CALLOWAY BLEVINS: PIONEER PREACHER

  

   Calloway Blevins was born at Whitehead, a small community in Alleghany County, North Carolina, on January 26, 1847, one of ten children in the family of Andrew Blevins and Susannah Joines Blevins. 
   On May 17, 1861, Calloway enlisted in the Confederate States Army as a soldier in the American Civil War, at the age of fourteen.  After the war, he married Lucinda Caudill at the age of eighteen, on July 7, 1865.  And on the second Saturday of February, 1869, he was ordained as a minister at New Salem Baptist Church in Alleghany County, at the age of twenty-two.
   When Calloway Blevins was born, more than half a century would come to pass before adequate roads, electricity, telephones, and automobiles came to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Virginia, and across other states.  One church in the vicinity did not have electric lights installed until 1927, and, as late as 1950, the only paved road in western Wilkes County was NC Hwy. 18.
   Regardless of his circumstances, Calloway Blevins became a pastor, missionary and evangelist, taking the Gospel of Christ to people in their communities, establishing churches, preaching and teaching, and ordaining men as ministers and pastors in their churches, thus enabling the people to have a local church in their home areas, usually within walking distance. 
   For decades, Calloway Blevins was the pastor of Walnut Grove Baptist Church.
   In 1897, when the Stone Mountain Baptist Association was formed in Wilkes County, Calloway Blevins was elected the first Moderator of this association of Baptist churches, a position he served from 1897-1899, 1901-1905, 1907, and 1908.  In time to come, nearly all of the churches in the Stone Mountain Association would have a pastor, either a son or a grandson, of Calloway Blevins. 
   Three of Calloway's brothers---John, Ezekiel, and Smyth---were also Baptist preachers, serving many churches in the Cleghorn Valley, Virginia. 
   Moreover, four of Calloway's five sons---Andrew, Landreth, Avery, and Troy---became Baptist preachers and pastors of many churches.  Beyond his sons, at least twelve grandsons, five great-grandsons, and three great-great grandsons also became Baptist preachers.
   A cousin of Calloway Blevins, Hattie Blevins, lived to be 105 years of age.  She recalled Calloway as being "as well known in the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia in his day as Billy Graham is today---and just as loved."  She also said she was old and married before she heard anyone but a Blevins preach. 
   Della Blevins Graham has an anonymous quote in her history that says, "All a Blevins needs to do is open his mouth and out comes a sermon."
   The story of Calloway Blevins is also the story of hundreds of pioneer preachers in the United States.  Most of these stories are not known.  Most of their names today are simply names on genealogical charts or tombstones without a story behind the name.  American history books do not mention their names, their lives, nor their contributions to people all across the United States.  Many of them had no education or formal training, and Calloway Blevins was called to preach before he knew how to read.  They simply did what they believed they were called of God to do, which is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and establish churches:  to be preachers, ministers, missionaries, and evangelists. 
   But these pioneer preachers, like Calloway Blevins, did so much.  They helped to established a strong foundation on which would stand Christian colleges and universities, Bible colleges, seminaries, hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes, and missionaries to nations throughout the world. 
  Calloway Blevins died at his home in Wilkes County, North Carolina, on August 7, 1924, at the age of 77.  He and his wife, Lucinda are buried in the cemetery at Walnut Grove Baptist Church, and they had eleven children:  Oliver, Elizabeth, Andrew, Martha, Sena, Theodosia, Troy, Landreth, Avery, Susan, and Samantha, who was my grandmother.
   Pioneer preachers, like Calloway Blevins, believed in the Holy Bible, and perhaps that is the only textbook they needed.
      How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!  (Romans 10: 15)


BLEVINS FAMILY TREE:
   When I researched this Blevins family tree Ancestry.com, and beginning with Calloway Blevins, I arrived at Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham, and from there to Noah, and then on to Adam and Eve, the first humans on earth.


FOOTNOTE:  Information obtained from the North Carolina Archives, "History of the Stone Mountain Baptist Association, 1897-1976".  Paul W. Gregory, Chairman, Associational Historical Committee.