Blythe Homestead

Of those 400 acres, Samuel deeded 100 acres to his son-in-law Thomas Martin in 1789, 125 acres to his son Richard Blythe in 1790, and two and one-half acres to the Trustees of Gilead Church in 1791. In his will, Samuel bequeathed his home and the remaining property to his grandson William Conner following the death of Samuel’s wife. Following his inheritance of the property, William Conner deeded nearly twenty acres to William Henderson in 1798 and another acre to the Trustees of Gilead Church in 1804.

It is believed that the Blythe Homestead is situated on part of the property that Richard Blythe received from his father. Richard (1750s?-1800) married Margaret (Peggy) Patton, probably in the 1780s. They had two children, Rebecca (1780s?-1809/18) and Samuel (1790/93?-1866). Richard Blythe died in March of 1800; neither he nor his widow is listed as head of a household in the federal census for that year. Following Richard’s death, Peggy may have moved with her two children to the home of her father, Charles Patton, on Gar Creek in the Hopewell community and continued to make her home there. When daughter Rebecca married Anderson Sadler in 1809, Charles Patton was bondsman. Peggy was still living and had not remarried in 1818, as evidenced by her deeding land from her father's estate that year.

Samuel and Peggy’s son, also named Samuel, accumulated over 200 acres of land on the east side of the Catawba River in 1818, the majority of which he received from his brother-in-law Anderson Sadler. The younger Samuel married Isabella Nantz (1794/5?- 1876) in 1822, and they appear to have been residing at the Blythe Homestead tract at least as of the 1830 census. It is unclear whether they were living in the house occupied by Samuel’s parents in 1790 or a new home of their own. The younger Samuel is reported to have served as postmaster of the Cowan's Ford post office from June 1847 to December 1866. Samuel and Isabella had seven children. The eldest, Richard Franklin Blythe (1824-1885), married Violet Jane McCoy (1829-1899) in 1848 and potentially built the extant Blythe Homestead. Both Samuel and Franklin were farmers, although the 1850 Census lists Franklin’s occupation as Constable. During their lifetimes, both men acquired and disposed of several tracts of land in the area, including undoubtedly parts of the senior Samuel’s original 400 acre tract.

Franklin and Violet parented eleven children, ten of whom grew up in the 1848 Blythe Homestead. The house and much of the land remained in the Blythe family during much of the 20th century. By the early 1960s, however, construction of Lake Norman flooded many of the family’s pastures and fields, leaving only about fifty acres of the original property, including the circa 1848 house.