Edward was a Yale graduate in 1879, who wrote several books including a history of the Chicago Club,[3] and spent his life working in his father's firm.
When it looked as if America would enter World War I in 1917, Blair was involved with the Four-Minute Men of Chicago, giving speeches during film intermissions.
After the war, he continued with Lee, Higginson,[8] but due to the underwriting of Swedish magnate Ivar Kreuger the firm went bankrupt.[when?]
Their firm was opened on January 8, 1935, as Blair, Bonner & Company with an office in the Marshall Field Building at 135 South LaSalle Street in Chicago.
The firm was managed by five partners: William Blair, Wallace Flower, Donald Miehls, Lee Ostrander and Daniel Ritter.
In 1912 her mother endowed the summer camp for poor children of Hull House known as the Bowen Country Club.
Adler designed a house for Blair on an 11-acre (4.5 ha) estate they purchased in 1926 when the Crab Tree Farm of Henry Williams Blodgett in Lake Bluff, Illinois, was broken up by Scott Sloan Durand (1869–1949).
His son Edward also built a house on an adjacent parcel, designed by George Fred Keck.
The estate was added to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Lake County, Illinois, on January 31, 2008.
[citation needed] The Pritzker Military Museum & Library holds the William McCormick Blair Collection, which consists of letters, news bulletins, pamphlets, publications, newspaper clippings and photographs related to Blair's service as the National Director of the Four Minute Men, a division of the Committee on Public Information during World War I.
[22] See Chaim M. Rosenberg, The International Harvester Company: A History of the Founding Families and Their Machines (McFarland, 2019).