Recently, Donnie Ward sent me a complete genealogical report on his ancestry of the Coats, Flinns, and Wards.  It is much too long to reproduce here.  I will try to condense it to the people involved in Glendale and the people connected to them.

A small area of North Carolina in Madison County around the communities of Marshall and Grapevine, was once the home place of several families of Glendale.  These are small farming communities about 20  miles north of Ashville.  I would love to know how the first people heard of Glendale or did they just hear of all the cotton mills moving onto this area.  Some brave soul took the first trip to find out about the living conditions.  Was it Marion Coats and his father, Gabriel McDonald Coats, who, in 1894, rode a wagon from the mountains to Pacolet?  Marion worked in the Pacolet Mill first and then came to Glendale.
 
In the late 1800’s, one couple living in that area of  NC, John Flinn, Jr., (1819-1895) and Betta Ugenia Nodine, (1820-1895), married and had a large family.  One daughter Sarah Elizabeth Flinn married Gabriel McDonald Coats and from that family several children came to Glendale.  The children were Francis Marion, Cynthia, James Henry, Clarence, and Sion(Simon).

Francis Marion married Nettie Lominacs and had thirteen children.  All their children were born in Glendale and most of them worked in the mill at some time.  An article appeared in the Spartanburg Herald featuring Francis Marion Coats on his retirement from the mill in 1947.  He tells of his life’s work in the mills and of his family. 

Of the children of Marion and Nettie Coats, I knew Boyce Coats who came to visit my Dad, (Bill McKinney) often.  I grew up in the Baptist Church with the younger children of Elsie Mae Coats Ward.  Elsie married James Robert (Bob)Ward.   Click on this link to read more about the James Robert Ward family.

In the early 1900’s, another daughter of John and Betta Flinn, Charlotte Lucretia Flinn, married John L. Corn while they still lived in Madison County. There were nine children in this family. After a few years they relocated to Spartanburg County to find work in the mills. When they arrived in Spartanburg at the depot, Charlotte sent word to her sister, Elizabeth Coats, to come with a wagon to bring them to Glendale. Their children were all born in NC and moved with their parents to Glendale.  Click on this link to read more about John and Charlotte's family.

John Corn was a blacksmith for the mill. Of the nine children, five lived to adulthood and worked in the mill at some time in their life. They first lived on the Glendale/Clifton  Road and then later on Broadway across from the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

Daughters Bessie and Ada lived in this house at 144 Broadway and cared for their father until his death in 1944.  They bought this house from the Mill Company in May of 1955.

Charles B. married Susie Crocker, of the Glendale Crockers, and lived just above the Baptist parsonage.  Robert (Bob) married Nettie Bradley and lived in Gastonia, NC. 

Their oldest daughter, Addie Lee, married Andrew McKinney and they were my grandparents.

(Mary McKinney Teaster)

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