Archibald Blair

Archibald Blair ( – March 4, 1733) was a Scottish-born physician, merchant, planter and politician. Born in Roxburghshire, he moved to the English colony of Virginia in the 1690s. Blair served in the House of Burgesses multiple times, alternately representing the colony's capital and surrounding county. He may be confused with a distant collateral relative, Archibald Blair, who became clerk of the Virginia Governor's Council in 1776 and served for more than 25 years. Early and family life The youngest of three sons of Rev. Peter Blair, rector of Jedburgh parish in Roxburghshire, Scotland. His father had previously served at St. Cuthbert's parish in Edinburgh, where in 1654 he married Mary Hamilton. His eldest brother, Rev. James Blair had followed their father's career path, studying to become a minister at the University of Edinburgh and becoming ordained, but his career became derailed during Scotland's religious strife, when he refused to sign a loyalty oath demanded by the Scots parliament. Rev. Blair instead emigrated to the Virginia colony, where in addition to his religious duties (and later political responsibilities), and convincing this brother to join him in the colony, he re-founded the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Rev. James Blair served as the commissary (emissary) of the Bishop of London in the Virginia colony for more than five decades and married into the First Families of Virginia in 1687, two years after his arrival in the colony. His 17 year old wife Sarah was the daughter of Col. Benjamin Harrison of Wakefield plantation in Surry County, as well as the sister-in-law of prominent merchant and planter Philip Ludwell Jr., who became one of this man's business partners. Although the minister's marriage produced no children before her death in 1713 (and historians suspect it was unhappy), Rev. Blair never remarried in the three decades before his own death, when he bequeathed much of his estate to this man's son, as well as made charitable bequests. Their middle brother, John Blair (ca. 1662-after 1689) remained in Scotland where he became an apothecary in Edinburgh, a burgess of that city in 1683 and Scotland's postmaster general in 1689;. Some of his descendants would later emigrate to Virginia, particularly his grandsons (by his non-emigrating sons Peter who was a skinner and another Archibald), John Blair (d.1757) who became a merchant in York County with this man's son.