He may have died on 27 April 1840, as submitted by a long time member of Findagrave, but no source was given and it is therefore not used above. If anyone has a source for the 27th, let the manager of this memorial know.
William Blair was born in December 1760 to Alexander Blair and Elizabeth Cochran in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which is on the southern border of the state just two counties west of Philadelphia. William served in the Revolutionary War. There is a full account of his service as a soldier found in his pension declaration, which he applied for in 1832 at age 72. A summary of his service follows: when under military age in May 1778, he served as his father's substitute under Captain Ball for two months at Bald Eagle and Penn's Valley, Pennsylvania. He enlisted for five months in May 1779 in Captain Daugherty's company and served under General Sullivan in his campaign against the British and Indians of New York. He was permanently disabled [but with what is unknown] at the Battle of Chemung, but was mustered out with his regiment. This battle took place in August 1779 in Chemung, New York on the southern border south of the Finger Lakes. William again enlisted in June 1780 in Captain Gilbert McCoy's Rangers and "served on the frontier until he was discharged in January 1781."
He married Catherine Evans sometime around June 1781 in Pennsylvania, as he was married before he was 21. Catherine was born to Thomas Evans and Mary Rutledge, but we don't have her birth year. She and William had 12 children, but we only know of 11. William and Catherine were members of the Presbyterian Church and William served as a ruling elder where ever they went. A year after they married, William and Catherine migrated "by pack horse over the mountains [Allegheny Mountains] to Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania", perhaps due to available land. Westmoreland County was in western Pennsylvania. But just 2 years later they moved further west to Kentucky. They took a boat down the Ohio River from Fort Pitt [Pittsburgh]. The Ohio River today is the border between West Virginia and Ohio. They arrived at Limestone, which was a stop along the Ohio River after it turned west and followed today's border with Ohio and Kentucky. From Limestone they traveled 40 miles south over land to Cane Ridge [now Paris] in Bourbon County, Kentucky. Here a fort had been built to protect the pioneers
against the Indians. Was it an adventurous spirit that led them here? They housed themselves at the fort for a few years, but whether or not they also farmed the nearby land is not known. Or did William have a trade that was needed at a fort? By about 1798, they moved again, but this time to Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio, this being 2 counties north into Ohio from Kentucky. It is here that Catherine died about 1818; she would have been about age 55. She was buried in the Waugh Cemetery near Greenfield in Ross County, Ohio, but she has no grave marker. For whatever reason, William gathered up his family the next year in 1819 and started west again. This time he took his sons with their wives and made the first long stop at Flat Rock, Indiana. This would have been about 60 miles west into Indiana from Ohio. "They probably had passable trails to follow since Ohio had been a state for 16 years and Indiana for three. When on the road, William always rode and lived with his elder son, Thomas and his family. We know more about their travels, because family member, Sarah, shared stories about them to her grandchildren many years later. Sarah told them about "tying their feather beds on the cattle for the women and children to ride. They could not travel in winter because of snow and zero weather and it was not good to take babies on the road." So they stopped at Flat Rock for two years. Their next stop was in 1823 in Sangamon County in the middle of Illinois, but before 1828, they had again moved on to Schuyler County, Illinois, two counties further to the northwest. Ten years later they are laying claim for land in the Black Hawk Purchase in the Wisconsin Territory. Their land was in what is today's Des Moines County, Iowa and is right on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River;
they would have needed to take a ferry or barge to cross over into Iowa from Illinois. William died in April of 1840 at age 79 at his home and was the first adult buried in the Round Prairie Cemetery near Kossuth, Des Moines County, Iowa. He has an original grave marker plus a larger one erected later as more of a monument to his pioneering life, which lists the 6 states that he had lived in!