William Blair was probably born in Ireland. He emigrated and settled in Newberry County, South Carolina. He married Jane and they had two known sons, David Blair and James Blair (d. 1816). Descendants and relatives lived mainly in South Carolina and Alabama.
By their very nature, Family History books are filled with names, dates, and place names. Usually they make for very boring reading unless you are looking for some fact that will help to complete your family tree. We have attempted to make SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE BLAIRS more interesting by providing biographies of many of our ancestors. We hope to give future generations of Blairs an insight into their heritage. Through these pages you will be able to follow William Blair and his descendants. We believe that William migrated from Ireland to America (South Carolina) in the late 1700's. He likely was looking freedom and opportunity, the same as many American immigrants. It is doubtful that he envisioned he would have over 1,000 descendants and that their history would be the history of America. We, Thomas William Blair Sr. and Thomas William Blair Jr., have focused on our Blair lineage beginning with William in Newberry, SC and moving into Southeast Alabama. But we did not limit our book to a single family line. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE BLAIRS covers 11 generations of Blairs. We have included as many branches of the family tree as possible. The idea for this book was born in the 1960's. T.W. Blair Sr. began researching our family tree and found that our Blairs were instrumental in the growth of our nation. Many local history books did not contain references to our ancestors and T.W. could not understand why. When he asked the author of one such book why our relatives were not included, she replied, "History is His-Story. Authors include the information they want to include. You should write your own book." Over 40 years later, SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE BLAIRS, has been published. Hundreds of thousands of miles have been driven searching for an elusive bit of information that would help to link one generation to the next. Musty storage rooms in the basements of courthouses have been explored. Dozens of libraries have been inspected. Hundreds of cemeteries have been examined. And our eyesight has diminished staring at faded records prepared by people with questionable handwriting skills. But every step of the way, new insights were gained which helped us to better understand our heritage. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE BLAIRS is 383 pages long, including the index. There are over 1000 descendants (and spouses) of William Blair listed. There are over 100 photos and images. Three Appendixes are also included. One covers the known Early Blair history. Our line goes back to the Blair of Blair from about 1205 in Scotland. The second appendix covers some information on the Blair DNA project, which is how we know the origination of our Blair line. The third Appendix includes a couple of stories on Blairs that we do not know if or how we are linked, but the stories were so intriguing they had to be included. From the birth of our nation until now, the Blair family history and American history are intertwined. By following one generation to the next, you can also see America's history. Hopefully the reader will gain a new appreciation of the struggles, heartaches, and successes of the Blairs. None of us should be reduced to a few lines of facts on paper or carved into a headstone. This book was written to keep the memory of our Blairs alive for us and future generations.
By their very nature, Family History books are filled with names, dates, and place names. Usually they make for very boring reading unless you are looking for some fact that will help to complete your family tree. We have attempted to make SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE BLAIRS more interesting by providing biographies of many of our ancestors. We hope to give future generations of Blairs an insight into their heritage. Through these pages you will be able to follow William Blair and his descendants. We believe that William migrated from Ireland to America (South Carolina) in the late 1700s. He likely was looking freedom and opportunity, the same as many American immigrants. It is doubtful that he envisioned he would have over 1,000 descendants and that their history would be the history of America. We, Thomas William Blair Sr. and Thomas William Blair Jr., have focused on our Blair lineage beginning with William in Newberry, SC and moving into Southeast Alabama. But we did not limit our book to a single family line. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE BLAIRS covers 11 generations of Blairs. We have included as many branches of the family tree as possible. The idea for this book was born in the 1960s. T.W. Blair Sr. began researching our family tree and found that our Blairs were instrumental in the growth of our nation. Many local history books did not contain references to our ancestors and T.W. could not understand why. When he asked the author of one such book why our relatives were not included, she replied, History is His-Story. Authors include the information they want to include. You should write your own book. Over 40 years later, SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE BLAIRS, has been published. Hundreds of thousands of miles have been driven searching for an elusive bit of information that would help to link one generation to the next. Musty storage rooms in the basements of courthouses have been explored. Dozens of libraries have been inspected. Hundreds of cemeteries have been examined. And our eyesight has diminished staring at faded records prepared by people with questionable handwriting skills. But every step of the way, new insights were gained which helped us to better understand our heritage. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE BLAIRS is 383 pages long, including the index. There are over 1000 descendants (and spouses) of William Blair listed. There are over 100 photos and images. Three Appendixes are also included. One covers the known Early Blair history. Our line goes back to the Blair of Blair from about 1205 in Scotland. The second appendix covers some information on the Blair DNA project, which is how we know the origination of our Blair line. The third Appendix includes a couple of stories on Blairs that we do not know if or how we are linked, but the stories were so intriguing they had to be included. From the birth of our nation until now, the Blair family history and American history are intertwined. By following one generation to the next, you can also see Americas history. Hopefully the reader will gain a new appreciation of the struggles, heartaches, and successes of the Blairs. None of us should be reduced to a few lines of facts on paper or carved into a headstone. This book was written to keep the memory of our Blairs alive for us and future generations.
Light on a people's forward path comes from behind - from the past. Because Cumberland Presbyterians are eager for illumination for their ongoing mission this set of books have been written. In ÒA People Called Cumberland PresbyteriansÓ three writers have endeavored to directly and effectively present the convictions, dedication and purpose that formed this Presbyterian denomination on the American frontier and have impelled it through more than 160 years to the present. The books illuminate some of the most distinctive traits of the church. Many persons and events come to life in it. Not only the better known heroes and heroines of the movement are presented, but also many of the lesser known who play colorful and significant roles, and details typical of the ongoing life of the church are here, along with accounts of the stirring hours of its history.
Stoked by a series of major scandals, popular fears of corruption in the Civil War North provide a unique window into Northern culture in the Civil War era. In The Enemy Within, Michael Thomas Smith relates these scandals—including those involving John C. Frémont’s administration in Missouri, Benjamin F. Butler’s in Louisiana, bounty jumping and recruitment fraud, controversial wartime innovations in the Treasury Department, government contracting, and the cotton trade—to deeper anxieties. The massive growth of the national government during the Civil War and lack of effective regulation made corruption all but inevitable, as indeed it has been in all the nation’s wars and in every period of the nation’s history. Civil War Northerners responded with unique intensity to these threats, however. If anything, the actual scale of nineteenth-century public corruption and the party campaign fundraising with which it tended to intertwine was tiny compared with that of later eras, following the growth and consolidation of big business and corporations. Nevertheless, Civil War Northerners responded with far greater vigor than their descendants would muster against larger and more insidious threats. In the 1860s the popular conception of corruption could still encompass such social trends as extravagant spending or the enjoyment of luxury goods. Even more telling are the ways in which citizens’ definitions of corruption manifested their specific fears: of government spending and centralization; of immigrants and the urban poor; of aristocratic ambition and pretension; and, most fundamentally, of modernization itself. Rational concerns about government honesty and efficiency had a way of spiraling into irrational suspicions of corrupt cabals and conspiracies. Those shadowy fears by contrast starkly illuminate Northerners’ most cherished beliefs and values.
At the time of his death, renowned Lincoln biographer Benjamin Thomas was at work on a life of one of the most controversial figures in American history: Edwin McMasters Stanton, the man who marshaled the military forces of the Union in the Civil War and played a crucial role in the only presidential impeachment trial in our history. Harold Hyman, himself a prize-winning historian, undertook to carry on from the advanced point in research and writing that Thomas had reached. The result of their collaborative efforts is a monumental work worthy to stand beside Thomas’s own Lincoln as a truly outstanding American biography. Continuously absorbing and written with clarity and grace, Stanton gives an objective, full-scale portrait of this complex and enigmatic figure. Stanton could be explosive and domineering or gentle or considerate; he was at once single-minded and self-doubting. That Stanton should be “controversial” is curious, for he served with distinction under three Presidents; Lincoln offered him unquestioning trust and warm personal friendship. Yet Stanton’s name is commonly associated with duplicity rather than with selfless patriotism, including charges that he connived in Lincoln’s murder, betrayed each of the Presidents he served, antagonized such generals as McClellan and Sherman, and thwarted opportunities for the peaceful reconciliation of North and South. This biography puts legend and prejudice in clear perspective by going directly to documentary evidence, by probing into Stanton’s motives and methods, and by evaluating his accomplishments and failures. It is a judicious and honest portrait of a stubborn, dedicated man; but it also brings to light many important details about the times in which he lived.
This volume ... includes hundreds of photographs, many of them never before published. The authors provide text and commentary, organizing the photographs into chapters covering the origins of war, its conventional and guerrilla phases, the war on the rivers, medicine ... the experiences of Missourians who served out of state, and the process of reunion in the postwar years"--Fly leaf.
William Gilpin (1815–1894) has been called “America’s first geopolitician.” Regarded today as both scientist and quack, Gilpin was in his own time a recognized authority whose maps were accepted by Congress as the most accurate available, and his description of trails and land in the West were read by pioneer and scientist alike as inspiration and guide. His writings first introduced to the American public the treasures of the Great Plains (to Gilpin probably belongs the credit for introducing this well-known term) and the mountain plateaus of the Rockies. He advertised the future of the lush valleys of Oregon and the mineral riches that, he was sure, the American West contained. Gilpin was a cultured, educated man; his studies and his hours of lonely observation on many trips across the American prairies had resulted in the theory—in part true, in part fallacious—about the importance of the Mississippi Valley to world trade and world peace. To his contemporaries and a few later historians he was “a man of rare genius and advanced thought, a prophet and pioneer of civilization,” “one of the wonderful and gifted men of the age, and to him are the citizens of the Republic, in general, and the West, in particular, immeasurably indebted.” In this biography Thomas L. Karnes traces the life of William Gilpin from the quiet comfort of his wealthy Quaker boyhood home through an exciting and turbulent career as Indian fighter, pioneer, newspaper editor, explorer, land promoter, and first governor of Colorado Territory. But throughout his varied career there was one task to which Gilpin was always devoted: he was a publicizer of the West, first in letters to family and friends; then in newspaper articles, books, and speeches; and finally in reports that became part of the Congressional Record and that influenced the actions of Presidents.
The preparation of "History of Western Maryland", one of the most voluminous works on the history of that party of the United States, imposed a vast responsibility and an immense amount of labor. In the compilation of this history no authority of importance has been overlooked. The author has carefully examined every source of information open to him, and has availed himself of every fact that could throw new light upon, or impart additional interest to, the subject under consideration. Besides consulting the most reliable records and authorities, over fifteen thousand communications were addressed to persons supposed to be in possession of facts or information calculated to add value to the work. Recourse has not only been had to the valuable libraries of Baltimore, Annapolis, Frederick, and Hagerstown, but the author and his agents have visited personally the entire territory embraced in the six counties of Western Maryland, spending much time in each district, examining ancient newspapers, musty manuscripts, family, church, and society records, conversing with the aged inhabitants, and collecting from them orally many interesting facts never before published, and which otherwise, in all probability, would soon have been lost altogether. In addition to the material partly used in the preparation of his " Chronicles" and " History of Baltimore City and County" and " History of Maryland," the author has consulted an immense number of pamphlets, consisting of county and town documents, reports of societies, associations, corporations, and historical discourses, and, in short, everything of a fugitive character that might in any way illustrate the history of Western Maryland. Sketches of the rise, progress, and present condition of the various religious denominations, professions, political parties, and charitable and benevolent institutions, societies, and orders form a conspicuous feature of the work. Manufacturing, commercial, and agricultural interests have also a prominent place. An account of the county school system is also given, and a history of the various institutions of learning of which Western Maryland has every reason to be proud. Many of the facts recorded, both statistical and historical, may seem trivial or tediously minute to the general reader, and yet such facts have a local interest and sometimes a real importance. Considerable space has also been given to biographies of leading and representative men, living and dead, who have borne an active part in the various enterprises of life, and who have become closely identified with the history of Frederick, Washington, Montgomery, Allegany, Carroll, and Garrett Counties. The achievements of the living must not be forgotten, nor must the memories of those who have passed away be allowed to perish. It is the imperative duty of the historian to chronicle their public and private efforts to advance the great interests of society. Their deeds are to be recorded for the benefit of those who follow them; they, in fact, form part of the history of their communities, and their successful lives add to the glory of the Commonwealth. A distinguishing feature of the work is its statistics of the various districts into which the six counties of Western Maryland are divided. In them the reader is brought into close relation with every part of Western Maryland. This is volume three out of six, covering Frederick County (contd.), D.C., and Montgomery County.
The Civil War and Reconstruction were characterized by two lasting legacies -- the failure to bring racial harmony to the South and the failure to foster reconciliation between the North and South. The nation was left with a festering race problem, as a white-dominated society and political structure debated the +proper role for blacks. At the national level, both sides harbored bitter feelings toward the other, which often resulted in clashes among congressmen that inflamed, rather than solved, the race problem. No Congress expended more energy debating this issue than the Fifty-First, or "Billion Dollar," Congress of 1889-1891. The Congress debated several controversial solutions, provoking discussion far beyond the halls of government and shaping the course of race relations for twentieth-century America. Legislating Racism proposes that these congressional debates actually created a climate for the first truly frank national discussion of racial issues in the United States. In an historic moment of unusual honesty and openness, a majority of congressmen, newspaper editors, magazine contributors, and the American public came to admit their racial prejudice against not only blacks, but all minority races. If the majority of white Americans -- not just those in the South -- harbored racist sentiments, many wondered whether Americans should simply accept racism as the American way. Thomas Adams Upchurch contends that the Fifty-First Congress, in trying to solve the race problem, in fact began the process of making racism socially and politically acceptable for a whole generation, inadvertently giving birth to the Jim Crow era of American history.
Get the lowdown on America’s Bloodiest War—the Civil War—with this essential guide to 101 interesting and unexpected facts about this defining event in US history. Do you know which state first seceded from the Union? What about the individual who could be considered the Mata Hari of the Civil War? Or how about which Bible passage Southerners used to justify slavery? You’ll find answers to these questions and many, many more in 101 Things You Didn’t Know about the Civil War. Packed with fascinating details about the people, places, and events that defined our nation’s most contentious conflict, this tell-all guide reveals the inside scoop on slavery and its impact on the war; great—and not-so-great—leaders and generals; battles fought and lost—and fought again; some of the most shocking horrors of the war; women, children, and African Americans in the war. Complete with a helpful timeline, 101 Things You Didn’t Know about the Civil War is your go-to guide for little-known facts about the war that dramatically altered the course of American history forever.
Chronicles life in the United States during the Colonial period, including information on weather, economy, population, religion, education, arts and letters, and popular culture.
This volume gathers the best previously unpublished and uncollected writings on Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln scholarship by one of his great biographers, Benjamin P. Thomas. A skilled historian and a masterful storyteller himself, Thomas was widely regarded as the greatest Lincoln historian of his generation. With these essays, he combines historical depth with narrative grace in delineating Lincoln's qualities as a humorist, lawyer, and politician. From colorful tall tales to clever barbs aimed at political opponents, Lincoln clothed a shrewd wit in a homespun, backwoods vernacular. He used humor to defuse tension, illuminate a point, put others at ease--and sometimes for sheer fun. From an early reliance on broad humor and ridicule in speeches and on the stump, Lincoln's style shifted in 1854 to a more serious vein in which humor came primarily to elucidate an argument. "If I did not laugh occasionally I should die," he is said to have told his cabinet, "and you need this medicine as much as I do." Thomas brings his deep knowledge of Lincoln to essays on the great man's tumultuous career in Congress, his work as a lawyer, his experiences in the Courts, and his opinions of the South. A gracious survey of Lincoln's early biographers, particularly Ida Tarbell, stands alongside an appreciation of Harry Edward Pratt, a key figure in the early days of the Abraham Lincoln Association. Thomas also assesses Lincoln's use of language and the ongoing significance of the Gettysburg Address. This diverse collection is enhanced by an introduction by Michael Burlingame, himself a leading biographer of Lincoln. Burlingame provides a balanced portrait of Thomas and his circuitous path toward writing history.
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