Silas Jackson Blair was born in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, October 18, 1832. He was the sixth of the seven surviving children of
Samuel
and Mercy Blair. He was named in honor of his maternal grandfather Silas Chidester,
but was commonly known as "Jack." He came to Ogle County, Illinois with his
parents when he was five years old and grew to manhood there. As he grew the land
about him went from a virgin prairie to a settled community providing hundreds
of settlers with a prosperous livelihood. It was a novel experience to grow from innocence
as the land around you did the same; to watch the primitive log cabins being
replaced by large frame dwellings; to see the lumbersome ox drawn wagons joined by
the speeding trains; to witness schools, churches and businesses replace the lonesome grass prairie.
Silas helped to build the first school in
Adeline, Illinois. He worked
the farm with his parents in Adeline and helped his brother, William build a prosperous hotel
business in the town of Mt. Morris, Illinois. Later, Silas and his brother, William, became partners
in a grocery business in Mt. Morris. Below right is an advertisement touting there venture
that appeared in the Mt Morris newspaper in 1857.
He met
Charlotte
Cecilia Richardson, a talented young beauty who was born in Canada and came to
Illinois with her family, settling in the Forreston area. They married on October 3, 1854 and four years later their first child Ida
Laura was born on June 25, 1858. Two years later there was another charming addition,
Harriet Cecilia on October 26, 1860. His
charmed life took a turn in the year that followed--1861. On April
12th the nation changed forever when the first shots of the Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter
in South Carolina. In June, his beloved mother, Mercy, passed away and just as he was about to board a train
to go off to war, his father, Samuel, died. What was he feeling as he boarded that train on September 9th, 1861? Grief over the loss of his
parents; guilt that his volunteering for war may have hastened his father's
death; worry over what would become of his wife and two beautiful
daughters in his absence? What compels a man to set all these personal emotions aside and
risk his life for his country? Perhaps it was a passionate sense of patriotism, a sense
of duty to give back to a country that had given him and his family so
much? We will never know for sure, but surely honor must be paid him for such a
courageous and selfless decision.
Jack never came home, he was killed at Pittsburgh
Landing during the Battle of Shiloh on April 7th, 1862. For many years the people of Forreston and Adeline would honor their Civil War dead on "Decoration
Day," the forerunner of today’s Memorial Day. The townspeople would gather
together and form a procession that marched to the cemetery, the band playing some of
their fine pieces and the ladies carrying armloads of flowers to be strewn upon the graves
of their fallen heroes. Besides Silas, Andrew J. Hammond,
David Bell
and others were honored in this manner.
