Colessie in Fifeshire, Canongate Church in Edinburgh. and Lady Tester's, he was promoted in 1758 to the highest position attainable by a Scotch clergyman—one of the charges of the High Church". Edinburgh. His discourses, which display little power or originality of thought, more yet greatly admired on account of their polished style. In 1759 Blair commenced a series of lectures on composition at the university; and three years afterwards, a new chair of rhetoric and belles-lettres, with a salary of £70 a year, being created by the Crown, Blair was made professor. He held this appointment uintil 1783, when he resigned: and in the same year published his Lectures, which obtained a reputation far beyond their merits, and one that time has by no means sanctioned. His first volume of sermons, which appeared in 1777, proved a great success. George III. showed his appreciation of them by bestowing on Blair, in 1780, a pension of £200 a year. Opinion about their merits has much changed since the date of their publication; they are now considered as moral essays rather than sermons. Blair's critical acumen was not great: he strenuously defended the authenticity of Ossian's poems. He died December 27, 1800. For his life, consult Finlayson (London, 1801), and Hill (Edinburgh, 1807).
BLAIR, James (1656-1713). A Colonial
clergyman and educator, the founder and first
president of William and Mary College in
Virginia. He was born in Scotland, graduated
at the University of Edinburgh in 1673, removed to England in 1682, and in 1685 was sent
to Virginia as a missionary of the Church of
England. He was minister successively at Henrico City, Jamestown, and Williamsburg, and after 1689 was Commissary of Virginia, "a very
weighty and creditable post." the highest ecclesiastical position, at that time, in the colony.
In this capacity he did much to raise the character of the provincial clergy and to rectify many
clerical abuses. In 1690, at a time when there
was only "one privately endowed school and a
few old field schools" in the colony, he took up
the work of founding a college in Virginia. and
in the same year began soliciting subscriptions
for an institution which was to provide for "the
Education of our Youth, a constant supply of our
Ministry, and perhaps a foundation for ye Conversion of our neighboring Heathen to the
Christian Faith." In 1691 he went to England,
and there, in 1693. secured a charter for the
College of William and Mary. On his return he
worked indefatigably to secure the immediate
erection of buildings, and until his death was
president of the college. After 1693 Blair was
also a member of the Council of Virginia, of
which he was for some time president. In this
capacity he had rancorous disputes with Goveniors Edmund Andros, Francis Nicholson, and Alexander Spotswood, and by his representations to the home Government was instrumental in securing the removal of each in turn. It has been said of Blair that he did more than any other one man for the intellectual advancement of Virginia during the Colonial period. He collaborated with Henry Hartwell and Edward Chilton in the preparation of a valuable work, entitled The Present State of Virginia and the College (London, 1727), probably the best extant account of Virginia in the latter part of the
Seventeenth Century, and published an elaborate
series of sermons on Our Saviour's Divine Sermons on the Mount (1740), which have been
much commended by theologians. Consult D. E.
Motley. "Life of Commissary James Blair,
Founder of William and Mary College," in Series
19, No. 10, of Johns Hopkins University Studies
(Baltimore, 1901).
BLAIR, John Insley (1802-99). An American capitalist and philanthropist. He was born in Warren County. N. J., and from 1811 to 1819 worked in a small store in Hope, N. J. Later he removed to Blairstown, became interested in the Oxford Iron Furnace in Warren County, and in 1846 was associated with the Scranton Brothers in the first attempt to manufacture iron with anthracite coal. To facilitate the transportation of the company's output, he and his associates constructed the road which subsequently became known as the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western. In later life he was connected, either as builder or director, with twenty railroads, and at one time was said to own more miles of railroad than any other man in the world. He gave Blair Hall and about $70,000 to Princeton College, where he established a professorship; helped to rebuild Grinnell College, Iowa; gave nearly $90,000 to Lafayette College, and about $600,000 to the Presbyterian Academy at Blairstown, and contributed toward building over one hundred churches in the towns laid out along the lines of his railroads.
BLAIR, Montgomery (1813-83). An American lawyer and politician, the son of Francis P. Blair, Sr. He was born in Franklin County. Ivy., graduated at West Point in 1835, and served for several months in the first Seminole War. He then resigned from the service, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1839, and began to practice in Saint Louis. He was for a time United States district attorney for Missouri, was mayor of Saint Louis in 1842-43, and from 1843 to 1849 was judge of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1852 he removed to Maryland, where he devoted his attention as a lawyer chiefly to important cases before the United States Supreme Court, and quickly became prominent as a Democrat in State politics. From 1855 to 1858 he was United States solicitor in the Court of Claims, and in 1857 was the counsel for the defendant in the celebrated Dred Scott Case (q.v.) and made an able argument in support of his side. Strongly disapproving of the attitude of the Democratic Party toward the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, he joined the newly organized Republican Party in 1856, and in 1860 was Chairman of the State Republican Convention. In 1861 he became a member of Lincoln's Cabinet as Postmaster-General, and in this capacity served with great ability until September, 1864, when he resigned. His term is notable in the history of the department from the fact that during it money-orders first came into use, and such improvements as free delivery in cities and the sorting of the mails on postal cars were introduced. After the war, Blair returned to the Democratic Party, and in 1876-77 was conspicuous as a supporter of Tilden in the famous Tilden-Hayes controversy.
BLAIR, Robert (1699-1746). A Scottish clergyman and writer. He was born in Edinburgh, was educated at the university there and in Holland, was licensed to preach in 1729, and from
