Scope and Contents From the Series:

Some folders in the biographical material series are more thoroughly organized in the PDF inventory available at http://scrc.swem.wm.edu/findingaids/UA_1980_128%20blair,%20james.pdf Consult a staff member for assistance.

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Bulk from 1940-1941. Correspondence and notes, primarily of library staff, documenting efforts to research Blair's life and noting errors in published biographies.

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Transcriptions or excerpts quoting from official records, private correspondence (neither to nor from Blair), and contemporary published works that mention Blair.

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Photocopies and transcriptions of correspondence to and from James Blair.

Scope and Contents Photostats relating to James Blair joining the University of Edinburgh Library. Photostat of the title page of the book which Blair presented to the Edinburgh Library on becoming a member of it; photostat of Blair's signature on joining the Edinburgh University Library; photostat of the agreement he signed. Copy of Blair's commission as commissary. Photocopy of commission, transcription of commission, translation of commission from Latin, bibliographic citations. A Vindication of Sr. Edmond...

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Photostat and photocopy of the published pamphlet Papers Relating to an Affidavit... (London: 1727), made in 1942 from the volume owned by the John Carter Brown Library; photocopy of handwritten document entitled A Defence of Mr. Blair; and a Confutation of an Anonymous [sic] Pamphlet, Lately Dispersed by General Nicholson, Entitled Papers Relating to an Affidavit...

Scope and Contents Brief extracts from two sermons preached in Bruton Church by Blair, taken from W. A. R. Goodwin's Historical Sketch of Bruton Church; Photostat of title page of James Blair, Our Saviour's Divine Sermon on the Mount...to which is Prefix'd a Paraphrase on the Whole Sermon of the Mount... (London: second edition, 1740) and Photostat of Blair's Paraphrase on Our Saviour's Sermon on the Mount (1729); photocopy of Danish edition of Our Saviour's Divine Sermon on the Mount (Copenhagen, 1761?). Both...

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Bibliographic citation for Blair's death notice in Scot's Magazine (July 1743); page 643 of The Gentleman's Magazine (August 1743) with Blair listed under Deaths; brochure entitled Merely to Survive Is Not Enough, comparing Dr. Woodbridge's building a fallout shelter for his neighborhood in 1961 with Dr. Blair's creation of the College of William and Mary; photographic copy of signature, James Blair President.

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Itemized bill for funeral expenses.

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Handwritten sermon said to be by James Blair, along with correspondence giving reasons why James Blair was probably not the author.

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Inventory of portraits of James Blair owned by the college, completed in 1968; notes miniature owned by Virginia Historical Society; photostat of silhouette; copy of published reproduction of college-owned portrait.

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Three photographs of an oil painting by J. Hargreaves, in London, 1705, of Sarah Harrison, wife of James Blair. Portrait owned by the college.

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Notes on inscriptions on the graves of James Blair and Sarah Harrison Blair; page from "Notable Trees of Virginia," Bulletin of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute 24 (March 15, 1931) illustrated with a photograph of the sycamore tree that separates the two graves; drawing of the tree and Mrs. Blair's damaged gravestone.