The Mountain Laurel
The Journal of Mountain Life

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Heart of the Blue Ridge


One Mullins Family

By Marie R. Justice © 1989

Issue: January, 1989

The beginning of the book, "One Mullins Family", really began when I was a very small child. My maternal grandmother, Matilda Mullins Akers, lived with us until I was 12. She was so full of life, so busy, so active and such a dear, kind person that she was the center of my childhood. I was impressed by the tales she told of her people, "They came across the water," she said. She told of the home in which she grew up, big house and t'other house, the geese penned under the floor, the lazy-susan on the table, the way her father prayed and read the Bible to the 12 children, the way her mother said, "Farewell, farewell," the last time she saw her. All these things were pictures on a giant screen in my child's mind. And when I misbehaved she called me "Lady Margit." "Waych Lady Margit," she would say when in anger I would place my small hands on my hips and stamp my foot.

I never forgot these things and when I was older, I began to search. My search led me to South Carolina and to the archives which held ships records containing names of Mullins who sailed from Ireland to Charleston, South Carolina and began the Mullins family in America; on into the Toe River Valley of North Carolina where I found the deeds where they had sold their property when they moved to Virginia. Later there were the stories of Revolutionary John, his sons, the herb doctor James, one called Holy Creek John and Solomon who married a Cathey.

Later relatives searched out the graves of Solomon and his wife, Sara Greenfield Cathey in a remote place in West Virginia and erected monuments to one born on the Broad River in South Carolina in 1782.

All this is told in "One Mullins Family", for descendants of Mullins, Cathey, Baileys, Flemings, Stambaughs - the story that begun in a child's mind years ago and would not let me rest until it was told.

One Mullins Family, price $10.00, can be ordered from Marie R. Justice, P.O. Box 2172, Pikeville, KY. Postage $1.25.