Blount was born in 1831 to A.E. Blount and his wife Harriet. The family were missionaries and accompanied the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. In 1837, the family moved back to Tennessee. Blount attended Dartmouth College.  He would move to Cleveland where he would become the principal of the  Cleveland Masonic Female Institute from 1859-1861. He would leave the school in 1861 to join the Union Army, where he served as a Captain until 1864. On January 3, 1865, Blount returned to Cleveland and reopened the school. In 1968, he would become the first superintendent of Bradley County Schools.     

Along with being an educator, Blount was also a farmer and was Bradley County’s first scientific farmer. Blount specialized in hybridizing grains in order to develop new types of wheat, it was said that he made over 400 strains of wheat.

Blunt left Tennessee and moved to Colorado, where he died in 1911.