Folks, I'm gradually getting back into my routine. Those of you waiting on obituaries, please be patient. I'm almost caught up. The Southern Democrat Oneonta, AL 9-23-1948 Letter from Descendants of Blount County Citizen The following letter was recently received by the editor of the Democrat. We print it with the hope that the family of the writer will respond to his request: Dear Editor: Mr. Campbell, who takes your paper, handed me a copy of it last Sunday. He was reared in Blount County but has been in this country for years, living on a farm near Apache. He knew many of my people in Blount and was telling me that many of them were still there. My father, Wesley Harrison Ballard, was reared in Blount County, having been born in 1840. He was a member of the Methodist Church and blacksmith by trade. He served in the Southern Army as a blacksmith, but I do not know the name or number of his company. My father's first wife was a Cowen. Her sister married Bill Garrett. My father, with his young wife, before any children were born, came to Texas in an ox wagon and settled in Athens, Texas, in 1865, the year the war closed. My oldest half sister, Mary, was born on the road to Texas. There were two other children born to them while they lived at Athens, and then father lost his wife. He then married the widow Adams who had two children by Mr. Adams. I am the oldest child by this second marriage. All I know about my people is what I have heard him say of them. He had a brother. William, a Methodist preacher, who lived to be real old and died in south Texas. He had two other brothers, Willis and Louis, one of whom was bitten by a mad dog and died in Blount. I don't know which one. Father spoke of one sister who married a Eubanks and moved to Arkansas. He visited her on his way from Alabama to Texas. I recently received a letter from Henry A. Ballard, of Pearl, Texas, who is a son of my father's preacher brother, William. Henry is also a Methodist preacher and is now 76 years old. He says that he and I are own cousins. I would like to get a write-up of all the Ballard family in Blount in your paper, by some of the older members who know them all, and then subscribe for the paper in order to get the information concerning my people. I am, respectfully, James Wilson Ballard Apache, Oklahoma