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Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary
Special Collections© 2002 By the College of William and Mary
Funding: Web version of the finding aid funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Processed by: Special Collections Staff
Collection is open to all researchers.
Before publishing quotations or excerpts from any materials, permission must be obtained from the University Archivist, and the holder of the copyright, if not Swem Library.
James Blair Papers, University Archives, Swem Library, College of William and Mary.
James Blair was born in Scotland in 1655 or 1656. He received his master of arts from the University of Edinburgh in 1673. He was ordained in the Church of England. He went to Virginia as a missionary in 1685, serving as rector of Varina Parish (later Henrico). In 1689, he was appointed commissary, the first official representative of the Bishop of London, whose diocese included Virginia, in the colony. He left Henrico to become minister of Jamestown Church in 1694 and, in 1710, became instead rector of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg. Blair was instrumental in founding the College of William and Mary and served as its first president, from 1693 until his death in 1743. Blair was a member of the Virginia Council from 1694 to 1743 with one brief interruption, and, as president of the council, served as acting governor in 1741.
Papers of and relating to James Blair, first president of the College of William and Mary. The collection contains two original manuscripts: a funeral bill by Blair dated 1701, and a sermon erroneously attributed to Blair dated 1747. The bulk of the collection consists of copies collected for research purposes, mostly in 1940-1941. Includes biographical material; extracts and copies from official records; copies of correspondence; sermons; notes on paintings of Blair and his wife owned by the College of William and Mary; notes on their graves.
The collection is organized into three series: Biographical materials, Original documents, and Images.
Photostat of page 613, discussing James Blair's death as noted in the vestry minutes of 1743.
Photostat of biographical sketch written by Dr. Earl Gregg Swem.
Typewritten note with bibliographical references to three articles on Blair.
Page 62, with continuation of biographical sketch from the next page cut out and glued on.
Pages 7-14, containing biographical sketch of Blair, and also a biographical sketch of Hugh Jones, who was a professor of mathematics at the College of William and Mary as well as a clergyman. Typed transcription of Sprague's sketch of Blair.
Correspondence and notes, primarily of library staff, documenting efforts to research Blair's life and noting errors in published biographies.
Transcriptions or excerpts quoting from official records, private correspondence (neither to nor from Blair), and contemporary published works that mention Blair.
Photocopies and transcriptions of correspondence to and from James Blair.
Photostat of the title page of the book which Blair presented to the Edinburgh Library on becoming a member of it; photostat of Blair's signature on joining the Edinburgh University Library; photostat of the agreement he signed.
Photocopy of commission, transcription of commission, translation of commission from Latin, bibliographic citations.
Photocopy of a document by William Byrd.
Photocopies of two documents.
Photocopies of two documents.
Photostat and photocopy of the published pamphlet Papers Relating to an Affidavit... (London: 1727), made in 1942 from the volume owned by the John Carter Brown Library; photocopy of handwritten document entitled A Defence of Mr. Blair; and a Confutation of an Anonimous [sic] Pamphlet, Lately Dispersed by General Nicholson, Entitled Papers Relating to an Affidavit...
Brief extracts from two sermons preached in Bruton Church by Blair, taken from W. A. R. Goodwin's Historical Sketch of Bruton Church; photostat of title page of James Blair, Our Saviour's Divine Sermon on the Mount...to which is Prefix'd a Paraphrase on the Whole Sermon of the Mount... (London: second edition, 1740), and photostat of Blair's Paraphrase on Our Saviour's Sermon on the Mount (1729); photocopy of Danish edition of Our Saviour's Divine Sermon on the Mount (Copenhagen, 1761?). Both the English and the Danish editions of Blair's book are in the Rare Book collections of Swem Library, College of William and Mary.
Bibliographic citation for Blair's death notice in Scot's Magazine 5 (July 1743); page 643 of The Gentleman's Magazine 13 (August 1743) with Blair listed under Deaths; brochure entitled Merely to Survive Is Not Enough , comparing Dr. Woodbridge's building a fallout shelter for his neighborhood in 1961 with Dr. Blair's creation of the College of William and Mary; photographic copy of signature, James Blair President.
Itemized bill for funeral expenses.
Handwritten sermon said to be by James Blair, along with correspondence giving reasons why James Blair was probably not the author.
Inventory of portraits of James Blair owned by the college, done in 1968; note of miniature owned by Virginia Historical Society; photostat of silhouette; copy of published reproduction of college-owned portrait.
Three photographs of an oil painting by J. Hargreaves, in London, 1705, of Sarah Harrison, wife of James Blair. Portrait owned by the college.
Notes on inscriptions on the graves of James Blair and Sarah Harrison Blair; page from "Notable Trees of Virginia, "Bulletin of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute 24 (March 15, 1931) illustrated with a photograph of the sycamore tree that separates the two graves; drawing of the tree and Mrs. Blair's damaged gravestone.