenn. in 1839.
Margaret Carson — “Margie,” as she was known — was the daughter of John Carson Sr. and Sally Estes, who settled at Tunnel Hill and may be buried at the Carson Cemetery there. It’s interesting to note that the tract of land owned by the Terrys and the tract of land owned by the Carsons essentially adjoined in the area between present-day Tunnel Hill and present-day Ponderosa.
Armstead and Margie had at least nine children before she died in 1862 and was buried at Hattie Blevins Cemetery in the Divide Road area of the Big South Fork.
The marriage of Armstead and Helen
Helen Terry appears to have been living with her brother, Calvin, when the 1860 census was taken, although she was listed as Emely (her middle name was Emily).
An exact marriage date for Armstead Blevins and Helen Terry isn’t clear, but they were married by the time the next census was taken in 1870, eight years after Margie’s death. Armstead and Helen’s first child — Shadrack “Shade” Blevins — was born in 1864, which helps pinpoint the time of their marriage.
Armstead and Helen had several more children after Shade: Jacob Blevins, William Huston “Huse” Blevins, Jane Blevins Slaven, and Lewis Blevins. There were perhaps more.
There’s much about the settlement at Parch Corn Creek that isn’t known. The Historic Resource Study states that Armstead Blevins purchased the tract of land that Elijah Terry once owned. However, it would make sense that the Parch Corn settlement periods by the Terry family and the Blevins family overlapped, and that’s how Armstead Blevins and Helen Terry met. There is archaeological evidence to suggest that there was more than one home at Parch Corn. Archaeologists have located two other potential chimney falls further up the creek from where the Armstead Blevins home was located.
In May 1863, likely just before he and Helen Terry were married, Armstead Blevins’ farm at Parch Corn was raided by Confederate guerrillas as part of a broader raid that targeted farms in the Big South Fork area. These were the events that led up to the Duck Shoals Skirmish — or the Battle of No Business, as it is sometimes called — later that night, when the Confederates were massacred at the home of Jonathan Burke on the Big South Fork River a short distance from Parch Corn Creek.
In 1881, John Litton was contracted for $5 to build a cabin for the Blevins family at Parch Corn. It was a story-and-a-half, single-pen cabin. At the time, Armstead and Helen had five children living at home: Shadrack, Jacob, Huston, Lewis and Jane.
The Blevins farm consisted of two large fields along Parch Corn Creek, while the river bottoms were also cleared for the growing of crops. There was a spring near the home where the family got its water. A community road traveled by the Blevins home and up the hill to Terry Cemetery.
Huse Blevins, who would go on to gain influence as a Republican figure in the greater Knoxville area, gained the nickname “Ram’s Horn Orator,” for the walking stick he carried that had a ram’s horn affixed to the handle. He once told a writer from a Knoxville newspaper that his mother, Helen Blevins, would blow the ram’s horn to call the children (and the horses) from the fields for supper when the work day was done at Parch Corn Creek.
“It always made us happy to hear Ma blowing that dinner horn when we were plowing on a hot day,” he said. “We could hear it blow for a mile and a half. Our horses nickered, when they heard that dinner horn, and they were as glad to quit plowing as we were. They knew that sound as well as we did.”
Much of what we know about Parch Corn is gleaned from the writings and interviews of Huse Blevins. He and his siblings attended school under a cliff at Parch Corn Creek, and he traded a catfish for a math book at the age of 10. He would later leave Parch Corn and enroll at Huntsville Academy.
Of the days spent at Parch Corn Creek, Blevins said: “Them were the days when men were men and women were glad of it.”
Aftermath
Armstead Blevins died in 1897, at the age of about 77. It isn’t clear where he was buried, but it was likely at the Hattie Blevins Cemetery, where his first wife was buried.
Helen Terry Blevins died May 20, 1913, at the age of 80. She was buried on the family farm, just above the west field and about a quarter of a mile or so from her home.
Huse Blevins and Jacob Blevins continued living at Parch Corn Creek after their mother’s death in 1913. Jacob Blevins lived there the rest of his life. Both men were buried at Sunny View Cemetery in the Pine Creek area of Oneida.
The Parch Corn property was eventually purchased by Noble Smith, who used it as a hunting retreat until he was ordered to sell to the federal government for the creation of the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area in the 1970s.
The Blevins cabin that John Litton builtin 1881 stood until it burned to the ground after careless hikers started a fire in 1998. The rock chimney at the cabin site stood for another 20 years, but recently collapsed. The only structure that remains at the old farm is a wooden outhouse, which is also near collapse.
Most of the farm has been reforested. The only clearings are the two fields along Parch Corn Creek, which are periodically maintained by the National Park Service.
The historian H. Clay Smith described the Parch Corn settlement this way in his book, Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past: “Now, all is quiet in, and around Parch corn, except the noise of the river, the stamping of the buck or a chant from some distant point, of an owl — even of an eagle, once in a while. If it were not for these old memories of the past, all, except for the virgin timber that has been removed, would be today as it was when the first white man set eyes on the place.”
This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.