William Sutherland BLAIR

1917 - 2000  (82 years)

• Name	William Sutherland BLAIR
  Birth	18 Sep 1917	Glasgow, Scotland
  Gender	Male
  Death	21 Jun 2000	Peterborough, Hillsborough, New Hampshire   [1]
  Burial	Carpenter Cemetery, Guilford, Windham, Vermont   [2]
  Person ID	I14124	bmds
  Last Modified	16 Aug 2017

  
  

  Father	Duncan BLAIR
  Family ID	F5771	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Mary Seymour BARNES,   b. 16 Jul 1922, Montreal, Quebec d. 3 Feb 2006, Peterborough, Hillsborough, New Hampshire (Age 83 years)
  Marriage	1945	Seaford, Sussex, England
  Age at Marriage	William : ~ 27 years old | Mary : ~ 22 years old.
  Children	1 son and 3 daughters
  	1. Fiona Seymour BLAIR,   b. 23 Sep 1945, Glasgow, Scotland d. 26 Sep 2014, Brattleboro, Windham, Vermont (Age 69 years)   2. Colin C. BLAIR,   b. 23 Sep 1945 (Age 78 years) + 3. Sheila S. BLAIR,   b. 26 Nov 1948, Montreal, Quebec (Age 75 years)   4. Dr. Felicity Duncan BLAIR,   b. 25 Sep 1952, Greenwich, Fairfield, Connecticut d. 17 Aug 1979, Worcester, Massachusetts (Age 26 years)
  Family ID	F5760	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Event Map		Marriage - 1945 - Seaford, Sussex, England Death - 21 Jun 2000 - Peterborough, Hillsborough, New Hampshire Burial - - Carpenter Cemetery, Guilford, Windham, Vermont
  Pin Legend	: Address       : Location       : City/Town       : County/Shire       : State/Province       : Country       : Not Set

  
  

• Sources

  [S4] Obituary. William Blair, 82, Co-Founder of Country Journal  William S. Blair, a former publisher of Harper’s magazine and co-founder of Country Journal, died on June 21 at a retirement home in Peterborough, N.H. He was 82.  It was at Harper’s, in 1971, that Mr. Blair clashed with the younger editor in chief, Willie Morris, over declining circulation and huge financial losses at the magazine. Mr. Morris was a magnet for writing talent, revered by writers like Norman Mailer and William Styron. When Mr. Morris resigned from the magazine that year, six editors quit in stormy protest.  Mr. Blair became the publisher at Harper’s in 1968. He was also president, and left soon after the departure of Mr. Morris. Before that, he was president and chief executive of Harper-Atlantic Sales, a company he joined in 1957. It was then a wholly owned subsidiary of Harper & Row and the Atlantic Monthly Company. Before that, he was a research director at Ogilvy, Benson & Mather.  After the trouble at Harper’s, Mr. Blair moved to Guilford, Vt., where he and his wife, Mary, had bought a 106-acre farm in 1964. (It grew to more than 200 acres.) There, Mrs. Blair said, he grew 40 acres of daffodils, tulips and irises, reminiscent of the fields of flowers he used to wander through as a boy in Scotland. Local farmers grew corn and raised cattle on the property, and Mr. Blair spent afternoons fishing for trout.  “It was much more his speed,” said Lewis H. Lapham, the current editor of Harper’s, who knew Mr. Blair. “It was tweed coats. And people talked in civil tones.”  It was there, too, in 1974, that he started Country Journal with a friend and colleague, Richard M. Ketchum. The magazine was written for people who had grown tired of hectic city and suburban life and took refuge in rural living, not unlike Mr. Blair. “The magazine was an extension of his own life,” Mrs. Blair said. It was sold a decade later.  Mr. Blair was born in Glasgow in 1917, the son of a minister, and attended Oxford University in the late 1930’s, earning a degree in economics, Mrs. Blair said. He moved to the United States in 1940, where he attended graduate school at Princeton and, during World War II, joined the Canadian Army.  In addition to his wife of 55 years, Mr. Blair is survived by two daughters, Sheila, of Richmond, N.H., and Fiona, of Brattleboro, Vt.; a son, Colin, of Arlington, Mass.; and two grandchildren. — The New York Times, June 30, 2000 (by Laura M. Holson) [S5] Find A Grave, → Memorial ID 154303695.