To the right is John Jackson (Jack) Blake. He grew up on Clover Fork and is buried there in the Mitchell (Clover Fork) Cemetery. His granddaughter Estella Blake is at the left, holding the doll baby. The two girls kissing? One is his daughter Mildred, and that's all we know.
Jack and his wife Ella Mae (Foster) (pictured below) moved farther up Clover Fork and set to farming in the Hackers Creek area. They had 9 kids. Below are pictured two of their boys, Vincent (left) and
Alva Brannon, who was Estella's dad and Loretta's grandfather. Another son, Lee Washington, wrote an Orlando history, Blakes and Riffles, Going Back to the Seventh Generation.Jack's father, Stewart McClung Blake, came with his family to what would become Orlando as an Original Settler at the age of 5.
Jack was born during the Civil War. His father Stewart had been mustered into the 125th West Virginia State Militia the year before Jack was born but we know that, like all his family and neightbors in the Orlando area, his dad served the Confederacy. We know this because Stewart was among those found guilty of being Southern Sympathizers. It would have been when Jack was 8 that his dad was disenfranchised; lost is rights as a US citizen.1
1. per Don Norman at Hackers Creek Pioneer Descendents
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