Entity | Brand Blanshard

Percy Brand Blanshard (/ˈblænʃərd/; August 27, 1892 – November 19, 1987) was an American philosopher known primarily for his defense of reason and rationalism. A powerful polemicist, by all accounts he comported himself with courtesy and grace in philosophical controversies and exemplified the "rational temper" he advocated. Brand Blanshard was born August 27, 1892 in Fredericksburg, Ohio. His parents were Francis, a Congregational minister, and Emily Coulter Blanshard, Canadians who met in high school in Weston, Ontario. The freethinker and sometime The Nation editor Paul Beecher Blanshard was his fraternal twin. During a visit to Toronto in 1893, their mother Emily fell down stairs while holding a kerosene lamp. She died of burns the next day. The Rev. Mr. Blanshard brought his sons to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for maternal care by his mother, Orminda Adams Blanshard, widow of Methodist clergyman Shem Blanshard. Francis briefly left them in her care to pastor a church in Helena, Montana. In 1899 the four moved south to Edinburg, Ohio. Upon being diagnosed with tuberculosis, Francis was advised to seek the drier climate of the American West. In 1902, Francis Blanshard bade his mother and sons goodbye. The family moved northwest to Bay View, Michigan, while Francis moved alone to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where, in 1904, he died, alone in a tent.