It was a mild 61 degrees and a little before 8 p.m., April 17, 1917, when members of the Columbia Historical Society began to stream into the Gold Room of the Shoreham Hotel at the corner of 15th and H St., N.W., in Washington, D.C. Scheduled to speak that evening was Maj. Gist Blair, whose talk was titled “Silver Spring.” Blair was the grandson of Silver Spring’s founder, Francis Preston Blair, Sr., advisor to U.S. presidents from Andrew Jackson to Ulysses S. Grant, and son of Montgomery Blair, United States Postmaster General during the first term of President Abraham Lincoln.