BLUE,

Dr. John Holmes

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Dr Blue and his son arrived at Rio de Janeiro on the British barque PETER C WARWICK (Capt Chichester) from Baltimore on 16 Apr 1865; they took the coastal steamer PEDRO II on 9 May to Santa Catarina.

Four years later, Dr J H Blue returned to Rio de Janeiro on 2 Aug 1869 from Santa Catarina on the SÃO VICENTE, and sailed for Hampton Roads on 8 Sep on the very same PETER C WARWICK.

Henry Blue returned to the US later, with a wife.On 21 Jul 1872 he arrived at Rio de Janeiro form Santos on the steamer PAULISTA and departed for Baltimore on 27 Jul on the British barque CAMPANERO.

[information transcribed from Rio de Janeiro newspapers by Betty Antunes de Oliveira]

According to Judith McKnight Jones "Soldado Descansa!", Dr John Blue had a number of letters in the newspaper "Daily Missouri Republican" (presumably in 1865-66) extolling the virtues of life in Paranagua, Paraná.In addition to his work as a doctor, he had a farm in the colony on the Assunguy River.

I found this on the web, from DeBow’s Review, January 1866 by Dr John H Blue:
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Judge John Guillet, an old and highly-esteemed citizen of Carroll county, with several families, and a Mr. Reavia, of Cooper county, Missouri, with his interesting family, are now here (August), making about forty Americans in all, the nucleus of a good settlement around Colonel M.L. Swain, of Louisiana, who has located and paid for a body of land on the Assunguy, a branch of the Serra-Negro river, which empties into this bay from the northwest, and which is the only practicable route to the mines, and to the rich open country beyond. We already have houses and a little store, and will soon have a little blacksmith shop and a school house, the Government giving us five hundred milreis a year to support a school. We have small crops of corn, beans, and potatoes, growing finely, and expect to keep ahead of the wants of new-comers, in the way of food.All of this dates from about the time that I came into the bay, a period, a period of less than three months.
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I have seen reference to Dr John Blue being buried in the "Confederado" Campo Cemetery at Santa Bárbara d'Oeste SP (see http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ILMACOUP/2000-03/0953733178http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ILMACOUP/2000-03/0953733178 ).However I do not believe that to be so.There is no reference to him as having any connection with the Confederado settlers in that area, and he does not appear in the Tombstone Records.  (Editor's note:  See below death notice   He died on  Tuesday, March 16, 1875 in Missouri.)

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His son, 

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Dr. Henry Lewis Blue  married Jane Crisp

BIRTH DATE:Nov 1846

BIRTH PLACE:Saint Joseph, Buchanan County, Missouri, United States of America

DEATH DATE:12 Oct 1924

DEATH PLACE:Gonzales, Gonzales County, Texas, United States of America

CEMETERY:Gonzales Masonic Cemetery

BURIAL OR CREMATION PLACE:Gonzales, Gonzales County, Texas, United States of America

HAS BIO?:Y

SPOUSE:Jane Paschal Crisp

BIRTH11 Sep 1849

Marshall County, Mississippi, USA

DEATH21 Jun 1917 (aged 67)

Gonzales, Gonzales County, Texas, USA

BURIAL

Gonzales Masonic Cemetery

Gonzales, Gonzales County, Texas, USA 

Obit-Gonzales Inquirer Oct. 1924

Dr. H. L. Blue, esteemed old resident, who departed this life on the Sabbath, Oct. 12, 1924, at his home near Gonzales, was born at St. Joseph, Mo., in 1847, and was a son of Dr. John Blue, a prominent surgeon and Alison a journalist, who once owned and edited a leading newspaper in Brunswick, Mo.

In early young manhood he married Miss Jane Crisp, sister of Mrs. J. C. Jones Sr., of this city, whose father, with family, moved from Columbus, Texas, to South America during the carpet bag rule.

Dr. Blue Sr., and his young son, the subject of this sketch, then about 20 years old age, were among the southern families then exploring this county. It was on this visit the young people met, fell in love and were married at Santa Barbara by an Episcopal minister, Rev. Joseph Dunn. Returning to this country, they lived in Missouri for a time, Mrs. Blue's love for Texas bringing them to Gonzales.

In 1883 they moved to Colorado at the urgent request of his brother, the gold fever being on there.
Nearly twenty years ago Dr. and Mrs. Blue returned to Gonzales to make their home, setting on the place near town where Dr. Blue passed his last days.

Dr. and Mrs. Blue when they first came to Gonzales about 1872, united with the Methodist church, Dr. Blue being of that denomination. In later years he was a member of the Church of the Messiah. Mrs. Blue was called to her eternal reward July 30, 1917.

Dr. Blue's death was very unexpected, as he was in his usual health and while in town Thursday was in an unusually happy frame of mind. He took delight in writing poems and on that day had received word that several had been accepted by publishers.

He lived in the home with Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Green, who were devoted to him,giving him every care and attention in his declining years.

Following the funeral services conducted Monday at the Church of the Messiah by Rev. B. S. McKenzie, a former rector of the church here his remains were laid to rest in the Masonic Cemetery beside those of his wife, pretty autumn flowers mantling his last resting place.

The acting pall bearers were R. S. Dilworth, George N. Dilworth, Sam P. Jones, Edward M. Sweeney, J. D. Sayers and B. B. Hoskins Jr.

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The Confederados, Old South Immigrants in Brazil

by Dawsey

Page 53-54

 

 Even before the former Confederates made new lives in Mexico, Canada, Cuba, and even Europe, however, another genre of former Confederates were planning to go even further away from the reunited Union. Indeed, only one week after Appomattox, on April 16, 1865, Missourian Dr. John H. Blue and his son sailed from Baltimore on the Warwick for Rio de Janeiro. Blue, along with Colonel M. S. Swain and Horace Manley Lane of Louisiana, eventually became one of the principal promoters of a Confederate colony in Parana in the southern part of Brazil.  With his wife and two sons, Lane sailed from Baltimore on May 16, one month after the departure of Dr. Blue, on the Grey Eagle bound for Rio de Janeiro. Other Southerners padded the ranks of the Parana colony when Judge John Guillet and twenty members of his family sailed from New York on July 1, 1865. After others joined the Blue, Lane, and Guillet families, American numbers in Parana eventually totaled as many as two hundred persons.

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Confederate accident to Latin America II.    Page 161

By Lawrence F. Hill

 

Dixieland in South America

 

The southerners who ventured into the South American Tropics established themselves over the vast area extending from the Brazilian province on the south to the Venezuelan valley of the Orinoco on the north. Paying little or no attention to family or small groups which stopped at places to numerous to mention, it may be of interest to locate the most important settlements and attempt such characterization as available materials will permit.

 

At the southern extremity of the line of settlement was the colony on the Assunguy River, a contributor to the Parana Bay, in the south Brazilian province of Parana. In the summer following the close of the war, Colonel M. S. Swain of Louisiana selected rlands for himself and bereaved friends which became the nucleus of the settlement.  A companion of Colonel Swain was Horace Lane of the same state.

 

The two sons of Louisiana were not to remain unto themselves for long. After four months, they were joined by Dr. John H. Blue, Judge John Guillet and brothers, and other Missourians, soon thereafter there were thirty-five southerners settled around the beautiful bay of Paranagua---mostly Missourians who had been encouraged by Dr. Blue’s letters published in the Daily Missouri Republican urging them to leave the “radicals” of their state. And southern “rebels” continued to come. In the summer of 1866 came Isaac N. Young, who had moved to Missouri from Staunton, Virginia, perhaps twenty-five years before, with his wife, her father and mother, three sons and a nephew from Franklin County, Missouri. Following the Youngs where the Johnsons, the Glenns, the Parkers, the Pattersons, the Thompsons,  the Millers, the Budds, the Fife’s, and others, most of whom were from the same state, though Illinois, Nebraska and California were represented.  Without doubt the half hundred letters of Dr. blue and the shortest series of Isaac Young, published in the Republican, influenced many of the discontented to lunch upon the new ventures. In January, 1868, Charles Nathan, the Louisianan who had gone to the Brazilian capital and after accepting Brazilian citizenship had contracted to bring into the country of his adoption 5,000 virtuous and provident southerners, estimated that the province of Parana was the home of two hundred American immigrants. It is true, of course, that not all, whatever the number, settled around Paranagua Bay. The bay was merely the nucleus of the settlement.

 

We are more interested in the occupation of the Paranagua settlers and in their reaction to their environment. Obviously both the occupations and the reactions were varied. Dr. Blue, in addition to operating a plantation, practiced medicine in the town of Paranagua. Isaac Young purchased 8,000 acres of land, 5,000 of which were covered with fine timbre, and 150 of which were in cultivation, for the sum of $5,600, and with the land improvements work double the purchase price. On the tillable portion of the plantation he proceeded in the exploitation of Negro labor in the production of cane, corn, beans, potatoes, mandioca, and other products.  Through the use of water power he started the cane and mandioca mills and the two distilleries that came with the place. Little wonder that he could pity the folk back in Missouri, where the “radicals”were in the hey-day of their power, that he “would not exchange my situation, with my land and woods and water power, for the ‘Gubernatorial Chair” at Jefferson City, nor even to be a ‘Military Governor” of two Southern States.”

 

The only great disadvantage that seem to circumscribe his happiness would “ignorance of the Portuguese language.”  This handicap he could overcome, as did Dr. Blue, who learned Portuguese within three years.

 

Other settlers at Paranagua had manufacturing as their major interest. When James K. Miller, an educated man and skilled mechanic from St. Louis, arrived at the bay, he set about the task of erecting a sawmill, the prime function of which was to shape materials for the making of barrels.  Dr. M. S. Fife of Missouri and W. P. Budd, a prosperous farmer of Alton, Illinois, followed Miller to Southern Brazil, and the trio organized the Parana  Manufacturing Company.  Isaac Young and other enterprising Americans soon entered the corporation and it did a lucrative business constructing barrels to contain the herva mate produced on the plantations around Paranagua and manufacturers by the 60 water-power mills in the vicinity. The engenius Dr. fife, in addition to contributing to the success of the barrel manufacturing company, made a discovery in the process of drying Mate that is still used.

 

Aside from the fact that Charles Nathan, who certainly was in a position to acquire information, said in 1868 that Pranagua was, because of the intelligence of Dr. Blue, Isaac Young, and the Miller brothers, the most prosperous settlement of southerners in Brazil; that W, P. Budd died at Morretes in 1869; that James K. Miller and M. S. Fife returned to the United States at the end of the same year and in the interest of business for the company In witch they were attached, that many of the less prosperous of the settlers returned to their old home in 1859 -1870, not a great deal is known of the later history of the Missouri colony in Parana.