By Robin Sterling
Jacob Jonathan Blevins was born in Morgan County, AL 12 February 1825 to John and Elizabeth Blevins. On 8 May 1849, he married Mary Ann Davis, daughter of Colonel Samuel Davis, Sr.
Jacob and Mary Ann had five children: Rosa Anne Elizabeth, born 26 February 1850; Martha Catharine Adiller, born 22 May 1851; Mary Louisa Jane, born 3 May 1853; William Carroll, born 10 January 1855; and Sarah Caroline, born 27 September 1859. Martha Catharine Adiller died at the age of three on 21 January 1855. Mary Louisa Jane died before 1860 but the exact date is unknown.
By 1860, Jacob had moved to Winston Co., AL. He is listed in the 1860 census with children Rosanna, William, and Sarah. His occupation in the census was listed as "hatter." Although most records list Jacob's address as Houston, the 1860 census says he was living near what is now the Trimble community in what is now western Cullman Co.. Cullman Co. was carved out of parts of Winston and Blount Co. in 1877.
Jacob had an older brother, Abraham Blevins, who moved to Texas before the war and enlisted in the Confederacy.
On 27 June 1862, Jacob Jonathan Blevins traveled from Winston Co. to Huntsville, AL and enlisted as a private in Co. K of the First Alabama Cavalry under Captain Bankhead on 24 July 1862. This Company was later reorganized as Captain David Smith's Company E of the First Regiment of the Middle Tennesse Cavalry on 6 September 1862.
Jacob was mustered in the service on August 12th. Almost immediately, he contracted typhoid fever. The associated symptoms plagued him constantly and ultimately caused his medical discharge from military service on 22 November 1862 in Nashville, TN. He had been in the Union Army four months. The discharge papers say he was just over five feet, eleven inches tall, light complexion, grey eyes, auburn hair, and a farmer. His post office was listed as Houston, Winston Co., AL.
After his discharge, he went back to Winston County and shortly thereafter packed up his belongings and moved to Effingham Co., IL. Jacob's son William Carroll died 10 October 1863. It is not known if William Carol is buried in Winston Co., or Effingham Co., IL.
Not long after he moved to Illinois, Jacob moved to Benton County in the northwest corner of Arkansas and then down south to Scott County. By then, the household consisted of Jacob and his wife Mary Ann and two daughters, Rosa Anne, and Sarah Caroline. Rosa Anne married Isaac James Lucas; marriage date unknown. The Lucas home in Scott County, Arkansas was located near the settlement of Lucas, named for the family of the man who married Rosa Anne.
Jacob's wife Mary Ann died 9 October 1878. She is buried in the Cedar Grove Cemetery in Scott County, Arkansas. A year to the day afterward, daughter Sarah Caroline Blevins married James Berry Hurt in Scott County on 9 October 1879.
On 14 November 1886, 61-year-old Jacob remarried Rhody Amena Rice Ramsey in Scott County. Less than a year later, Sarah Caroline Hurt died at the age of 28 on 27 October 1887. Sarah is buried near her mother in the Cedar Grove Cemetery in Scott County.
Jacob first applied for a Federal pension on his brief service as a Union soldier about 1890. Ten years later, after many applications and affidavits from some of his neighbors who had known him for many years, Jacob was recognized for his short length of service to the Union Army and received his military pension for a little while before he died 3 February 1901. He was buried next to his first wife in the Cedar Grove Cemetery.
His only remaining daughter, Rosa Ann, lived until 14 December 1933. She is also buried in the Cedar Grove Cemetery in Scott County, Arkansas.
Source: The author, Robin Sterling, wanted to give special credit to Artela Tyler for supplying some additional information about Jacob Jonathan Blevins to this story
Service records compiled by Glenda Todd and used with her permission. This and other information about the history of the First and the men who fought with the unit
can be found in her book, First Alabama Cavalry, USA: Homage to Patriotism.