John Blanchard

Who was John Blanchard?

John Blanchard was a Whig member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

John Blanchard was born in Peacham, Vermont. He taught school, and graduated from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1812. He moved to Pennsylvania in 1812 and settled in York, Pennsylvania, where he again taught school. He studied law, was admitted to the bar March 31, 1815, and commenced practice in Lewistown, Pennsylvania. He moved to Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, the same year and continued the practice of law.

Blanchard was elected as a Whig to the Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth Congresses. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1848. He died in Columbia, Pennsylvania, en route from Washington, D.C., to his home in 1849. Interment in Union Cemetery in Bellefonte.

His son Edmund Blanchard became a prominent businessman in Bellefonte.