Author: Blair, Thomas
Biography:
BLAIR, Thomas (c. 1797-1833: ancestry.co.uk)
His parents were David Blair, a Glasgow merchant with the EIC, and his wife Janet Muir; they were married on 2 Mar. 1793 in Cadder, Lanarkshire. Although birth records have been located for his siblings, his has not been found but he may have been born in 1797. By his own account in his poem, Glasgow, he studied at the Glasgow High School. No details of his early naval career are known but the poem, published in 1824, states that the vision it recounts came to him after twelve years at sea. He joined the EIC and eventually became captain of HCS William Fairlie in which he sailed to Bengal and China. On 7 June 1830 he married Matilda Pugh Mackenzie in Calcutta; she was the daughter of Charles Mackenzie of Calcutta. They had two daughters, one of whom was born in Feb. 1834 after her father’s death on 28 Oct. 1833. Blair was visiting his sister, Louisa, and her husband the Rev. Laurence Lockhart at Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, when he died as a result of a fall from his horse. His will was proved on 8 Feb. 1834. Blair’s widow, Matilda, married the Rev. Martin Charles Maher in 1836. Blair was a friend of James Sheridan Knowles (q.v.) who dedicated his play, The Wife (1833), to him. (ancestry.co.uk 5 June 2023; Public Ledger 10 Feb. 1832; English Chronicle 2 Nov. 1833) SR