At the opening of the fateful year of 1688, the Blairs were quietly pursuing their pastoral lives. Then Abraham Blair went to Derry, and while he was gallantly fighting there the King's soldiers were harrying his defenseless kindred, sacking and burning their houses, forcing many of the suffering crowds under the walls he was defending. His brother James' wife, Rachel (Boyd) Blair, managed to evade the hunters. With her little children she cowered in the sheltering furze. Her son, Robert was then about five years of age, old enough to receive a vivid, lasting impression of the devastation of their cherished home. His mother was a descendant of Thomas Boyd, who, in 1576, settled at Craig, a village lying between Ballymena and Kilrea. He could trace his ancestry back to Lord Boyd, who was a guardian of James Stuart III [of Scotland] during his minority. In 1467, the eldest son of Lord Boyd, Thomas, was created Earl of Arran and married the King's sister. Owing to enemies at court, in 1469, they were convicted of treason and their estates were forfeited; they then were governing the lordships of Kilmarnock, Arran, Bute Cowal, Renfrew, besides the castle of Rothsay. Lord Boyd fled to Oxfordshire, and his brother Alexander was executed on Castle Hill.

Interesting note: When Boyd's enemies talked the teenage king into convicting them of treason, Thomas was returning from King Christian of Denmark & Norway with that king's young daughter Margaret, who would become the bride of James III. Thomas had also negotiated as her dowry the islands of Shetland and Orkney, forever to be part of Scotland. Princess Mary warned him away from the dock so he wouldn't be captured, so obviously they had a love match. Lord Robert Boyd actually did good things for the country while having a lot of power as regent and High Chamberlain. Sad that James III was so easily turned by Boyd's enemies.

The gravestone erected to the memory of Mrs. Rachel (Boyd) Blair by her husband, James Blair, is still standing, and as it is alone, it strengthens the inference that her husband accompanied his brother Abraham, and his own sons when they sailed away to New England. Mrs. Rachel Blair died May 10, 1700, aged fifty-six years.