In a message dated 10/10/00 4:04:16 PM Pacific Daylight Time, pam_from_wv@yahoo.com writes: << All of the Blankenship's that I know have been mostly blonde, and I do mean blonde, except for my cousins with the Cherokee blood. We are all very fair skinned. I even moved to another state, and a lady I work with remarked on the fact that the only Blankenships that she knows is blonde. Pam >> You are right--other than a couple of African American Blankenship families--all the rest that I know are blonde. I am from a family of blue eyed blondes. My mother had strong Cherokee features, and had the darker coloring, but all six of us have my dad's blue eyes and hair that started out white and has slowly darkened over the years until now we're all at various stages of blonde to light honey color. We know very little of our Blankenship family. The first we know of was my GGGrandfather, John C. Blankinship, b. 1825 in Tennessee. He married Margaret Cannon, b. 1827, in Tennessee. They married in Gibson County, Tennessee in 1846. We find them on the 1850 census in Gibson County with two daughters. Buena Vista, aged 4 and Eliza, aged 3. In 1860, we find Margaret still in Gibson County with a daughter, Mandia, aged 13, John, aged 7, and Albert, aged 3. (Albert is my ggrandfather. We assume that Mandia and Eliza are the same person--probably using a middle name at one of the census. We don't know where John was at this time, and we don't know what happened to Buena Vista. And, we don't know what happened to Margaret and Eliza (Mandia) after that. Our next record is when Albert married Sarah Richardson in either Haywood or Crockett County. They moved to Lauderdale County where they raised their family. Both are buried in Lauderdale County. Albert's brother, John lived in Lauderdale County also. We have not been able to place our John with parents. There was a John, the same age as ours who was the son of Thomas and Mary McKelvey Blankinship in Gibson County in the 1850 census, but he was listed with his parents while our John was listed with his wife and family. Because the two Johns were the same age and in the same county, the two have been confused which makes it even harder to untangle. It has been suggested that the two are the same person--just counted in both households, but I truly don't think so. I don't know when our name went from "in" to "en" I know my grandparents used the en spelling, but everything we've found on John was spelled with the in. I sure wish someone could help me figure this one out! Dorothy