Henry Blair

Inventor

• Born: c. 1807
• Birthplace: Glen Ross, Montgomery County, Maryland
• Died: 1860
• Place of death: Montgomery County, Maryland

Blair was one of the first African Americans to receive a patent for an invention, a corn-seed-planting machine in 1834 and a similarly designed cotton-planting machine in 1836.

Early Life

Henry C. Blair was born around 1807 in Glen Ross, Montgomery County, Maryland; little is known about his early life. Glen Ross was a rural area near Washington, D.C. Most residents made their living from farming. Maryland allowed slavery, but as a border state it had a substantial population of free African Americans.

Federal patent records are the chief sources of information on Blair’s life. Blair was recorded in the patent registry as a “colored man,” the only such notation in the patent records. It is believed that Blair was a free man in part because slaves were not allowed to register patents in their own names. It also is likely that Blair was illiterate—a common situation at the time for both African American and white farmers—because he signed his patent application with an “X” mark.

Life’s Work

Blair received his first patent for a corn-seed-planting machine on October 14, 1834. Planting and harvesting corn was a labor-intensive affair, and any device that saved labor was of great benefit to farmers and the economy. Blair’s corn seeder received patent number 8447x. His patent application of September 1, 1834, known as a “specification,” includes a beautifully rendered drawing of the corn seed planter. This drawing may have been made by a patent official as part of a rigorous patent examination system. It certainly was based on Blair’s application. The drawing shows an elegantly designed two-wheeled machine with long, curved wooden handles that would be harnessed to workhorses. A harrow (triangular frame) with movable sharp teeth broke up the dirt. Two half-shovels opened a furrow. A hopper (funnel-shaped box) above the wheels dropped the corn seeds into the turned-up ground at regular intervals. Finally, a shovel plow at the tail of the machine spread dirt over the seeds and leveled the ground. The wheels were turned by cylinders. The plows were attached by a lengthy screw bolt. Blair’s corn planter deposited seeds in a checkerboard pattern, which also helped control weeds.

Blair received his second patent for a cotton planter on August 31, 1836. Like his corn seeder, Blair described his cotton planer as “new and useful” machine, qualities essential for his invention to be qualified for a patent. A new registry system recently had gone into effect, and Blair received patent number 15. There is no drawing of the cotton planter, but the text of the application specification is extant. The text was based on dictation made by Blair on April 27, 1836. Blair called his invention simply “the cotton planter.” It was based on a design similar to Blair’s corn seeder. Adjustable teeth allowed for furrowing of the ground. Again, cylinders allowed for the operation of the wheels and depositing of the cotton seeds into the ground. Dirt ridges were shaped by shovel plows, which also covered the dirt over the seeds. According to Blair’s application, his cotton planter was a new invention because the adjustable wheel disks and plows allowed for the making of either wide or narrow ridges.

Because Blair is the only inventor identified in the patent records as “colored,” he was long thought to be the first African American to receive a patent for an invention. Modern research, however, seems to confirm that the first African American to receive a patent was Thomas Jennings (1791-1859), a free man and tailor in New York who received a patent for a scouring (dry-cleaning) machine in 1821. The information about Blair and other early African American inventors was meticulously compiled by Henry Baker (1859-1928), an African American assistant patent examiner at the U.S. Patent Office at the turn of the twentieth century. Because the patent registry did not record the race of the patent holder, Baker gleaned most of his information from a survey about African American inventors issued by the patent office and twelve thousand pieces of correspondence with patent attorneys and agents. Baker compiled a fully documented list of 357 patents held by African Americans from 1834 to 1900. He published his findings in 1913. Baker believed Blair to have been the first African American to receive a patent.

The only other source of information about Blair’s patents is an article from the contemporary industrial magazine The Mechanics’ Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette, published by J. Cunningham of London. In an excerpt in the August 6, 1836, issue, an unnamed New York newspaper is quoted to the effect that Blair, a free man of color, was exhibiting in Washington, D.C., a corn-planting machine. The corn planter was described as a “very simple and ingenious” machine that could plant corn as rapidly as a horse could pull it, saving the labor of eight men. The newspaper excerpt also stated that Blair was in the process of altering his corn seed planter to invent a machine for planting cotton. Blair died in 1860 in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Significance

Blair was one of the first African Americans to receive a patent from the U.S. Patent Office for an invention. Although little is known about his life, it would have required tenacity and fortitude to register a patent as a man of color, especially one who likely was illiterate. The scanty records that exist about his inventions show that they were considered simple, ingenious, and efficient.

Bibliography

Baker, Henry. The Colored Inventor: A Record of Fifty Years. 1913. Reprint. Salem, N.H.: Ayer Press, 1988. Patent official Baker’s meticulously documented account of African American patent holders.

James, Portia. The Real McCoy: African American Invention and Innovation, 1619-1930. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985. Lavishly illustrated history of African American invention, with a crisp reproduction of the patent drawing for Blair’s 1834 corn seed planter.

Sluby, Patricia. The Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. A thoroughly detailed historical account of African American inventors. Photographically reproduces the written patent specification (application) for Blair’s cotton planter. The appendix features a complete roster of African American holders of utility patents since 1821.