He raised funds for new colleges and founded numerous congregations and churches in areas of new western settlement in Tennessee and Kentucky.

His grandfather, William Blackburn, was born in Ballymena, Ulster in 1702, and emigrated to Yorktown with the rest of his clan in 1719.

After being orphaned at the age of eleven, Blackburn moved to eastern Tennessee in 1787 to live with relatives.

[2] In the 1790s Blackburn began his ministerial career as pastor at the New Providence Church, which he founded in Maryville, Tennessee.

Receiving permission from them, he founded two schools for Cherokee boys in southeast Tennessee—one in 1804 on the Hiwassee River near Charleston, Bradley County, which future Cherokee Chief John Ross attended; and in 1806 one at the mouth of Sale Creek, Hamilton County.

Together the schools had an enrollment of about 100 students, mostly bicultural Cherokee-American boys, often sons of traders, who found the English lessons more useful.

Blackburn closed both schools in 1809 or 1810 after his reputation was severely damaged due to a scandal related to alcohol.