Henry Taylor Blow

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Henry Taylor Blow (July 15, 1817 – September 11, 1875) was a two-term U.S. Representative from Missouri and an ambassador to both Venezuela and Brazil.

Blow was born in Southampton County, Virginia to Captain Peter and Elizabeth (Taylor) Blow, owners of the famous slave Dred Scott. He moved with his parents to Huntsville, Alabama, where his father unsuccessfully tried farming. In 1830 the family moved again to St. Louis, Missouri, where Peter Blow died two years later.

Henry Blow attended Saint Louis University in 1830 and 1831, but was forced by finances to drop out. He entered business selling paint and oil, followed by the lead mines which eventually would make him wealthy. He married Minerva Grimsley (1821–1875), daughter of Colonel Thornton and Susan (Stark) Grimsley, by whom he had eight children. One of them, Susan Elizabeth Blow, became a noted nineteenth century educator.

Political life

Blow was a member of the Missouri Senate and served from 1854 to 1858. He was strictly against the Dred Scott Decision in 1857, siding with his family's former slave, Dred Scott, in Scott's quest for freedom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott

A Union supporter during the American Civil War, Blow was appointed Minister to Venezuela in 1861 by President Abraham Lincoln, and served until the following year. He was then elected to the United States House of Representatives as an Unconditional Unionist. He was reelected as a Republican, serving until 1867. Blow served on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He chose not to run for reelection in 1866.

Retirement from Politics

Blow resumed his business interests, but in 1869 was appointed Minister to Brazil by President Ulysses S. Grant, serving one year. In 1874, he became one of the original members of the Washington, D.C, Board of Commissioners, again serving for a year.

Henry Taylor Blow died in 1875 at age 58 in Saratoga, New York. He was interred in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, and was survived by six of his children.