H W Blair
HON. HENRY WILLIAM BLAIR.
Among the many strong and self-reliant men and women who went out from the old Scotch-Irish colony of Londonderry to establish homes in other sections of the state were the Livermores, Shepherds, Coxes, and Blairs, who were the first settlers in the Pemigewasset valley, where they and their descendants have ever since exerted a controlling influence.
The Blairs located in Campton, where the father of New Hampshire's senator of that name was born and grew to manhood. He was an excellent scholar, a talented musician, an accomplished military officer, and a man of great bodily strength and agility who was a recognized leader in the town. His wife was Lois Baker, a descendant of the Bakers of Candia, a family noted in colonial and revolutionary times, and for many years one of the most respected and influential in Campton. She was a very fine singer, and was gifted with remarkable mental endowments and rare sweetness of disposition. Both Mr. and Mrs. Blair were teachers in their youth, but after their marriage located themselves upon a farm in their native town, where they lived happily until he was fatally injured by falling timbers, while engaged upon the frame of a building. He died December 8, 1836, leaving three children: a daughter, Hannah Palmer Blair, aged six years; a son, Moses Baker Blair, aged four years; and a son, Henry William Blair, aged two years. A fourth child, Lois Esther Blair, was born soon after his death. Of these, the oldest daughter died in 1843, and the oldest son, a young man of remarkable abilities, in 1857.
The death of Mr. Blair left his widow very poor, and finding it impossible to support the children in her old home she was obliged to separate them. The two eldest were "put out" to live in the families of neighboring farmers, while she kept with her the youngest son, Henry, and the infant daughter, until he was six years of age, when she arranged with Samuel Keniston, a leading citizen of Campton, to take him for one year, and, carrying the little girl with her, journeyed by stage to Lowell in quest of work in the factories there, by which she might obtain the means to support and educate her children. This venture was not a pecuniary success, as her small earnings were nearly all absorbed in necessary expenses; and in the summer of 1842 she returned to Campton, and soon after removed with the two young children to Plymouth, where for the next year she supported them by sewing.
At this time the boy Henry W., who was born December 6, 1834, was seven years of age, bright, active, and able to make himself useful on a farm; and he attracted the attention of Richard Bartlett, one of the prosperous farmers of Campton, who offered to take him and give him a home in his house, with what small educational advantages the district school afforded, in return for such services as a boy of his build and mettle could render. Thither he went in May, 1843, to begin to earn his own living, and for several years his home was with Mr. Bartlett, who treated him kindly and generously. In 1846 Mrs. Blair died, and from that time on the boy fought the battle of life aided only by such friends as he made for himself, and inspired by a purpose to show himself a worthy son of his noble parents, whose memory he has always reverently cherished. Writing of them many years after, when the people of New Hampshire had conferred upon him the highest honor in their gift, he said: "I owe very much to my parents, who, though poor, were among the best that a child ever had; and to them I have always applied Cowper's proud tribute to his own:—
'My boast is not that I deduce my birth
From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth,
But higher far my proud pretensions rise,
The son of parents passed into the skies.'"