Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05

The Blalocks of Coffee Gap

As related by Michael C. Hardy

Many interesting individuals pop up in Watauga County history and visitors to Watauga County History Day at the library on Saturday, May 5, will be able to learn about some of them.

Probably the most notorious of Watauga County residents during the Civil War were Keith and Melinda Blalock of Coffee Gap, on the Watauga/Caldwell county line.

Keith did not support the Southern cause and did not want to join the Confederate Army. However, he found himself conscripted against his will.

Melinda, not wanting to be left at home, joined the army posing as a man, Keith’s younger brother Sam. The couple soon found themselves stationed on the North Carolina coast.

While serving on the coast, with the 26th NC State Regiment, Keith realized that they would not be able to get close enough to the Union lines to desert. His alternate plan of getting out of the army was to lie down in a “poison patch” and cover his body in the oozing rash that generally follows exposure to the plant. After he broke out in the rash, he went before the regimental surgeon who, as Keith hoped, interpreted his condition as a terrible disease. Not wanting to have an epidemic within the ranks, the surgeon arranged for Keith to be discharged.

Not wishing to be left behind posing as a man, Melinda went before the commanding officer Colonel Zebulon Baird Vance (who would become governor in 1862) and exposed herself as a woman. She was immediately discharged as well. Following their exit from the army, the couple returned to Coffee Gap and restarted their lives.

The couple’s story picks back up when they began to operate a stop on the Underground Railroad for escaped Union prisoners from Salisbury, as well as Unionists and dissidents who needed to move north. The section of railroad that the Blalocks operated ran from Blowing Rock through Shull’s Mill and into Banner Elk.

In 1864, Keith was finally able to join the Union Army and spent the rest of the war scouting for the Union in the High Country, but Melinda drops from the story.

Postwar information on the couple is sparse; however, it is known that following the war Keith killed a man in Caldwell County but was pardoned by the reconstruction government, possibly because of his service to the Union.

The Blalocks are buried in Avery County.