04/08/2022
Sarah Malinda Pritchard Blalock (findagrave.com/memorial/23543327) and her husband, William McKesson “Keith” Blalock (findagrave.com/memorial/18914225), lived in Coffey’s Gap on the Watauga and Caldwell County line in 1860.
Keith Blalock was an avowed Unionist, but with the passage of the first Confederate conscription act imminent, he enlisted in the 26th North Carolina Infantry on March 20, 1862. He hoped to get close enough to the Union lines to desert.
Malinda Blalock enlisted in the same day, concealing her identity as a woman and passing herself off as Sam Blalock, Keith’s younger brother. Once in the army, Keith Blalock concluded that his plan would not work. To obtain a medical discharge (he already had a hernia), he stripped and rolled around in poison oak, developing a rash that made him unfit for service. He was discharged on April 20, as was Malinda Blalock after she revealed her true identity. They returned to the mountains where Keith recovered.
