Home > Family History > Hubert Clay Blackstone
"Stories I have heard from mother were that he was "wild in his younger years," two fingers cut off at 1st knuckle from wrist in a sawmill accident, though another story was he and Milledge Shadburn (Larry Shadburn's father) were drunk and riding horses through the woods and his hand hit a tree causing him to lose parts of the fingers, he ran moonshine and police shootouts as going through Roswell, Ga., in chain-gang for failing to pay child support on a child he had prior to marriage to my mother." - Lorita Blackstone, January 2020
He was a whisky runner. He would race in cars with the police in shootouts through the middle of town in Roswell, Georgia. - Lorita Blackstone, December 2016
He would always ask people when he met them if they drove a Ford or a Chevy. (He drove a Ford.) - Lorita Blackstone, December 2016
His best friend was Larry Shadburn's dad. - Vanessa Whitaker, August 2017
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"It is my understanding that my father had shootouts in Roswell. Cumming was a very rural town and they were on their way to Atlanta and most probably the stills were further up in the mountains, like maybe Dawsonville. (I myself remember stills being found in the Dawsonville area.) At some point his ring finger and little finger were cut off at the knuckle so he had stubs on his hand and the story was it was in a sawmill accident. There were other stories of him and Milledge Shadburn (Dolores's father-in-law) riding horses through the woods in the dark and while drunk and maybe some injuries there as well.
My father loved music and was a whistler. Everywhere he was, whatever he was doing, he would be whistling and, as I recall, he was a great whistler but I thought everybody whistled. I often wonder where the alcoholism came from. Nothing was ever said about James T being a drinker and it looks like Catherine Mashburn returned to her family after Francis Marion's death then years later married a Fowler. As I was growing up, on Sunday's we would drive up to Forsyth Co and go visiting - primarily to the Kellogg's, the Crow's, and to Joe and Irene Fowler. Mother (who was the only one that ever talked to us about the past) said that somehow we were related but she didn't know how. I haven't figured out how Joe Fowler was exactly related but he may have been a 1/2 uncle to my father. They lived in an old time mountain home on a dirt road with a red clay dirt yard, gardens, animals. Had dim electricity with single light bulb, old time crank telephone and cooked on a wood stove so the house always smelled of wood smoke. Irene wore bonnets and an apron and her hair pulled into a bun. I feel sure she is the one that went with us to the cemetery at Ebenezer Methodist Church. Anyway there was never a hint of alcohol or any misbehavior and she was the main historian that told my mother the stories of my father's growing up years. The conditions "were terrible" and they and others would take food over to them because George Marion "was no good" and would be drunk, not working or spending all the money and the family was destitute. My father was born under a peach tree as his mother was working in the fields. Another memory, though tangential, was that they all had tornado shelters or pits dug out of the hillsides with framed wooden entryways and lightning rods on their tin roofs.
On the Douglass side, they were Methodist circuit preachers and leaders in the community. The Mashburn's became very prominent in Forsyth County, owning a lot of land and they were the 'doctors' in the county. Their name as well as that of the Pilgrim's are on various landmarks in the county. When I lived in Forsyth County in the early 1960's I taught piano to some of the Mark Mashburn children. Brothers Mark Mashburn and Jim Mashburn had followed their father as country doctors. The wife of Mark Mashburn was from somewhere else and used to shake her head at the conditions in Forsyth County and couldn't believe she lived in such a place and was raising her children under such conditions as were there at that time.
The Kellogg's were also stable community leaders and their name continues on various landmarks in the area. So as best I can sort it out, the Douglass, Mashburn, and Kellogg lines had some stability, education and 'standards.' The unknowns are Myrtie Overby and her genetic line of Wood and father unknown and the Blackston line. Aside from alcoholism, the other trait following the family is diabetes. Joe Fowler was always sitting in a chair with his ulcerated foot propped up on a chair facing a window and my first cousin Sammy (son of father's brother Sam Gartrell Blackston) died a few years ago of diabetes. His only sister was crippled and I think had cerebral palsy.
Of the five brothers, Daddy, Sam (always drinking though held down a job at a dealership as auto mechanic), Hoyt were active alcoholics and Clarence and Argus died young of TB as well as their mother (died of TB). Daddy took care of his mother and after George Marion came home from work as a blacksmith for the City, he would demand she iron him a shirt so he could 'go out' in the evenings which made my father mad. Myrtie would say "Let him go - it is easier on me..." so my father would iron the shirt for him and he would leave to 'go run around' the rest of the night. It may be that Clarence and Argus were married and had children as I met some older cousins but never kept up with them. As Myrtie was dying, George was 'shacking up' with Courtney and they had two more children. Donald was killed in his 20's in a MVA and I remember going to see 'Jackie' in the youth detention center in Milledgeville as the state was asking my parents to foster him but they decided not to. It looks like his legal name may not have been 'Jackie" as I think I found where he may have served in the Army and is now dead.
The story is that one of James T and Julia's daughters was a switchboard operator in Cumming as a young woman and was very pretty. She got pregnant by a son of one of the town's other powerful families (the Otwell's) and the Otwell family paid the Blackston's to move to Atlanta to East Point and leave Cumming is why they moved and the name became Blackstone (so much for integrity).
My father had his own secret life that mother, Dolores and I were unaware of. One day I opened his wallet for some reason and he was standing near me and it was literally packed with bills. I was stunned and asked him what that was and he said that he lent money to the other employees at his job at the City of Atlanta Water Dept and that they paid him back on payday with interest and that is how he made money to support us. In other words he had his own little payday lending operation going. I think he did a similar thing when we lived in Bronwood but my understanding was when somebody got arrested (mostly black and drunkeness, etc.) they called my father and he came down and got them out - i.e., his own bonding company? In truth, he did not read or write and made relatively little money except when he owned the Gulf Oil filling station in Bronwood. The rest of the time his job was supervising the paving of the entry to driveway's in the City of Atlanta. He was always bringing home things he found when people put out their garbage. Sometimes books and one time a down sleeping bag but the cat pee'd on it in the barn and after that I couldn't use it.
We bricked the house in Sandy Springs with old brick he had accumulated and brought home over a period of years when it was dug up in construction sites. The back patio was paved with paving stones that were removed when streets were renovated in the City. People used to use a vacant lot behind our house as a dump and we would go over there and go through it. One time mother found a perfectly good cured ham that someone had thrown out because it had some mold on it and we took it home and it was fine." — Lorita Blackstone, March 2020
Floyd A. Reed, December 20, 2019 – April 13, 2020