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 still-born'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: Gieger, Gerry A