Colonel Jacob Blackwell (1717-1780) was a businessman, landowner, and a colonel in his local militia of Newtown, now Astoria. He was a veteran of both the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. When the British advanced through Queens from the south and the east in September 1776, he retreated to New Jersey, later returning to find his property and fortune seized by the crown. He died on October 23, 1780, at the age of 63, three years before the Treaty of Paris established the United States as an independent nation. Blackwell was born in Newtown on November 20, 1717, to Jacob and Mary (Hallett) Blackwell. With his first wife, Frances Sackett, he had three children. After Frances died in 1754, the following year he married Lydia Hallett, and their union yielded four children. Blackwell’s large inherited farmland estate in Newtown included Blackwell’s Island, now Randall’s Island. Blackwell served initially as a captain in the Newtown militia during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1776, Blackwell sided with the patriots and fled to New Jersey when the British advanced through present-day Astoria. Soldiers marked the door of his home with an arrow to signify that it was property of the crown. Though he eventually returned to Newtown, Blackwell never recovered from the financial losses, and he died on October 23, 1780. He was buried at the time in the family cemetery, which stood across from his estate at the foot of what is now 37th Avenue, just west of Vernon Boulevard. The family home was demolished in 1901, but the original door was retrieved. After passing through several hands, the door is now part of the collection of the Greater Astoria Historical Society. Named in his honor, P.S. 111 Jacob Blackwell was built in 1950. It opened the same year and is located at 37-15 13th Street in Long Island City, half a mile from the former location of the Blackwell family estate and burial ground.