William Huston Blevins

William Huston “Huse” Blevins (May 2, 1869 – November 20, 1964) was a prominent figure in Scott County’s Republican politics, and the forefather of the Blevins family in the Pine Creek area west of Oneida.

Biography

Born May 2, 1869, William H. Blevins was the son of Armstead Blevins and Hellen Terry. He was one of 17 children fathered by Armstead Blevins by two different wives. His paternal grandfather was Jonathan Blevins. His great-uncle on his mother’s side was Josiah Terry, the first settler of Oneida.

Early Life

The Blevins family lived at Parch Corn Creek in what is now the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area. Huse Blevins attended school, along with his siblings, under a cliff at Parch Corn Creek. He worked the fields in the summer and worked odd jobs to earn money in the winter.

At the age of 10, Huse traded a catfish for a math book. At the age of 20, he enrolled at Huntsville Academy. He fed livestock and did other odd jobs to pay for his room and board.

Professional Life

After graduating high school, Blevins became a school teacher. He held a lot of other jobs through the year, as well. He was known as “Professor” to many. He began his career in education in 1890, and taught for nearly four decades. Late in his career, he served as principal at Rock Creek School near Oneida. His starting salary was $25 per month. He retired on a pension of $1.30 per day.

Blevins was also a justice of the peace, which we know today as county commissioner. He served as a deputy sheriff under Sheriff Dorsey Rosser, was a census enumerator, a constable, and a lumber company superintendent.

It’s possible that Blevins also spent some time as postmaster. Notations appear in old historical records of a Frona Post Office in Scott County that opened in 1892 with William H. Blevins serving as its first postmaster, and closed in 1895 and moved to Oneida, with William W. Owens serving as the last postmaster. This would seem to be a reference to William Huston Blevins, who would have been 23 and living at Parch Corn Creek with his mother in 1892 when he was not in school at Huntsville, and William Wesley Owens, who lived at Station Camp Creek in 1895.

Political interests

Blevins had a deep interest in politics, and was a loyal Republican. He cast his first presidential vote for William McKinley in 1896, and once bragged that Democrats were “as rare as hen’s teeth” in Scott County. He got his start in politics at the Debating Club in Huntsville, which was founded by the town’s attorneys, including Heywood Pemberton, Beaty Cecil, W.H. Potter, Dan Jeffers and Harrison Reed.

At a political convention in 1950, the Republican Party of Scott County bestowed upon him the nickname “The Ram’s Horn Orator.” The nickname originated with the walking cane he carried that had a ram’s horn affixed to it. The ram’s horn was used by his mother, Hellen Terry Blevins, to call her family to dinner.

“It always made us happy to hear Ma blowing that dinner horn when we were plowing corn on a hot day,” Blevins once 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.”

Blevins bragged that there wasn’t a polling place he didn’t visit in Scott County or in the rest of Tennessee’s 3rd Congressional District, which also included Campbell County, Union County, Hancock County and Grainger County. Late in life, he said he had missed only one Lincoln Day dinner in Knoxville, because he was sick. He traveled East Tennessee to stump for every single Republican nominee for president, beginning with McKinley in 1896 and continuing until he retired at the age of 91 in 1960. Among them: Teddy Roosevelt, William Taft, Charles Hughes, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Alf Landon, Wendell Willkie, Thomas E. Dewey, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon.

Blevins attended Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inauguration in Washington, D.C. in 1953.

Family

Blevins married Rosie Marcum in 1901, at the age of 32. They had 10 children, which Blevins considered to be a small family.

“I guess I butterflied around too long before I got married,” he said. “But my brothers and sisters made up for me.”

Marcum was the daughter of John Arthur Marcum Jr. (1841-1903) and Arlena Phillips (1853-1945) of Pine Creek, and that is where the Blevins settled down and started a farm. Their children included Rev. Lawrence M. Blevins, Lue Maud Blevins, Emmett Blevins, Orlena Blevins Marcum, John D. Blevins, Helen Blevins, Ralph E. Blevins, Ola Blevins, Lucy Bell Blevins, and William Howard Blevins.

Death

Blevins died on Nov. 20, 1964, at age 95. He is buried at Sunny View Cemetery. His wife was also buried there in 1968.