John Blair.



The race of men who remember Cleveland in the day of its small beginnings,
is fast passing away. Of those who were residents of the little village on
the Cuyahoga fifty years ago, only about half a dozen now live in the
flourishing city that occupies its site and inherits its name. One of
these is John Blair, well known to all the Clevelanders of ante-railroad
days, but who is probably a mere name to a large proportion of those who
have crowded into the city of late years. Mr. Blair is one of the few
remaining links that connect the rude village in the forest with the
modern Forest City.

John Blair was born in Maryland on the 18th of December, 1793. His early
years were spent in farming, but at the age of twenty-three he dropped the
hoe and turned his back to the plow, resolving to come west and seek his
fortune. From the time that he shook from his feet the dirt of the
Maryland farm, he says, he has never done a whole day's work, at one time,
at manual labor.

In 1819, he reached Cleveland, then an insignificant village of about a
hundred and fifty inhabitants, who dwelt mostly in log houses, grouped at
the foot of Superior street. At the corner of Water street and what is now
Union lane, stood the pioneer hotel of Cleveland, the tavern of Major
Carter, where good accommodations for man and beast were always to be
found. The young Maryland adventurer was not overburdened with wealth when
he landed in his future home, his entire cash capital being three dollars.
But it was no discredit in those days to be poor, and three dollars was a