Heather Blanton

A Lady in Defiance

Dec 18, 2010
1 min

Tale of the Haunted Leg

by Mallory Roseman. “When my grandmother was a girl, she lived with her family in a haunted house. It was a small mill house in Mooresville, NC. People said the house used to be a gambling den, and that a man had been murdered there for being unable to pay his debts. Supposedly, the guys who ran the gambling den dismembered the debtor, and hid his body somewhere in the house. My grandmother did not know if that story was true, but she did know that weird things happened in th

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A Lady in Defiance

Dec 18, 2010
1 min

Holy, Cow–I Mean, Holy Koi!

Wendy Hua I have two uncles on my mom’s side of the family. Both are younger than her by several years. When they were very young, they lived next to a neighbor that kept koi in giant clay tubs in their yard. One day, when they were playing in the yard, they felt a surge of sympathy for the koi fish. They thought the fish were very sad, living in a wet and cold home that never saw the sun, so they decided to do the koi a service and help them sunbathe. One by one, they t

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A Lady in Defiance

Dec 6, 2010
2 min

Obviously, the Child is a Genius

by Tyler Gilmore My brother is really smart, and when he was young he was especially inquisitive. Once, when he was about three, he was asking our grandfather why the light inside the refrigerator came on when he opened the refrigerator door. Our grandfather showed him that there was a button that was pressed when the door was closed and that when it was released the light would come on inside. But that was not enough for my brother. He wanted to know why; why did the light h

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A Lady in Defiance

Dec 6, 2010
1 min

Must Be Something to do With the Name

My great uncle was named Custer Crawford. As Custer grew up, it was discovered that he was very smart. He went on to get his Ph.D and later become a professor at a college in Georgia. He grew up in the country near the NC/SC border in the mountains. The story goes that “he was so smart, he was stupid”–which was a well-known phrase back then to denote someone who had a large IQ but very little “common sense.” Of all the vignettes about Custer, the best known one is that when h

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A Lady in Defiance

Dec 6, 2010
2 min

The Secret Life of the Felon

There has always been a story that circulates within my family about where my grandfather got all of his tattoos. I once asked him as a child where he got them and he looked at me and said “During a bad time in my life” and that was all. I later found out that he had been in jail for two years during the 50s (1956-1958). At 16 he broke into a local liquor store with a couple of friends and the cops were called. He friends got away but he was left behind and arrested

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A Lady in Defiance

Dec 6, 2010
1 min

New Meaning for “Give Him the Finger”

When my uncle was eight, he and a friend were cutting a neighbor’s grass. My uncle held the grass up with his hand, and his friend wielded the clippers. The friend missed the grass and clipped off my uncle’s ring finger. While my grandma bandaged his hand, my mom had to run around the yard, find the finger, put it in a bag, and take it back to the house. All three of them went to the ER, and for days afterward, my uncle had to sleep with his wrist tied to the bed post to

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A Lady in Defiance

Dec 6, 2010
2 min

Lizzy Longbeach — The Generational Ghost

My Grandparents have had a beach house at Oak Island NC since my mom and her sisters were young children; once their school ended each summer they would pack up the station wagon and spend the summer down at the beach. During their summers, items around the house would sometimes “mysteriously” disappear or become misplaced after one of them had used it with or without permission from my grandmother. Now like many children, my mother and aunts did not like getting into trouble

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A Lady in Defiance

Dec 3, 2010
2 min

Elizabeth Poindexter — Hero of the American Revolution

This is the story of my ancestors who played an interesting role in revolutionary history and the local history as well. The genealogy of this story is, in itself, interesting enough. The Poindexter family is a direct line to my mothers side of the family, the Matthews. My great grandmother was originally a Poindexter before marriage. And there have been many other cross family tree connections since the early 1700’s. The focus of my story however, begins with Betty Donnaha.

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The Voices of the Angels

A Lady in Defiance

Nov 19, 2010
1 min

I practice three hours a day, so when I meet a pirate, I can kill it…or jump overboard.

My great-great grandfather Cappellari immigrated to the United States from Italy. We don’t know too much about him, but a story does circulate in my family about his journey here. According to this story, he and his dog boarded a ship and set off on their merry way across the Atlantic. Everything was going according to plan until his ship was attacked by a hoard of bloodthirsty pirates who killed every last living soul except for my ancestor (and his dog). While some migh

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A Lady in Defiance

Oct 10, 2010
2 min

Prince Valiant and the Alligator

Until I was 9 years old, my family and I lived on a lake just outside of Tampa, FL, so we naturally spent a lot of time on the water. Being just a little thing at the time, it seemed to me our backyard was half a mile long; most likely it was only a quarter of an acre or so. Well, the yard ended in a little three foot bank. My daddy had made a sort of shallow shelf from there that tapered down into the water. We used to sit on this shelf and eat watermelon or just hang out if

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