Emily Blair Gravestone
Location: Area H/Lot 477
Date of Placement: October, 1915
Decedents: Emily (Johnson) Blair
Monument inducted into the Hall in August 2022 (Class #2)
This is a monument that has largely flown under the radar. The natural elements here depicted were magnificently carved in marble and include a cross crafted to look like it was made from wooden logs. It appears to be held up by a pile of rocks and features a dove, flower and fern. Remember that this was all carved by hand by a skilled stonemason without the use of a machine or computer. Most importantly, all this detail was applied to the same chunk of marble.
Since we are here, I will admit that I already know a bit about the decedent this monument memorializes because I wrote a story about her family back in May of 2017. Emily (Johnson) Blair was the daughter of a Frederick native and physician named Dr. James T. Johnson. Dr. Johnson was part of the widely known family of that name and fame in our community and served as a surgeon under the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
Emily gave birth to a son, Francis Preston Blair III, on September 3, 1891 but would endure complications from the childbirth and developed Puerperal Pyrexia, dying just over two weeks later on September 19th, 1891. She was only 32.
Emily had married Cary Montgomery Blair the previous year and the family was living in Huntsville, Alabama at the time of her death. Cary had come from a high pedigree family as well as he was the son of famous Union Civil War Gen. Frank Preston Blair. Frank's father also served as a US congressman from Missouri. Cary Blair's grandfather was Kentucky newspaper editor and politician Francis Preston Blair, who, in 1840, came across a mica-flecked spring near, what is today, Georgia Avenue near the Washington, DC line. The location today is Acorn Park at Blair Mill Rd., Newell St. and East-West Highway. The elder Blair decided he liked the location so much that he would acquire the property surrounding the spring and build a summer home for his family, away from the sweltering, malaria-infested confines of the capital city.
Mr. Blair constructed a 20-room mansion on the parcel and called it “Silver Spring.” Cary’s uncle, Montgomery Blair, represented Dred Scott in the landmark Supreme Court case and served as mayor of St. Louis and Postmaster General under President Lincoln.
Cary Blair would not recover from his wife’s premature death, and lived a reclusive existence in Colorado and Texas until his own death in 1944. Son Francis was adopted and raised in Philadelphia by Cary’s brother, dying himself in London in 1943.
Since we are here, I will admit that I already know a bit about the decedent this monument memorializes because I wrote a story about her family back in May of 2017. Emily (Johnson) Blair was the daughter of a Frederick native and physician named Dr. James T. Johnson. Dr. Johnson was part of the widely known family of that name and fame in our community and served as a surgeon under the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
Emily gave birth to a son, Francis Preston Blair III, on September 3, 1891 but would endure complications from the childbirth and developed Puerperal Pyrexia, dying just over two weeks later on September 19th, 1891. She was only 32.
Emily had married Cary Montgomery Blair the previous year and the family was living in Huntsville, Alabama at the time of her death. Cary had come from a high pedigree family as well as he was the son of famous Union Civil War Gen. Frank Preston Blair. Frank's father also served as a US congressman from Missouri. Cary Blair's grandfather was Kentucky newspaper editor and politician Francis Preston Blair, who, in 1840, came across a mica-flecked spring near, what is today, Georgia Avenue near the Washington, DC line. The location today is Acorn Park at Blair Mill Rd., Newell St. and East-West Highway. The elder Blair decided he liked the location so much that he would acquire the property surrounding the spring and build a summer home for his family, away from the sweltering, malaria-infested confines of the capital city.
Mr. Blair constructed a 20-room mansion on the parcel and called it “Silver Spring.” Cary’s uncle, Montgomery Blair, represented Dred Scott in the landmark Supreme Court case and served as mayor of St. Louis and Postmaster General under President Lincoln.
Cary Blair would not recover from his wife’s premature death, and lived a reclusive existence in Colorado and Texas until his own death in 1944. Son Francis was adopted and raised in Philadelphia by Cary’s brother, dying himself in London in 1943.
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Emily was originally buried alongside her father in Huntsville's Maple Hill Cemetery, but their bodies (and gravestones) would be reinterred in a new family lot in Mount Olivet in October, 1915.