Guthrie Family Group 5 – Branch D
MELISSA EDWINA GUTHRIE 1834OH – 1915CA and WILLIAM BLANKENSHIP
of Ohio, Iowa, and California, USA

MELISSA EDWINA GUTHRIE
Parents: James C Guthrie 1795GA – 1862IA and Nancy Corn
Birth: 10 February 1834
Birth Location: Mercer County, Ohio, USA
Marriage: William M Blankenship on 3 November 1857 in Marion County, Iowa, USA
Blankenship Children: 8
Death: 3 February 1915
Death Location: Woodville, Tulare, California, USA
Burial: Visalia Public Cemetery, Visalia, Tulare, California, USA

WILLIAM M. BLANKENSHIP
Parents: William Moore Blankenship 1806VA – 1883CA and Mary ‘Polly’ E Martin
Birth: 14 March 1830
Birth Location: Giles County, Virginia, USA (Mercer County, West Virginia as of 17 Mar 1837)
Occupation: Farmer / Stock Raiser
Military Service: None Known
Death: 30 October 1920
Death Location: Tulare County, California, USA
Burial: Visalia Public Cemetery, Visalia, Tulare, California, USA

NOTES:

Melissa Edwina Guthrie was born on 10 February 1834 in Ohio, the youngest daughter of the Guthrie family to survive to adulthood. The family moved from Mercer County, Ohio to Jasper County, Iowa before 1850. She was enumerated there with her parents and siblings during the 1850 census and in the Iowa State Census of 1856.

When she was 23, Melissa married William M Blankenship on 3 November 1857. His family had come to Iowa from Mercer County, Virginia (now West Virginia). William already had his future plans in place having established a stock ranch on a quarter section adjoining his father’s half section at French Camp. Bringing 200 head of cattle across the plains, William and Melissa returned to French Camp, remaining on the farm for about a year before removing to Tulare County, California where they settled near Visalia. Read the full biographical sketch below.

They had 7 children, although the 1900 and 1910 censuses list 6, with only 3 children living at that time.

Melissa died in Woodville on 3 Feb 1915. Her husband lived another 5 years. He died 30 Oct 1920. They are buried at the Visalia Public Cemetery in Tulare County, California.

Blankenship Children: 7
Y-DNA Project Participants: N/A – Female Guthrie
Autosomal DNA Participants: NONE

CHILD 1: LUDENIA L BLANKENSHIP
Born: 2 July 1858 CA – Died: 9 Mar 1876 CA
Marital Status: Unmarried

Ludenia was born in Visalia, Tulare, California on 2 July 1858. She was enumerated in the 1860 and 1870 censuses with her parents and siblings. Only 17 years old at the time of her death, she was buried at the Visalia Public Cemetery.

CHILD 2: LEZDIA BLANKENSHIP
Born about 1859 CA – Died before 1870 CA
Died during early childhood

Only one reference is found for this daughter, Ledzia Blankenship who was listed with her parents and older sister, Ludenia, during the 1860 census of Tulare County, California at 4 months of age. Her name is not listed in the Find-a-Grave site for Visalia Cemetery, so her death may have occurred before they settled there.

CHILD 3: MARY F BLANKENSHIP
Born: about 1864 CA – Died: about 1864 CA
Died during her infancy

Daughter Mary F Blankenship was in her infancy when she died in 1864 Tulare County, California. She was buried at Visalia Public Cemetery.

CHILD 4: WILLIAM F BLANKENSHIP aka ‘BLANK’
Born: 10 Jan 1864 CA – Died: 6 Nov 1897 CA
Spouse: Lucy Emorine Hardaway m. 1890 in Tulare, California, USA +children

William F. Blankenship was born on 10 January 1864 in Tulare County, California and was known as Blank. He was listed at home with his parents during the 1870 and 1880 censuses in Tulare. During the latter census, he was noted to have attended school, but also to be a home worker. His father was a farmer, so he probably worked as a family farmhand.

At the age of 26, on 21 September 1890, Blank married Lucy Emorine Hardaway. She was a daughter of Ishmael Napoleon and Nancy Emeline (Philips) Hardaway, born on 11 Oct 1869 in Arkansas. They remained in Tulare County. They had two children during their 7-year marriage: Melissa Marie (known as Katie), and William Richard.

Blank died on 6 November 1897 at the age of 33. He was buried at Tulare Cemetery. His widow Lucy lived until 1946. Her obituary reads: BLANKENSHIP–In Visalia, Dec. 3, 1946. Lucy E. Blankenship, 77, native of Monroe Co., Ark. Beloved wife of the late Blank William Blankenship; mother of Melissa Kelley and William R. Blankenship of Visalia; grandmother of Nadine Mullen, Lorna Jones, Billy Blankenship, and David Blankenship of Visalia and Marilynn Hart of Altoona, Pa. Also leaves three great-grandchildren. Member of Church of God. Funeral services at Hadley Chapel, Visalia, Thursday, Dec. 5, 1946, at 1:30 p.m. Rev. P.H. Berg will officiate. Interment in Tulare Cemetery under the direction of the Hadley Funeral Chapel.

Blankenship Children: 2
Y-DNA Project Participants: N/A – Descendant of a Female Guthrie
Autosomal DNA Participants: NONE

1.) Melissa Marie “Katie” Blankenship: 24 Jul 1891 CA – 19 June 1974CA m. Neil Kelley -no children
2.) William Richard Blankenship: 12 Nov 1893 CA – 17 Feb 1971 CA – dairy farmer – (m.1922CA) Jessie Vivian Smith +children

CHILD 5: JOHN RICHARD BLANKENSHIP
Born: 13 Jan 1866CA – Died: 31 Aug 1935CA
Spouse 1: Leona Leota ‘Lena’ Scruggs m. 1889 CA + children
Spouse 2Grace Pearl (Lauffenburger) Compton m. before 1930 CA + stepchildren only

Son John Richard Blankenship was born on 13 January 1866. He may have married fairly young by the time he was 17, as there is mention of a John Blankenship at French Camp with a wife. He and Leona ‘Lena’ Scruggs were married before 1889 when their eldest known son was born. They had three children: Ewell Crowley, Roy William, and Gladys Ludenia. The couple were listed in Tipton in 1900, and in Springville in 1910, both in Tulare County, California. They divorced before the 1920 census when John is listed as both the proprietor and a lodger in a Rooming House in Fresno, California. During the 1930 census, he is still living in Fresno, but owns a Gas Station. By that time, he had married again. His second wife was Grace Pearl Compton nee Lauffenburger. Two Compton daughters were living with them.

BLANKENSHIP CHILDREN: 3
Y-DNA Project Participants: N/A – Descendant of a Female Guthrie
Autosomal DNA Participants: NONE

1.) Ewell Crowley Blankenship: 24 Nov 1889 CA – 29 Sep 1941 CA – butcher – m. Bess Ellen Scott – no children
2.) Roy William Blankenship: 25 Jul 1891 CA – 11 May 1969 CA – farmer – (m.1923CA) Katheline Deioannis +children
3.) Gladys Ludenia Blankenship: 1907CA – 14 Apr 1929CA (m.abt.1925CA) Anthony Coveils +child

CHILD 6: LEANDER GUTHRIE BLANEKENSHIP aka ‘BURt’
Born: 7 Aug 1873CA – Died: 15 Feb 1941CA
Spouse 1: Mary Boardman Herndon m. 1899 CA +children
Spouse 2: Ethel Lydia (Thomas) Klindera m. 27 Oct 1925 CA / div.
Spouse 3: Minnie May (Handlin) Small m. 16 May 1927 CA

Leander Guthrie Blankenship, known as ‘Burt’, was born in Tulare County, California on 7 August 1873. He married at 25 years of age to Mary Boardman Herndon, with whom he had 2 daughters. Burt was a stock raiser. Mary died on 10 May 1905. During the 1910 census, Burt was back home living with his parents, William, 80, and Melissa, 73. Both daughters, Mary E and Eveline R Blankenship, were living at the orphan asylum in San Francisco during that census year. He signed up for the WWI Draft listing his daughter, Mary Evadine Blankenship as his nearest relative.

Burt remarried in Alameda, California on 27 October 1925 when he was 52 years old. His new wife was Ethel Lydia (Thomas) Klinders, 42, a daughter of Mart Thomas and Lydia Dillard. They apparently also divorced before 1927. That year on 16 May 1927 in Alameda, California, Burt married for the third time. His wife was Minnie May (Small) Handlin, 47, a daughter of Joseph J Handlin and Sarah J Harris. Minnie had one daughter, Dorothy May (b.1907) from her previous marriage to Fred Fulton Small.

Leander Guthrie ‘Burt’ Blankenship died on 15 February 1941 in Alameda County, California when he was 67 years old. He was laid to rest with his first wife, Mary, at Tulare Cemetery. His widow Minnie lived until 24 September 1952.

Blankenship Children: 2
Y-DNA Project Participants: N/A – Descendant of a Female Guthrie
Autosomal DNA Participants: NONE

1.) Mary Evadne Blankenship: 5 Jan 1902 CA – 16 Oct 1967 CA (m.1920CA) John Enoch Hanson +children; (m2.) Gerald D Wenker +child
2.) Retha Evelyn Blankenship: 11 May 1903 CA – 12 May 1975 CA (Stenographer) (m.bef.1940/d.bef.1950) William A Kunde – no children

CHILD 7: DELLA GRACE BLANKENSHIP
Born: 21 Dec 1876CA – Died: 3 Jan 1969CA
Spouse: Frank James Smith +children

Della Grace Blankenship was born on 21 December 1876 in Tulare County, California, the youngest child of William and Melissa (Guthrie) Blankenship. She married at 18 to Frank James Smith on 23 December 1894 in Tipton, California. They lived in Tulare County during the 1900 census. They had 1 son at that time born in 1895, Frank William Smith.

By 1910, the couple had moved to San Francisco. Frank was working as a crane man at an electric plant. They had another son, Donald Lee Smith, born in 1912. Between 1920 and 1930, they moved to Oakland, Alameda, California where they remained. Frank died 10 Dec 1954 and Della on 3 Jan 1969. They are buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland.

Smith Children: 2
Y-DNA Project Participants: N/A – Descendant of a Female Guthrie
Autosomal DNA Participants: NONE

1.) Rev. Frank William Smith: 27 Sep 1895CA – 2 Aug 1983CA (m.1920CA) Lydia Candace Chedister +child
2.) Donald Lee Smith: 12 Oct 1912CA – 11 Jan 1924CA – died at 11 years of age

READING and RESOURCES

BOOK: Guinn, James Miller (1905) History of the State of California and Biographical Record of the San Joaquin Valley, California – an Historical story of the state’s marvelous growth from its earliest settlement to the present time, also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present. The Chapman Publishing, Co., Chicago, Illinois, United States. Digital Repository: Google Books.
p.783-784 – Biographical Sketch of William M Blankenship|
WILLIAM BLANKENSHIP . During the early years of California’s history as a state, when mining was attracting more attention than agriculture and men were eager to attain riches by a single bound, William Blankenship became a pioneer of Tulare County, where he contented himself with the peaceful pursuit of farming and stock raising. That he made no mistake in the selection of an occupation is proved by his present standing as a large land owner and prosperous cattleman. Since 1874 he has made his home nine miles southeast of Tulare, on the Tule River, where he owns all of section 16, and two hundred acres of section 15 making a total of eight hundred and forty acres in his home place, besides which he has three hundred and sixty acres one and one half miles south of Visalia, where he has alfalfa land and a large herd of cattle.

A native of West Virginia, Mr. Blankenship was born on Brush creek, near Princeton, Mercer County, March 14, 1830, being a son of William and Polly (Martin) Blankenship, also natives of Mercer County. The maternal grandfather, John Martin, who traced his ancestry to Germany, was born and reared it Mercer County, and with the exception of the period of his service in the war of 1812, devoted all of his active life to the occupation of a planter in his native county. The paternal grandfather, John Blankenship , was likewise a Virginian by birth, a planter by occupation, and during the war of 1812 served at the front. At the time of his death he was one hundred and four years of age. His father , who bore the same name as himself, was born in France and in youth became a soldier in the French Army. Enlisting under General Lafayette, he accompanied that famous soldier to America and fought on the side of the colonies. At the close of the war he settled in Virginia and took up the work of a planter in Mercer County.

The fact that the subject of this article is a man of broad information may be attributed to habits of close observation and to self culture rather than to any special advantages that fell to his boyhood years. The son of a pioneer, living in a sparsely settled region, he felt it a peculiar fortune that he was within walking distance of a log cabin where, during three months of the year, a subscription school was conducted, where boys and girls, seated on rude benches surmounting a dirt floor, were initiated into the mysteries of the three R’s. Out of that life he passed into the difficult struggle with nature in the improvement of a raw tract of land. The difficulties and obstacles which he was compelled to meet and surmount fitted him to take hold of life as a California pioneer, when, in 1850 he crossed the plains with his father’s family. After a brief experience in the mines of Calaveras County in 1852 he returned to Iowa by way, of Panama and in 1853 again crossed the plains, this time driving three hundred head of cattle. While at the head of the Humboldt he and his companions missed six head of cattle and suspecting the Indians of having stolen them, four of the men volunteered to follow the red men. This they did, but failed to overtake them and in eighteen hours returned to camp, none the worse for their reckless adventure. On his arrival in California he established a stock ranch on a quarter section adjoining his father’s half section at French Camp. In March, 1856, his father returned to the east, and the next month he too began the long journey to his old home. During the voyage a stop of fourteen days was made at the city of Havana. After arriving at New Orleans he proceeded up the Mississippi River to Iowa, where he married. In 1858, with an outfit of ox teams and a drove of two hundred head of cattle and horses, he and his wife crossed the plains alone. Not an animal was lost during the trip, but their experience would have been different had they not followed in the wake of Johnston’s army. After his return to French Camp he remained on his old farm for a year, but in 1859 removed to Tulare County, and from that time until 1874 made his home near Visalia, removing from there to his present homestead.

In Marion County, Iowa, November 3, 1857, Mr. Blankenship married Miss Melissa E. Guthrie, a native of Mercer County, Ohio, and a lady of attractive qualities, superior character and unusual capabilities. Born February 10, 1834 she was a child when the family moved to Indiana and in 1856 accompanied them to Iowa, where she married. In religion she is a faithful member of the Christian Church, in which her brother, Rev. J. D. Guthrie, pastor of a church at Oskaloosa, Iowa, is a leading and well known minister. The family was founded in America by John Guthrie, a native of Scotland and a pioneer of Georgia. During the course of his service in the Revolutionary War be received a severe wound through the body, but recovered and resumed the work of a planter in Georgia. In that state occurred the birth of his son, James, who early, in life settled in Ohio and there followed the tilling of the soil and the trade of a blacksmith. At an early day he settled in Jasper, Iowa, where he improved a tract of raw land, and supplemented his income by work at his trade. The lady who was the companion of his youth and survived to bless his age bore the maiden, name of Nancy Corn and was born in Kentucky, her father, George, having emigrated from Germany to America, settled in Kentucky, served in the Revolutionary War, and late in life made his home in Ohio. Both James and Nancy Guthrie died in Iowa. Of their fourteen children all but two attained mature years, but only three are living, and of these Mrs. Blankenship alone makes her home in California at this writing. Of the children born to Mr. and Mrs. Blankenship who are living we make the following mention: John R. married Lena L. Scruggs and has two sons, Ewell C. and Roy W.; Bert G. married Mary Herndon and has two daughters, Mary E. and Retha E. The two sons mentioned John R. and Bert G. reside on the old homestead, the former working as a farmer, while the latter makes a specialty of dairy business. Della Grace became the wife of F. J. Smith, of Grass Valley, and has one son, Frank W. The three oldest children in the family are deceased. Ludenia L. died at the age of eighteen years. Mary F. died when three years old. Blank William died in November, 1897, when thirty four years old; in 1881 he married Lucy Hardaway, by whom he had two children, William R. and Kate M. At no time during his busy life has Mr. Blankenship been willing to accept office, and he has taken no part in politics aside from voting the Republican ticket at national elections. In elections he maintains an independent attitude, giving his support to the men whom he considers best calculated to honorably and intelligently carry out the wishes of the people. Honorable in every transaction, sagacious in judgment, a friend to the needy, hospitable to all, he has proved himself an ideal representative of the honored class of pioneers.