BLACKWOOD
 
BLACKWOOD
 
        James Blackwood (1732-1810), part of a Scots-Irish Presbyterian group of immigrants from Ireland, arrived in the Pennsylvania Colony about 1741. The group remained in that area of Pennsylvania for only a short time, due to the French and Indian Wars. They migrated into the Virginia colony in a winter so cold that they drove their teams and wagons down frozen rivers. But they could not stay in Virginia  because their religious beliefs were not tolerated by the established Anglican church of that colony. The Blackwoods lived in Mecklenburg County of North Carolina, later moving to Lincoln County near King's Mountain. His wife was Anna Thompson (?-1839), the daughter of Gideon Thompson and Jeanette (Reid ?). The children of James and Anna were John, Gideon, Margaret, Anna, and Jennet. [Billy Jean Horne of Mahtomedi, MN has generously shared her own Blackwood family research with us.]

       The eldest son was known as "Honest John" Blackwood (1779-1864) for his integrity in business dealings, but in the 1840s a family scandal caused John Blackwood to move with his family from North Carolina to Tennessee. Mattie Love Blackwood Peters explained:

My father's story is this: John Blackwood [his grandfather] had a nephew who wanted to borrow money so he could go into mercantile business. John signed notes. The nephew came to John's home one night and asked to borrow a horse to go on brief rest from his hard work. He even asked for the loan of John's watch. The nephew left and was never heard from again. John had to pay all creditors. He seems to have lost everything. Feeling disgraced, he moved out of North Carolina to Tennessee. Father told me this on his 90th birthday. He was too proud to tell us before.

       John's sales of land and property began in 1841 and continued even after the move to Pinhook, Wayne County, Tennessee. His wife was Jeanette Reid Bradshaw(?-1794) and their children were Elizabeth, Margaret, Gideon, Ann, Susan, James T., Mary Ann and Isaiah. A second wife may have been Elizabeth Clower.

      Isaiah Blackwood (1824-?) escaped duty in the Confederate army when his wife, Eliza Curtis(1836-?), chided recruiters for trying to enlist a "white-haired old man" plowing in the nearby field - he was in his thirties. Their children were John, James, Henry, Andrew, Isaiah, Obediah, and Mary Ann Elizabeth.

       The son James Thomas Blackwood was born November 19, 1857 in Wayne County, Tennessee.  He remembered hearing the "guns of Shiloh " as a three-year-old. At the age of 14, he became a member of the Methodist Church and was licensed to preach on May 14, 1878.  Beginning as a Circuit Rider, he was an active minister and Presiding Elder in Middle Tennessee for over 50 years.  He retired in Monteagle where he continued to preach an annual sermon to his former congregation at Merton Memorial  Methodist Church. On the occasion of his 100th birthday, he was honored there as being the longest serving minister in the Tennessee Conference. His first wife, active supporter of his ministry and mother of their four daughters was Mattie Love Overall (1864-1925). Their daughters were Lillian, Lucy, Mattie Love, and Allaisie.  His second wife, who cared for him in Monteagle for the last thirty years of his life, was Clara Wooten.

      Their eldest daughter, Lillian Blackwood (1887-1944), became a teacher for a few years, but left the classroom to marry John William Pearson(1883-1954), also a Methodist minister. Their children are Mattie Love (Bates), James Blackwood, and Lillian Virginia (Green).