Blackburne married Catherine Ashton and had 9 children. His eldest son Thomas,
High Sheriff in 1763, predeceased him and thus his estate passed to Thomas' son,
John, the Member of Parliament (MP) for
Lancashire. His second son John became
Mayor of Liverpool. A younger son named Ashton emigrated to the United States and collected bird specimens, many of them new to science. His daughter Anna was a respected botanist and naturalist in her own right and corresponded with
Carl Linnaeus and
Johann Reinhold Forster. He died in 1786 at the age of 93 and was buried at
St Oswald's Church, Winwick. ==References==