Sampson Salter Blowers

Sampson Salters Blowers, sculpture by Richard Westmacott, St. Paul's Church, Halifax Sampson Salter Blowers (March 10, 1742 – October 25, 1842) was a North American lawyer, Loyalist and jurist from Nova Scotia who, along with Chief Justice Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange, waged "judicial war" in his efforts to free Black Nova Scotian slaves from their owners, leading to the decline of slavery in Nova Scotia.

Career After graduating with a Master of Arts from Harvard College in 1765, he studied law at Thomas Hutchinson's office. He became a barrister at the Massachusetts Superior Court in 1770. A very successful trial lawyer, he worked with Josiah Quincy and John Adams in defending the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre, a March 1770 confrontation in which British soldiers fired into a crowd of a few hundred Bostonians who had been verbally harassing and throwing projectiles at them.

Considered a Loyalist, he was forced to relocate to England in 1774. He resettled in America in 1777, in Newport, Rhode Island (then still under British control) as a judge in the vice admiralty court, later moving to New York, and then in 1783 moved permanently to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

In Halifax he built a busy law practice, and in 1784 was named attorney general of Nova Scotia. Blowers was raised by his grandfather, Sampson Salter. In 1774, he married Sarah Kent, daughter of Massachusetts Attorney General Benjamin Kent. In Halifax Blowers lived at the corner of Barrington Street and the street now named after him. Blowers died in Halifax in 1842, aged 100, soon after he broke his hip in a fall. Most of his estate went to his adopted daughter, Sarah Ann Anderson, who had married William Blowers Bliss. He is buried in the crypt of St. Paul's Church (Halifax) and his wife is buried in Camphill Cememtery. Although he lost a substantial amount of property in the American War of Independence, he regained his wealth in Nova Scotia, leaving a large estate to his adopted daughter.