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Patent holder profile

Henry Blair and the agricultural patent trail

Blair's seed-planter and cotton-planter patents show Black agricultural invention entering the federal patent record before the Civil War, while also exposing how rarely the record marked race directly.

Why this belongs on CultureUp

Blair is a public-record memory story.

Blair belongs here because his patents connect land, labor, agricultural machinery, federal recognition, and a rare racial marking in the public patent record.

Unique holder rank 2 / grant ranks 2 and 3Status: publish_readySource grade: A-

Patent: 8447X and 15: Seed-Planter; Cotton-Planter
Issue date: 1834-10-14 and 1836-08-31
Place: Glen Ross, Montgomery County, Maryland
Record strength: High patent-sequence strength: two public patent records are attached, but the first is an X-patent transcription with legibility limits.
Identity evidence: Strong enough for early Black American patentee treatment in this package, using patent history and legal-history context without adding private lineage claims.
Why this record matters: Blair shows Black agricultural invention entering federal patent memory through tools tied to planting, land, and labor before the Civil War.

What the public record supports

Seed-Planter, U.S. Patent X8447, dated October 14, 1834.
Cotton-Planter, U.S. Patent No. 15, dated August 31, 1836.
Legal-history source context showing Blair within the early free Black patent tradition.

What remains open

CultureUp is holding X8447 patent drawings out of media reuse until a primary patent-image reconciliation is attached.
The public record does not give a full community biography.

Article profile

Read the person, place, invention, and record separately.

CultureUp keeps each layer visible so a patent record does not get stretched into claims the source trail cannot support.

The patent record

The reviewed record includes Seed-Planter, U.S. Patent X8447, dated October 14, 1834, and Cotton-Planter, U.S. Patent No. 15, dated August 31, 1836.

The person in the record

Blair is read here through the public patent sequence and legal-history context. CultureUp does not use the patents to supply a full family biography.

Place attached to the claim

The patent text places Blair at Glen Ross, Maryland. That place anchor matters because agricultural invention cannot be separated from land, labor, and local public record.

The invention

The inventions are agricultural planting devices. CultureUp describes the category and patent trail without turning patent text into a complete labor or commercial history.

Business, labor, and use

The records show inventorship and federal recognition. They do not establish ownership of fields, manufacturing arrangements, market success, or the full labor network around the devices.

What the record cannot prove

The patents do not prove a complete biography, a private lineage, a full business trail, or the broader economics of antebellum agriculture.

Patent records

Grant trail

Grant rank and unique-holder rank are shown separately so repeat patentees do not distort the chronological sequence.

Grant rank 2Holder rank 2x patenthigh

8447X: Seed-Planter

Henry Blair / 1834-10-14

Early Black agricultural patent record; public transcription notes legibility gaps and should be paired with images for deeper archive work.

Residence: Glen Ross, Maryland
Category: agricultural machinery
Source status: high
Primary sources: 2 mapped

Grant rank 3Holder rank 2utility patenthigh

15: Cotton-Planter

Henry Blair / 1836-08-31

Second known Blair patent; grant rank differs from holder rank because Blair appears more than once.

Residence: Glen Ross, Maryland
Category: agricultural machinery
Source status: high
Primary sources: 2 mapped

Source trail

Claims stay tied to source limits.

Patent record

Patent text, case-file context, or patent-image trails that can support inventor, title, number, date, place, and claim language.

public patent transcription and imagespatent transcription

Seed-Planter, U.S. Patent X8447

Today in Science History / 1834 patent transcription

Supports: Provides public text and images for Henry Blair's Seed-Planter, X8447, dated October 14, 1834.
Limit: Transcription notes legibility gaps; use with source caution and pair with patent images where possible.
Last checked: 2026-06-08
Source URL: https://todayinsci.com/Events/Patent/SeedPlanter-BlairX8447.htm

patent text mirrorpatent text

US15A - Cotton-planter

Google Patents / 1836 patent record

Supports: Shows Henry Blair of Glen Ross, Maryland, U.S. Patent No. 15, Cotton-Planter, dated August 31, 1836.
Limit: Google Patents is a useful public mirror; primary archive verification remains preferred for case-file work.
Last checked: 2026-06-08
Source URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US15A/en

Under review

Useful sources that open sequence or identity questions but do not yet justify public rank changes.

legal-history scholarshiplegal-history context

Invention of a Slave

University of Kentucky College of Law repository / 2018

Supports: Explains slavery, patent oaths, legal capacity, and mentions free antebellum African American patentees including Robert Benjamin Lewis.
Limit: Strong context source, but Robert Benjamin Lewis needs a dedicated primary patent-record reconciliation before changing public rank cards.
Last checked: 2026-06-08
Source URL: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/law_facpub/619/