Cora Allen Bullard, only daughter and fourth child of Capt. John Bryan Allen, CSA, and Nancy Tilghman, was born on December 22, 1855, in Fayette County Georgia. She was a lady of medium build with dark hair and steel blue eyes. Cora's father was a Planter and Baptist Missionary commissioned by the Baptist Church of Christ and Shiloh (now, Fayetteville First Baptist). Sent to pioneer in Covington County, Alabama, he established several churches, including the Chapel Hill Baptist Church of Covington County. Cora was her father's pride and joy.

When the Civil War developed, Cora's father enlisted at nearby Evergreen, Alabama, as a Chaplain in the Conecuh (County) Guard, 29th Alabama Volunteers. With her father gone, the War years were hard for the Allen family. Soldiers from both North and South raided their plantation home, looking for provisions and trying to conscript horses and her fourteen year old brother, David, who later enlisted and served as a Private in the Confederate Army. Cora's second older brother, Asberry, was crippled and unable to perform labor in the fields. Family lore says that her father was wounded in one of the battles around Atlanta, and sent home to recuperate, but shortly returned to his unit. Nevertheless, her mother held things together, with the help of the servants and her sons.

Things went from bad to worse when on November 30, 1864, Capt. Allen was killed-in-action while leading his men in the first hour of the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, where the fighting has been described as "hand-to-hand massacre."

After the war, the family's plight got even worse. Without Capt. Allen and the field hands, the family plantation was seized and divided up by direction of the Union governors of military occupation and carpetbaggers. Reconstruction brought extreme and bitter hardship. Cora often repeated the story of the aged Negro couple who pitifully wept because they were forced to leave and had no other place to go. Cora's family had been good to them and treated them fairly with food, clothing, and shelter.

In 1866 Cora's widowed mother, Nancy, married William Franklin Seiglar, and the family located in Pike County, Alabama. Despite all these adversities, Cora's family never lost their Faith in Jesus, as the alleviator of their suffering. Cora deeply loved her brothers and frequently related how they protected her and labored hard to make sure their sister had shoes.

At age 20, Cora married William Hilliard Bullard, on May 11, 1875 at her family home in Brundidge, Alabama. His father had also been killed during the war, and his younger brother and sister migrated to Blue Ridge in Hamilton County, Texas, where the grass was tall and plenteous, and the ground fertile for crops of cotton and corn. After the birth of their first child on July 15, 1877, Cora watched William board a train, bound for Texas, accompanied by his mother, Amanda, and two younger siblings. Waco was as far as they could go by train, so they traveled on by covered wagon to Blue Ridge, where William witnessed for himself that the claims of his brother and sister were true, and that the virgin land was a desirable place to raise a family. Soon, he returned to Waco to meet the train bringing Cora and their young son to Texas. Again, the covered wagon, pulled by longhorn steers, transported them from Waco to Blue Ridge. Cora had been reluctant to leave her gravely ill mother who passed away a few months after she left for Texas. William and Cora lived with his mother for a couple of years, before purchasing a quarter section of adjacent land at Blue Ridge for $1 per acre. Their first house was a small single room dwelling with dirt floor. Furniture was sparse, but a fireplace kept them warm and doubled as a place to cook. A featherbed, provided by Cora's mother, underlain with straw on a scaffold frame also inhibited the cold north winds of winter. Early living at Blue Ridge was a big change for the little girl from the plantation, who was the apple of her daddy's eye. Ten more children were born at Blue Ridge, including three unnamed stillborn's who are buried at Whittenton Cemetery. The youngest, Vernon Cora, died at the tender age of seventeen. Cora and William lived at Blue Ridge watching their children one by one grow up and start their own families. After their mother's death, Cora's younger brother, John Bryan Allen, Jr., joined them in Hamilton County. On March 1, 1939, Cora abandoned this house of clay and is buried in the Whittenton Cemetery near Blue Ridge.

SOURCE: Gerry A. Gieger

BULLARD, CORA (ALLEN) & WILLIAM HILLIARD

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BULLARD, JAMES FRANKLIN "JIM"

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BULLARD, VERNON CORA 

Vernon Cora Bullard, eleventh child of William and Cora Bullard, was born on April 14, 1898, in the Bullard family home near the Blue Ridge community of Hamilton County, Texas, She was a pleasantly frail lady of small stature, with light hair and light blue eyes. Vernon was a student of Blue Ridge Schools, but was never married. For her entire life, Vernon regularly worshiped at the "old" Sardis Primitive (often called Hard-shell) Baptist Church near Cowhouse Creek, where every meeting was an all-day experience, including dinner, singing, and two or three sermons. About six months after her sixteenth birthday, she was referred to Scott and White Hospital in Temple, Texas, for diagnosis and treatment of a growth under her arm. Etched into the memories of her nieces and nephews, was the excruciating pain from the Sarcomatosis which took her life on April 30, 1915, at the tender age of seventeen years and seventeen days. Vernon is buried in the Whittenton Cemetery near Blue Ridge.

The following poem composed by Mark V. Wheeler, was printed with her obituary in The Hamilton Record and Rustler, Thursday May 6, 1915:

Oh, Vernon! Thou lovely one, Thy work is o're; thy task is done,

Thou hast gone on before, To watch, to wait on the golden shore;

Thy glowing face we miss, for thy soft voice we list,

But all in solemn stillness reigns, Our thoughts, our visions are but vain;

Gentle zephyrs blow o'er thy grave, To pay respects to one so brave,

Sleep on, Oh soul, in thy repose, Tis thee He chose, Tis thee He chose;

Thou wilt not have long to wait, Ere a knock is heard at the Pearly gate,

Thy loved ones then shall surely meet, To clasp glad hands at Jesus feet;

Then will we know as we are known, When gathered round the Great White Throne,

For God will wipe all tearful eyes, And ear will hear no more "good-byes"

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HARLIEN, SARAH EVELYN. (BULLARD)

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RICHEY, SARAH ANN (WRIGHT) & ROBERT T.

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