Ruth Blair
American librarian and archivist

Ruth Blair (March 17, 1889 – July 24, 1974) was an American librarian and archivist in the U.S. state of Georgia. She was the first woman state historian of Georgia and the first executive secretary of the Atlanta Historical Society. She helped organize the Society of American Archivists in 1936. Named Atlanta's Woman of the Year in 1955, she has been called "one of the most distinguished archivists in America".
Early life
Ruth Blair was born in Douglas County, Georgia, on March 17, 1889, to Hiram Columbus Blair and Nancy Ann Blair (née Mozley). Her father was born in 1836 and served in the Confederate Army; her mother was born in 1851. She had two immediate siblings, Lillian and Hiram Jr. Her father was a successful farmer and briefly represented Douglas County in the Georgia General Assembly. Her father also had been married once before, and thus she had eight half-siblings including Daniel Webster Blair, who was a superior court judge.
After her father's death in 1901, the family moved to Lithia Springs, Georgia.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ruth Blair” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.