Colonel Ephraim Blaine had two sons named Robert and James, and each of these sons named his son for Colonel Ephraim Blaine.  Old Ephraim Blaine did not leave his property to his sons, but to these two grandsons, (1) Ephraim, who remained in Carlisle, and (2) Ephraim Lyon Blaine, who grew up in western Pennsylvania.  Ephraim Lyon Blaine was named for his mother, Miss Lyon, the daughter of Samuel Lyon from about Carlisle.  Ephraim Lyon Blaine married Miss Gillespie, a devout member of the Roman Catholic Church, but most of their seven children—­five boys and two girls—­adhered to the traditional faith of the Blaines.  The second of these sons, James Gillespie Blaine, is the subject of this sketch.  He would have inherited large blended fortunes, had not his father, like his grandfather, been a spendthrift.  Therefore, soon after James G. Blaine was born his parents had to move out of the big house which they could no longer keep up, and occupy a frame-house called the Pringle dwelling, also in West Brownsville, about a quarter of a mile distant.  Here young Elaine lived and went to school both in Brownsville and in West Brownsville, until his father was elected prothonotary of the county, in 1843, when the whole family removed to Little Washington, twenty-four miles distant.

James G. entered Washington College in 1843, being then thirteen years of age, and became at once prominent as a scholar among the two or three hundred other lads from all parts of the country.  He was also a leader in athletic sports.  He was not a bookworm, but he was a close student and possessed the happy faculty of assimilating knowledge from books and tutors far more easily and quickly than most of his fellows.  In debating-societies he held his own well, and was conspicuous by his ability to control and direct others.

After leaving college young Blaine started for Kentucky to carve out his own fortune.  He went to Blue Lick Springs and became a professor in the Western Military Institute, in which there were about four hundred and fifty boys.  A retired officer who was a student there at the time relates that Professor Blaine was a thin, handsome, earnest young man, with the same fascinating manners he has now.  He was popular with the boys, who trusted him and made friends with him from the first.  He knew the given name of every one, and he knew his shortcomings and his strong points.  He was a man of great personal courage, and during a fight between the faculty of the school and the owners of the springs, involving some questions about the removal of the school, he behaved in the bravest manner, fighting hard but keeping cool.  Revolvers and knives were freely used, but Blaine only used his well-disciplined muscle.  Colonel Thornton F. Johnson was the principal of the school, and his wife had a young ladies’ school at Millersburg, twenty miles distant.  There Blaine met Miss Harriet Stanwood, who subsequently became his wife.  She was a Maine girl of excellent family sent to Kentucky to be educated.