Montgomery Blair. Montgomery Blair was an American politician and lawyer from Maryland.
He served in the Lincoln administration cabinet as Postmaster-General from 1861 to 1864, during the Civil War. He was the son of Francis Preston Blair, elder brother of Francis Preston Blair Jr. and cousin of B. Gratz Brown.
Blair was born in Franklin County, Kentucky, site of the state capital of Frankfort. His father, Francis Preston Blair, Sr., was editor of the Washington Globe and a prominent figure in the Democratic Party during the Jacksonian era.
As a boy, Montgomery often listened to the talk of his father and Andrew Jackson. Blair graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1835, but after a year's service in the Seminole War, he left the Army, studied., and began practice at, in 1839.
In 1836, Blair left the Army after serving one year, married Caroline Rebecca Buckner of Virginia, and began studying law at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. Blair began to practice law in 1839 at St Louis, Missouri, working as a United States district attorney. After the death of his first wife, Carolina, in 1844, he later married Mary Elizabeth Woodbury, daughter of Levi Woodbury. After serving as United States district attorney and later as judge of the court of common pleas, Blair moved to Maryland in 1852 and devoted himself to law practice principally in the United States Supreme Court. H