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- John Insley Blair (August 22, 1802 – December 2, 1899)[2] was an American entrepreneur, railroad magnate, philanthropist and one of the 19th century's wealthiest men. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Insley_Blair
- [From Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, Third Series, Volume III, 1898-1900, Pages 127-130. Published in 1906. Amended by Volume IV, Pages 155-156, Published in 1907.]
John Insley Blair, born on a farm on the banks of the Delaware river, two miles below Belvidere, new Jersey, August 22, 1802, died at his home in Blairstown, December 2, 1899. He was of Scotch ancestry, his family having come to this country about 1740. He went to work at the age of eleven years in the store of his cousin, Judge Blair, at Hope, Sussex County, now Warren County, where he remained until the death of his father compelled him to return to the farm, but a year later he returned to mercantile life, entering the store of Squire James DeWitt.
At the age of eighteen or nineteen he started out for himself by establishing a store at a place called Gravel Hill, now Blairstown, carrying on business there for forty years, from tine to time extending his trade and establishing stores in several villages in that region. In 1833-4 he became interested with Colonel George W. Scranton and Selden T.Scranton, in the mines at Oxford Furnace.
In 1846 he was one of the organizers of the Lackawanna Coal and Iron Company, afterwards one of the most successful in the country. Then he built a railroad from Owego to Ithaca, New York, which was opened in 1849. A year later he was largely instrumental in the building of the railroad from Scranton to the Delaware Water Gap, securing an outlet for the coal and iron beds of Northeastern Pennsylvania. In 1852, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, so named at his suggestion, was organized, and he remained a large owner in the same until his death, being one of its principal stockholders, and having served as director from the organization until he died. In 1860, when attending the convention at Chicago, Illinois, which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency, his attention was directed to the great possibilities of Western development, and from that time he became interested in the railroads west of the Mississippi. In 1862 he exerted his influence in building the Union Pacific Railroad by way of Omaha. His operations in the west were extended in succeeding years to Iowa, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota, Missouri and Texas. He was at one time President of sixteen different railroads. He laid out sites for more than eighty towns, and owned in those western states lands equal to half the area of his native state. The writer enjoyed many conversations with him in the course of a journey in the same car from New York to Cincinnati, in 1876, in which many of his railroad experiences and reminiscences of his early life were related. He early adopted the plan of planting trees along his western railroads, which served as wind-breaks and protection against snow drifts, and as the trees grew larger and more numerous furnished ties for the railroads in a region where wood was scarce.
When he was eighty-six or eighty-seven years old, the writer had a conversation with him in Jersey City, in which he stated that it had been his custom for many years to travel as much as 40,000 miles a year. The year before, when he was about eighty-five years of age, he had reduced this, and traveled only about 20,000 miles. He was, or course, remarkably vigorous for a man of that advanced age. In his railroad building in Iowa, he conformed to the local sentiment favoring prohibition, and in all his deeds for the sale of lands inserted restrictions against the use of the same for the sale or manufacture of liquor in any way. He felt that this was about as practical a way as any to enforce prohibition, which he also felt was to the best interests of the towns through which his railroads ran.
Mr. Blair was elected a member of this Society January 11, 1882, and served as a member of its Executive Committee from 1884 until 1897, except for the year 1896, and on various special committees. His beneficences were innumerable. He founded the Belvidere Bank in 1830, with a capital of $50,000, subsequently increased to $300,000. In his later years he established the great banking house of Blair & Company, now (1906) in Broad Street, New York. In 1848 he erected a stone building for the Blair Presbyterial Academy. This building still stands (1907) upon the knoll, in the front of the Blair Academy grounds, in its original form and size. It is now being used as the music hall of the school. On April 11, 1870, he deeded the building along with about nine acres of land, to the Presbytery of Newton. Within the next twelve years he established an endowment for fifteen free scholarships for the sons and daughters of ministers within the bounds of Presbytery. In 1883 he added $100,000 to the endowment; two years later he gave several acres more of land, and afterwards several other large buildings, with additional endowments amounting to nearly a million dollars. He gave Lafayette College, at Easton, $50,000, and $20,000 for the erection of the President's house. he gave $70,000 to Princeton College, and $50,000 to Grinnell College, on the line of one of his western railroads. Blair Hall, at Princeton College, is a splendid monument to his liberality. At Blairstown, he built its churches, its water works, bridges and railroads, and in other ways contributed to the prosperity of the town and its people.
He married, September 20, 1826, Ann Locke of Warren County, daughter ofJohn Lock, of Frelinghuysen township, Somerset County, son of Captain Francis Lock, who lost his life in a skirmish at Elizabethtown, September15, 1777. She died several years before him. Mr. Blair's maternal grandfather is said to have fought at the Battle of Princeton. Mr. Blair had four children: 1. Marcus L. Blair, known as the Colonel, who died in1873, unmarried; 2. DeWitt Clinton Blair, who survives him, and continues his numerous business interest; 3. Emma Elizabeth, married Charles Scribner, founder of the well known publishing house now Charles Scribner's Sons; 4. Aurelia Ann, married Clarence Green Mitchell, a lawyer in New York City.
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Gibbs Family Tree
1802 - 1899 (97 years)
