Julie McDonald Commentary: Blair Family Has Deep Roots in Lewis County

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Looking at the street map of Lewis County, like in many other places, it’s easy to derive a bit of history looking at the monikers and recalling the names of early pioneers.

For example, Blair Road, which connects to the east end of Gore Road in the Onalaska area, was named for William Roland Blair, who settled on Gore Road in 1903 when he arrived in Lewis County with his in-laws, Harrison and Cyrene (Smyth) Fuller, according to John Blair, a great-nephew who graduated from Onalaska High School in 1977.

William was born Jan. 5, 1869 in Meeker County, Minn., to Jacob and Louisa (Hutchins) Blair, a couple from Kentucky and Virginia, respectively, who moved west to Minnesota during the Civil War in 1864. One of their older sons, George, moved west to Spokane in 1885, and eventually he and most of the Blair family moved to Lewis County.

William, who had lost an arm in a threshing machine at the age of 18, married Ida Ann Fuller in 1894, and they moved to Lewis County with her parents in 1902. The Fullers settled with their large family in Salkum, while William and Ida lived in the Onalaska area. Ida died in 1905, and a year later William married Katherine B. Gore, the daughter of Hollis C. and Mary (Towner) Gore, who lived nearby.

A singer and an ordained Baptist minister, Rev. William Roland Blair was known for teaching others to sing in the early 1900s. He helped start two schools in Lewis County — one at Salkum and another on Burnt Ridge in Onalaska, according to John Blair. He often filled in as minister at the Salkum church.

Shortly after William arrived, his younger brother, Benjamin “Frank” Blair, followed him to Onalaska with his wife, Emma (King) Blair and their children. Frank also brought their mother, Louisa, and a brother, John.

By 1915, their older brother, George, who had moved from Spokane to Lewis County, owned and operated the Toledo Telephone Company, which he sold in 1920. George lived in the Toledo area as did his sons Frank and Howard.

His brother, John, was a bachelor who lived in Toledo and then in the Winston Creek area east of Salkum.

“He built homes, and stories often told of his homemade moonshine,” according to his great-nephew John Blair of Onalaska. During a visit to a doctor at the age of 80, the physician told him that his whiskey drinking and rolled cigarettes would kill him. It did, four years later, in May 1955 in Tacoma.

Frank, the youngest of Jacob and Louise’s sons, settled on Gore Road with his large family of 11 children: Frances Finney, Jacob “Jake,” Beatrice Louise Hawes, Ethel Snodgrass, Mary Dedrick, John (who was killed by a horse team at 13), Frederick “Fred,” Clark, Ruby Keenan, Emma Snodgrass Bullock, and George. As children, they attended Greenwood and Bennett schools before the small schools were consolidated into the Onalaska School District.

During the 1920s, Frank Blair owned a watch and clock repair shop and gas pump on Gore Road, and his mother smoked a corn cob pipe until she died at 87 in 1923, according to family lore. Like his brother, Frank was a well-versed Bible scholar and taught Sunday school at the Bennett Schoolhouse in Onalaska. He also helped build Leonard Road when it was extended over the hill from Onalaska to the White Pass Highway, State Route 12.



His daughter, Frances Finney, was known for her iris gardens and created a new variety she registered as “Onalaska Skies.” Her husband, Bob, was a log scaler for the Carlisle Lumber Co. in Onalaska.

Frank’s son, Jake, worked as a steam donkey engineer for the Onalaska Logging Company in 1917, when he registered for the draft. He later became a school bus driver and owned an 80-acre farm on Gore Road. Frank’s son Fred served in France with the Army during World War II. Son George lost his hand in a sawmill accident in 1961. He was well-known for working the sideline yardage chains at local football games, said his son, John Blair.

“My father recounted stories of his walking to school, and in the winter, followed a time or two by a cougar,” John Blair said.

The descendants of the Blair family eventually spread throughout Lewis County, making their homes in Toledo, Winlock, Napavine, Salkum, and elsewhere.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Daily Chronicle reported on the annual Blair family reunion, which took place in August at the Lewis and Clark State Park. It brought together the descendants of Frank and Emma Blair. Frank married Kitty Wright in December 1942, three years after Emma died.

William Blair died Nov. 14, 1949, in Tacoma, 23 years after the death of his second wife, Katherine. They had a son, Alfred, and three daughters — Viva Campbell, Esther Bence, and Elsie Lilpstack. William’s brother Frank died at 79 in May 1952, and his older brother George, who was born in Virginia in 1858, died in July 1934 in Toledo at 76. According to findagrave.com, George and his wife, Mary Ann (Keesee) Blair, had seven children — Maude Biggar, Minnie Logsdon, Frank, Harold, Ann Mellish, Howard, and Lawrence.

So next time you pass Blair Road, you’ll know a bit more about the family that gave the road its name.

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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.