1790 was appointed governor of the territory south of the Ohio. Chosen president of the convention to form the state of Tennessee in 1796, he was its representative in the U. S. senate in 1796, but was expelled in July, 1797, for being concerned in a conspiracy to deliver New Orleans to Great Britain, and for having instigated the Creeks and Cherokees to assist the British in conquering the Spanish territory of Louisiana. The proceedings against him increased his popularity in Tennessee, and he was elected to the state senate, and chosen president of that body.—His brother, Thomas, soldier, was b. in Edgecombe co., N. C, in 1760; d. in Washington. D. C, 7 Feb., 1812. He volunteered in the revolutionary army at sixteen, became deputy paymaster-general in 1780, and, with the rank of major, commanded a battalion of North Carolina militia at Eutaw Springs. He became a major-general of militia, and was a representative in congress in 1793-'9, 1805-'9, and 1811-'2. He again sat in congress, being elected as a democrat.—Another brother, Willie, governor of Tennessee, was b. in North Carolina in 1767; d. near Clarksville, Tenn., 10 Sept., 1835. He was secretary to his brother William while the latter was territorial governor of Ohio, and afterward removed to Montgomery co., Tenn., and was soon returned to the legislature. He was governor of the state from 1809 till 1815.
BLOW, Henry T., statesman, b. in Southampton CO., Va., 15 July, 1817; d. in Saratoga, N. Y.,
11 Sept., 1875. He went to Missouri in 1830, and
was graduated at St. Louis university. He then
engaged in the drug business and in lead-mining,
in which he was successful. Before the civil war
he took a prominent part in the anti-slavery movement, and served four years in the state senate. In
1861 he was appointed minister to Venezuela, but
resigned in less than a year. Pie was a republican
member of congress from 1863 till 1867, and served
on the committee of ways and means. He was
minister to Brazil from 1869 till 1871, and was appointed one of the commissioners of the District of Columbia in 1874.
BLOWERS, Sampson Suiters, jurist, b. in Bos- [
ton, Mass., 23 March, 1742; d. in Halifax, N. S., 25 Oct., 1842. He was a grandson of Rev. Thomas Blowers, minister, of Beverly (1701-29), was graduated at Harvard in 1763, and studied law under
Gov. Hutchinson. With Adams and Quincy he
was engaged as junior counsel, in 1770, in the defence of the British soldiers concerned in the Boston massacre. Being a loyalist, he went to England
in 1774, but returned in the spring of 1778 to his
native city, and after a short imprisonment went
to Halifax, where he successfully pursued his profession. In 1785 was appointed attorney-general and speaker of the house of assembly; and in 1795 was appointed a justice of the supreme court, having had for some years a seat in the council. In 1799 he became chief justice of Nova Scotia, with the presidency of the council, which offices he resigned in 1833.
BLUNT, Edmund March, author, b. in Portsmouth, N. H., 20 June, 1770; d. in Sing Sing, N. Y., 2 Jan., 1862. He was a bookseller, and published the Newburyport “Herald.” In 1796 he published his first “American Coast Pilot,” which is still in use and has been translated into most of the languages of Europe. About thirty editions of this work, which describes all the ports of the United States, with sailing directions, lists of lighthouses, and other knowledge important to seamen, have been issued. He also published “Stranger's Guide to N. Y. City” (1817), and numerous nautical books and charts. — His son, Joseph, lawyer, b. in Newburyport, Mass., in February, 1792; d. in New York city, 16 June, 1860, first came into notice by writing on the Missouri question in 1820. Soon afterward he wrote an article on the Laybach circular, published in the “North American Review,” which attracted the attention of politicians. He was long a leading whig and protectionist, was one of the first members of the republican party, and drew up the original resolutions of the republican
state convention at Saratoga in 1854. Mr. Blunt
declined the commissionership to China offered
him by President Fillmore. He was appointed
district attorney not long before his death. He
edited the “American Annual Register” (1827-'35), and published “Historical Sketch of the Formation of the American Confederacy” (New York, 1825); “Speeches, Reviews, and Reports” (1843); “Merchants' and Shipmasters' Assistant” (1829 and 1848). — Another son, Edmund, hydrographer, b. in Newburyport, Mass., 23 Nov., 1799; d. in Brooklyn,
N. Y., 2 Sept., 1866, manifested in early life a
taste for practical mathematics, and when scarcely
seventeen made the first accurate survey of New
York harbor. In 1819-'20 he made the first survey
of the Bahama banks and the shoals of George and
Nantucket, and in 1824 surveyed the entrance of
New York harbor from Barnegat to Fire Island.
In 1825-'6 he ran the line of levels from the river
San Juan to the Pacific ocean for a canal on the
Nicaragua route. In 1827-'30, as a private enterprise,
he surveyed Long Island sound from New
York to Montauk Point. On the organization of the
U. S. coast survey in 1832 he was appointed first
assistant, holding that place till the time of his death.
In 1855-'6 he furnished the points to determine the
exterior line of New York harbor. While he was
on the coast survey his attention was directed to
the inferiority of the lights in the American
light-houses, and he was the proposer and advocate of
the introduction of Fresnel's system of signal-lights.
He also invented the dividing-engine. He
was a partner of his brother in the firm of E. &
G. W. Blunt, nautical publishers, of New York. —
Another son, George William, author, b. in
Newburyport, Mass., 11 March, 1802; d. in New York
city, 19 April, 1878, was a sailor from fourteen to
nearly twenty-one years of age. From 1822 till
1866 he was a publisher of charts and nautical
books in New York. From 1819 till 1826 he was
engaged in marine surveys on the Bahama banks
and New York harbor, neither of which had been
recently surveyed. In 1834 he called the attention
of the government to the superiority of the French
light-houses, as his brother Edmund did in 1838,
and the result was the establishment in 1856 of
the present light-house board, and the adoption of
the French system. In 1845 he was one of a
committee to organize the present system of pilotage
for New York. He was appointed a pilot
commissioner in that year, and continued to be one,
except during six months, to the time of his death.
In 1857 he was made a harbor commissioner to
protect the harbor of New York. He was for five
years a trustee of the seaman's retreat, and in
1852-'4 a commissioner of emigration. He
published “Atlantic Memoir,” “Sheet Anchor,” “Pilot Laws and Harbor and Quarantine Regulations of New York” (New York, 1869), and “Plan to Avoid the Centre of Violent Gales” (1867), and prepared several editions of the “American Coast Pilot.”
BLUNT, James Gilpatrick, soldier, b. in Hancock CO., Me., in 1826 ; d. in Washington. D. C, in 1881. For several years he was a sailor before the mast. He was graduated at the Starling medical
