James Buchanan Macaulay

Colonel The Hon. Sir James Buchanan Macaulay KCB (December 3, 1793–November 26, 1859) was a Canadian lawyer.

Macaulay, born at Niagara, Ontario, Canada, 3 Dec. 1793, was the second son of James Macaulay by his wife Elizabeth Tuck Hayter (a childhood friend of Elizabeth Simcoe). His father was posted from England to Canada in 1792, attached to the queen's rangers, and was afterwards Surgeon-General to the British Forces in Canada, under the patronage of his friend John Graves Simcoe, the first Governor-General of Upper Canada.

James served as an ensign in the 98th regiment. In 1812 he joined the Glengarry fencibles as a lieutenant, and fought during the war with America at Ogdensburg, Oswego, Lundy's Lane, and at the siege of Fort Erie. At the close of the war in 1815 his corps was disbanded, and after studying law he was admitted to the Canadian bar in 1822. He rose rapidly in his profession, and was an executive councillor during the administration of Peregrine Maitland. He was first appointed temporary judge of the court of queen's bench, and permanent judge in 1829.

On the first establishment of the court of common pleas in December 1849 he was made the chief justice, and continued to preside there until his retirement on a pension in 1856, but afterwards became judge of the court of error and appeal. As chairman of the commission appointed to revise and consolidate the statutes of Canada and Upper Canada, Macaulay helped to reduce the whole statutory law of the country from its conquest to his own time into three volumes, a work of great labour and corresponding value, which he just lived to see completed.

He was gazetted C.B. 30 Nov. 1858, and knighted by patent 13 Jan. 1859. He was the brother of Colonel The Hon. John Simcoe Macaulay (1791-1855). Sir James died at the home he built on his father's land in Toronto, Wykeham Lodge, 26 Nov. 1859. His wife, whom he married in 1821, was Rachel Crookshank, daughter of John Gamble (1755-1811), a Loyalist Surgeon with the Queen's Rangers. She died in England on 17th July 1883, at the home of her son-in-law, Edward Henry Bennett (1822-1897) J.P., of Sparkford Hall, Somerset.

References

*DNB

* [http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=4038 Biography at the "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online"]