The Magistrate Nobody Appealed

Did you know? In 1755 a Scotch-Irishman named Alexander Blair came to Chester County, Pennsylvania, where he stopped awhile and married Rachel Carson. The two of them came on to Dublin Township, bought part of the Croghan tract and settled there. Lytle's 1876 county history puts their coming somewhere about 1765; Africa's 1883 history says Blair came to the township in 1784 or 1785.

From a very early day the old Blair house, built by Alexander Blair, was the center of trade and travel. All the wagons going to and from Baltimore made it their stopping place, and the lawyers passing between Chambersburg and Huntingdon stayed the night there. Africa says Blair hung out his sign in 1790 as a tavern and store. Dr. J. A. Shade, who furnished the family's account for Lytle's history, says the old house had burned the previous fall.

John Blair, one of the couple's sons and daughters born there, is called in that account a marked man in the history of Dublin Township. He bought some two hundred acres more of the Croghan land adjoining his father's property and soon turned it from native woods into a beautiful farm. For a good many years, from quite a young man, he was Justice of the Peace and a ruling elder in the Presbyterian church.

In all the long years he held the office of magistrate, the account says, the records of Huntingdon would show that no appeal or certiorari was ever taken in any case he decided, and that no criminal business passed from his docket to the Court of Quarter Sessions. He worked for the good of the neighborhood to the very end of his useful life, and he died at a good age in 1841, much regretted.

Checked 2026-10-30 · County histories and primary sources, read in full

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