1194 - Blair/Fairbank
Black-and-white photo of a tall, ornate gravestone marked “Blair” standing alone in a grassy prairie cemetery, with rolling hills of Sully County, South Dakota, stretching into the distance under a partly cloudy sky.
Two forces shaped the early history of Fairbank Township: the railroad and a group of enterprising black settlers.
When the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad reached Pierre in 1880, there were visions of continuing on to the west coast—but the Great Sioux Reservation stood in the way. Exploring possible routes, they discovered a gravel crossing on the north side of the Little Bend. Thinking this would surely be the route the railroad would choose, on the 8th of October 1883 the Missouri Valley Townsite Company filed the plat for the town of Fairbank with the Register of Deeds for Sully County in Clifton. The town was named for Mr. Fairbank, an investor in the Chicago & Northwestern railroad.
Fairbank was a contender in the fight for the Sully County seat, and was even suggested as a potential site for the capital when Dakota Territory became a state. However, rumors that the railroad might bypass Fairbank began to circulate in 1884. With the loss of faith that the railroad would come through, the flurry of development in Fairbank dried up.
Ben Blair was one of the people who purchased and held on to lots in Fairbank. Ben Blair and his brother Patrick came to Fairbank Township in 1882. They decided Fairbank Township looked promising and in 1883 their parents joined them. Ben’s father, Norvel, was born a slave in Tennessee. After being emancipated in 1863, Norvel Blair left Tennessee and was reunited with his wife and seven children on a farm in Illinois. When he was barred from voting in an election, he decided to move his family west. He brought a string of Morgan horses with him from Illinois and became a renowned breeder of racehorses.
The Blairs wanted to share their freedom with other African-Americans. In 1906, Ben Blair hosted a meeting in Yankton and created the Northwestern Homestead Movement, designed to relocate blacks from Southern states to farms in South Dakota and the Upper Midwest. The Blair family even pledged 1,700 acres upon which to build an agricultural college.
The group considered colony locations in four counties but only Sully County’s became successful, thanks to Norvel’s daughter Betty. She worked for a real estate company in Iowa and is credited with selling much of the land. Betty traveled back east to recruit buyers, and even got them to believe there weren’t any flies in South Dakota.
The Sully County Colored Colony had as many as 200 members and was a bustling community for over 50 years. But hard times in the 1930s drove many to larger cities like Huron, Pierre and Minneapolis. Today the Blair cemetery, nestled near the Fuller Dam, remains as a reminder of the refuge Sully County became for men and women seeking freedom.