David Blair gunmaker Birmingham & Robert Burns

[Neil McLellan]

As it's Burn's a Night tonight here's a Birmingham connection with the great poet. Viv.

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It turns out that Burns' excise pistols are not the ones given by Blair. The "Blair Pistols" given to Burns at Ellisland were well made double barrelled holster pistols and are now those on display at the National Museum of Scotland. His flintlock excise pistols were single barrelled and are now owned by National Trust of Scotland. They can be viewed at these organisations online. See Wilkins F. Lock Stock & Barrel: Robert Burns, Dr William Maxwell & a Pair of Pistols. Wyre Forrest Press: 2009 for an account of how the correct attributions were made.

 

[Neil McLellan]

Thomas Gainsborough's painting "An Officer of the 4th Regiment of foot" dating from 1776-1780 gives an idea of what a proper officers fusee or fusil (type of musket) would have looked like at the time that Blair and other gunmakers were constructing them (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...4th_Regiment_of_Foot_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg) and somehow seems to add a further perspective to the subject of this thread.

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And you can see and read about one made by Blair here: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/britishmilitariaforums/a-real-officers-fuzee-t22990.html

 

[Neil McLellan]

There is a summary of the story about David Blair, Robert Burns, Radicals and Birmingham on Birmingham’s Archives and Collections site ( https://birmingham.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO_3ccb1ed7-2670-4846-ad3a-9f79cf1e7770/ ).

I’ve had an interest in this for some time but have only now managed fully to decipher David Blair’s Will (see: PROB 11/1566/321, National Archives, Kew). His Will was signed on 21st March 1814, two months before he died and reveals:

• His marriage to Jane was in fact his second marriage
• Jane Hannah Blair’s maiden name was Wilson
• David Blair’s eldest son, also David, was from his first marriage
• His children are identified as “David Blair by a former Marriage, Jane Mary, Sarah, and Margaret, Ellen, and William Blair and the Child of which my said Wife is now pregnant”. [This unborn child was probably later named Isabella who sadly died aged 2 years on June 8th 1816 according to a notice in Aris’s Birmingham Gazette of June 10th].
• In a Codicil (letter A) appended to the Will on 22nd March 1814, Blair states “It having been omitted to be mentioned in my Will I do hereby empower you as two of my Executors either to continue the weekly Allowance which I have long been accustomed to pay to each of my two Sisters in Dumfries or any part thereof or to withdraw it altogether as the Case may appear to you consistent or otherwise with Justice to my Wife and Children…”. This provides clear evidence of Blair’s family connection with Dumfries and so indirectly supports the idea that Blair came from there too. It also helps to explain how his connection with Burns and the Maxwells might have arisen, both of whom lived in or close to Dumfries.