OBITUARIES, AMERICAN. (BLAIR BLAND.) 



579 



same year he became a clerk in a general store 

 in Hope, and so closely did he devote himself to 

 his work that at fourteen he was looked upon 

 as a good merchant, and at nineteen he embarked 

 in business for himself, opening a country store 

 in what is now Blairstown. The venture, despite 

 the fact that the surrounding country was almost 

 a wilderness, prospered, and in the course of a 

 few years Mr. Blair found himself able to e'xtend 

 his business by opening branch stores in several 

 places, each of which he placed in charge of a 

 brother or a brother-in-law, thus laying the 

 foundations of several large fortunes. An impor- 

 tant factor in his business was his trading in 

 country produce, for which he found a ready 

 market in New York city. As his fortune grew 

 he devoted his talents to the encouragement of 

 the iron industry at Oxford Furnace, where op- 

 erations had been going on ever since William 

 Penn settled in Pennsylvania. The necessity for 

 means of transporting the metal to the seaboard 

 led Mr. Blair and others to organize the Lacka- 

 wanna Coal and Iron Company, out of which 

 has grown the great system of the Delaware, 

 Lackawanna and Western Railroad. In the early 

 days of the settlement of the great West Mr. 

 Blair found ample opportunity for the exercise 

 of his rare judgment and untiring energy, and his 

 name was connected, either as builder or director, 

 with 25 different lines. Mr. Blair was one of 

 the original directors of the Union Pacific Rail- 

 road. He was also a director in the following 

 companies: The Warren Railroad, the Blairstown 

 Railroad, the Delaware, Lackawanna and West- 

 ern, the New York, Susquehanna and Western, 

 the Chicago and Northwestern, the Burlington, 

 Cedar Rapids and Northern, the Sioux City and 

 Yankton, the Sioux Falls and Dakota, the Chi- 

 cago and Pacific, the Chicago, Iowa and Dakota, 

 the Kansas City and Southern, the Cedar Rapids 

 and Missouri River, the Green Bay and Western, 

 the Sioux City and Pacific, the Iowa Falls and 

 Sioux City, the Chicago, Iowa and Nebraska, the 

 Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley, the Maple 

 River, Sussex and Mount Hope, the Cayuga and 

 Susquehanna, and the Bangor and Portland. In 

 connection with his railroad building Mr. Blair 

 received enormous grants of public lands, and it 

 has been said that as he built and owned in his 

 lifetime more railroads than any one man in the 

 world so, at one time and another in his life, he 

 owned more land than any other man in the 

 world. He formed land companies, and these 

 companies, under his direction, laid out the sites 

 for what are now more than 100 flourishing cities 

 and towns in the West. In his railroad building 

 it was Mr. Blair's custom to take a road that 

 somebody had begun antl failed to complete, re- 

 build it entirely or complete it, and then lease it 

 or sell it to a trunk line after connecting it with 

 the trunk line. In this way he made a profit on 

 the railroad building, acquired great quantities 

 of valuable land, and made still more money 

 by selling or leasing the road he had thus re- 

 habilitated. The last road that Mr. Blair built 

 w r as the Kansas City, Osceola and Southern. This 

 was completed in 1898 and turned over to the 

 St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad to operate 

 for a term of years. Mr. Blair was always identi- 

 fied w r ith the Republican party, and with two 

 exceptions he attended all the national conven- 

 tions in the capacity of a delegate. In 1868 he 

 was defeated by Theodore F. Randolph in the 

 contest for the governship of New Jersey, but, 

 aside from this, he was never a candidate for pub- 

 lic office. He had the distinction for several 

 years of being the oldest bank president in the 



country. He contributed an endowment fund of 

 $150,000 to the Presbyterian Academy in BlairH- 

 town, which bears his name, and he also founded 

 professorships in Princeton University and La- 

 fayette College, and in 1807 erected a large dor- 

 mitory at Princeton, which bears his name, be- 

 sides giving generous aid to Western colleges. 

 To the Presbyterian Church as a whole he gave 

 large sums, and more than 100 churches of that 

 denomination owe their existence to his liberality. 



Blake, John H., scientist, born in Boston, 

 Mass., in 1808; died there, July 5, 1899. He was 

 the youngest son of Thomas Blake, a lieutenant 

 in the 1st New Hampshire Regiment in the Revo- 

 lutionary War, and was one of the earliest gradu- 

 ates of the Boston High School. When eighteen 

 years old he established a laboratory at Jamaica 

 Plain for the manufacture of pure chemicals, and 

 here was made the ether that was used in the 

 first experiments in anaesthesia. In 1835 he went 

 to South America to investigate the extensive 

 niter beds over which Chili and Peru subsequently 

 quarreled. The outcome of this journey, in ad- 

 dition to its commercial importance, was a geo- 

 logic and geodetic survey and exploration of the 

 Atacama region and an exploration of the pre- 

 historic graves at Tacna, the results of which 

 are in the Peabody Museum, at Cambridge. On 

 his return from South America Mr. Blake took 

 charge of the copper mines at San Fernando, 

 Cuba, subsequently explored a portion of the Isle 

 Royale region near Lake Superior, and then set- 

 tled in Boston as a consulting chemist and civil 

 engineer, also filling many important business and 

 administrative posts. 



Bland, Richard Parks, legislator, born in 

 Ohio County, Kentucky, Aug. 19, 1835; died near 

 Lebanon, Mo., June 15, 1899. Left an orphan at 

 an early age, he was compelled to earn his own 

 living, and for four years he worked on a farm. 

 From his small wages he saved enough to en- 

 able him to attend school in winter. When eight- 

 een years old he took a teacher's course for one 

 year in the Hartford (Ky.) Academy, and then 

 taught three terms in Kentucky and Missouri. 

 In 1855 he went to California. "Ten years were 

 passed in that State, Nevada, and Colorada in 

 teaching and studying and practicing law, and he 

 was admitted to the bar in Utah in 1860. Dur- 

 ing this period he also served a term as treasurer 

 of Carson County. In 1865 he opened a law office 

 in Rolla, Mo., and, after practicing there three 

 years, settled in Lebanon, where he combined law, 

 politics, and farming. In 1872 he was elected to 

 Congress as a Democrat, and he was re-elected to 

 each succeeding Congress till 1894, when he was 

 defeated by Dr. T. D. Hubbard, Republican. In 

 the next election he in turn defeated Dr. Hubbard, 

 and he then held his seat till his death. Mr. Bland 

 will be longest remembered by reason of his inti- 

 mate connection with the silver movement. From 

 the beginning of his long congressional career 

 till his death he was the most conspicuous cham- 

 pion of free-silver coinage. He voted for the 

 famous inflation bill of 1874, which President 

 Grant vetoed, and opposed the bill of 1875 for 

 resumption of specie payments. In 1876 he in- 

 troduced a bill providing for free coinage of sil- 

 ver, which was afterward amended by the Senate 

 into a limited purchase, and in that form was 

 passed over President Hayes's veto in 1878. This 

 bill called for the coinage of $2,000,000 worth of 

 silver a month, and remained in force till re- 

 pealed by the Sherman act of 1890. In 1891 and 

 1893 Mr. Bland was chairman of the Committee 

 on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, of which he 

 was before and afterward a member. From 1878 



