A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time. Various
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Boswell, George Morss Jukes, Q.C., Judge of the County Court of the United Counties of Northumberland and Durham, Cobourg, Ontario, was born at Gosport, England, in June, 1804. His father, John Boswell, of London, England, solicitor, was the youngest son of James Boswell, an officer in the Royal Navy, whose four elder brothers were also officers in the same service, and a descendant of the Boswells of Balmuto, Scotland, the elder branch of the family of the celebrated biographer. Judge Boswell, the subject of our sketch, was educated at the Grammar School, Buntingford, Herts, England, came to Canada in 1822, and was one of the earliest settlers in Cobourg. He was called to the bar in Michaelmas term, 1827, and is the premier Queen’s counsel in Canada, being the first created by commission in August, 1841. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Upper Canada Assembly in 1836, but was returned at the first election after the union of Upper and Lower Canada, and sat from 1841 to 1844, in the then Parliament of Canada. While in parliament he took a prominent part in constitutional debate, was a staunch advocate of responsible government, and although a Conservative in principle, worked with the Reform party until constitutional government was conceded. During the discussion on this question, he forced Mr. Draper, then attorney-general, to admit the principle, “That if the government cannot command the majority of the house, so that its measures may be carried on harmoniously, if they do not find by the whole proceedings of the house that they have the confidence of a majority of its members, then that a dissolution of the house shall follow, or that the government resign.” This then settled this important question of responsible government, though dragged out of Attorney-General Draper against his will (see Cobourg Star, June 11th, 1841). Before accepting a judgeship, Mr. Boswell was one of the leading lawyers in Canada, and as such was specially retained to defend Hunter, Morrison, Montgomery, and others, who were tried for high treason in connection with the rebellion in 1837. The two former were acquitted. In 1845, he was appointed Judge of the County Court of the United Counties of Northumberland and Durham, and accepted superannuation in 1882. In 1837, he served under Colonel Ham as brigade major with the volunteers in suppressing the rebellion, and was on the frontier at Chippawa, at the time the rebels under McKenzie took possession of Navy Island. Judge Boswell was married first in 1829, to Susannah, daughter of James Radcliffe, by whom he had a numerous family; and last to Mary, daughter of the late Rev. Thomas Wrench, rector of St. Michael’s Church, Cornhill, London.
Ogilvie, Hon. Alexander Walker, Montreal, Lieutenant-Colonel, member of the Senate of Canada for Alma division, was born at St. Michael, near the city of Montreal, on the 7th of May, 1829. The Ogilvie family is descended from a younger brother of Gilchrist, Earl of Angus, a valiant soldier who in the thirteenth century was rewarded with the land of Ogilvie, in Banffshire, Scotland, and assumed the name of the estate. The family is celebrated in history for having long preserved the Crown and sceptre of Scotland from the hands of Oliver Cromwell. The parents of Senator Ogilvie came from Stirlingshire, Scotland, to Canada in 1800, and Mr. Ogilvie, sr., served his adopted country as a volunteer cavalry officer during the war of 1812–14 against the Americans; and took up arms against the so-called patriots during the Canadian rebellion of 1837–8. To this couple were born a large family of sons and daughters, and all have made their mark in the country. In 1854 Alexander and his brothers, John and William, founded the firm of A. W. Ogilvie & Co., as millers and dealers in grain, and built extensive mills on the banks of the canal at Montreal, now known as the Glenora mills. Since that time the business has grown to such dimensions that the firm’s mills and business operations are carried on at Montreal, Goderich, Seaforth, Winnipeg and other parts of the North-West, and they are now the most extensive millers in the Dominion. In 1874 Alexander retired from the business. In 1867 he first entered political life, and at the general election of that year he was chosen by acclamation to represent Montreal West in the Quebec legislature, when on the dissolution of the house in 1871 he declined re-nomination. He, however, was induced again to enter the political field in 1875, and was elected for his old seat. This he occupied until the legislature was dissolved in 1878, when he retired from local politics. On December 24, 1881, he was called to the Senate to represent the Alma division in that body. Senator Ogilvie has been an alderman for the city of Montreal, president of the Workingmen’s, Widows and Orphans’ Benefit Society, and of the St. Andrew’s Society, and a lieutenant-colonel of the Montreal Cavalry (now on the retired list). He is president of the St. Michael Road Company, chairman of the Montreal Turnpike Trust, and of the Montreal Board of Directors of the London (England) Guarantee Company, a director of the Sun Life Insurance Company, the Edwardsburg Starch Company, the Montreal Loan and Mortgage Company, and the Montreal Investment Company. He is also a justice of the peace. Senator Ogilvie is a Conservative in politics, and in religion is a Presbyterian. He is married to a daughter of the late William Leney, of Montreal, and has a family of four children, one son and three daughters.
Campbell, Rev. Robert, M.A., D.D., Pastor of St. Gabriel Presbyterian Church, Montreal, was born on a farm near the town of Perth, Lanark county, Ontario, on the 21st June, 1835. Peter Campbell, father of the subject of this sketch, was born at Rein-a-Chullaig, Loch Tayside, Breadalbane, Perthshire, Scotland, and belonged to the Lochnell branch of the Campbell clan. One of his ancestors having taken part in the Jacobite rising in 1715, and thus having incurred the displeasure of Argyll, who was at the head of the Hanoverian forces, did not return to his native district, but placed himself under the protection of his other great kinsman, Breadalbane, who was neutral in that contest, and who assigned him the property called Rein-a-Chullaig. Peter Campbell was a man of high character and intelligence. He had for a time been a teacher in Scotland, and this gave him much influence with his Highland countrymen who accompanied him to Canada in 1817, and settled in the Bathurst district. He brought some money with him to Canada, and owned the first yoke of oxen in the settlement; although during the first season he had to carry a bag of flour on his back through the woods from Brockville, a distance of about fifty miles, having no road to follow but guided only by the blazes on the trees. He was chosen an elder of the first Presbyterian church, which was under the ministry of Rev. William Bell, shortly after his arrival in the country. But as he was born and bred in the Church of Scotland, he united with that branch of the Presbyterian communion as soon as it was established in Perth under the ministry of the late Rev. T. C. Wilson, of Dunkeld, Scotland, and was installed an elder in it too, which office he retained till his death in 1848. Margaret Campbell, Rev. Dr. Campbell’s mother, was of the Gleno and Inverliver branch of the clan Campbell. She was born in Glenlyon, Scotland, her mother being a MacDiarmid, one of the oldest families in Scotland. Mrs. Campbell ably seconded her husband in all his aims and efforts; and one of the results of their joint influence and instruction was that three of their sons became ministers of the Presbyterian Church of Canada in connection with the Church of Scotland, and a fourth studied for the ministry of the Baptist church, but his health broke down before he was able to complete his course of preparation. Robert was the seventh son, and eleventh child of the family, his youngest brother being Rev. Alexander Campbell, B.A., of Prince Albert, North-West Territory. He was educated at the common school, near his birth place; but as it happened that the school was taught by a succession of able masters, one of them being an admirable scholar in both