Henry Blair
Farmer who patented seed and cotton planters in the 1830s
At a glance
- Inventor
- Henry Blair
- Life
- c. 1807–1860
- Birthplace
- Montgomery County, Maryland
- Country
- United States
- Region
- United States
- Era
- 1800s
- Fields
- Agriculture
- Evidence
- Documented
- Records
- 0 in this archive
What they did
Blair received United States patents for a corn seed planter and a cotton planter in the 1830s, and is recorded in the Patent Office register as 'a colored man' — one of the very few such notations in the era's files.
Historical context
Planting by hand set the ceiling on how much ground a farm could work. Mechanical planters opened rows, dropped seed and covered it in one pass.
The legacy
Blair is the second African American known to this archive to have been granted a US patent. The specific document numbers fall within the X-patent series damaged in the 1836 Patent Office fire.
The evidence
Patent Office annual report entries, 1834 and 1836
Primary recordBlack inventors in the antebellum patent record
Institutional record
Documentation strength
- 2
- Sources
- 1
- Primary
- 2
- Publishers
Calculated from the sources actually attached to this record — the closer a source sits to the original document, the more it counts. It is never asserted by hand.