of 1883 he was appointed city surveyor of Montreal, and this position he has occupied ever since. He was also one of the members of the Royal Flood Commission of Montreal, appointed in 1886. Mr. St. George has been an associate member of the Institute of Civil Engineers of England since 1877; and is now a member of the Council of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers. He is a master Mason, and a member of the Royal Arch Chapter. He has travelled a good deal, and his profession has made him familiar with the greater part of Canada. He is a member of the Church of England. On the 11th July, 1872, he was married to Flora Stewart, daughter of the Rev. Canon Geo. Townshend, rector of Amherst, Nova Scotia, and Elizabeth Stewart, daughter of the Hon. Alexander Stewart, C.B., master of the Rolls, and judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court, and has issue five children.
Palmer, Caleb Read, Justice of the Peace, Moncton, was born at Dorchester, Westmoreland county, New Brunswick, on the 13th February, 1834. His father, John Palmer, grandson of Gideon Palmer, a U. E. loyalist, who came to New Brunswick from Staten Island, New York, is a veteran of 1812, and is now (1887) in his ninety-ninth year, and regularly draws his pension for services during the war. His mother, Elizabeth Cole, was a daughter of Ebenezer Cole. Caleb received his education at the Wesleyan Academy, in Sackville, N.B., taking a course in the higher mathematics and languages, and then for some time adopted teaching as his profession. From 1859 to 1870 he taught the Superior School in Sussex, Kings county, and from January, 1870, to September, 1882, he acted in the capacity of station master at Dorchester for the Intercolonial Railway Company. In July, 1883, he became manager of the Moncton Publishing Company, and this position he occupied until February, 1885, since which time he has confined himself to the duties of justice of the peace, and secretary to the Board of School Trustees of the town of Moncton. Mr. Palmer is interested in shipping, and is also a stockholder in the Moncton Cotton Factory. He is a member of the Royal Arcanum, and in politics is a Liberal. Although brought up in the Episcopal church, he found it more congenial to his taste to attend the Methodist church, and is now a member of that denomination. He was married on the 21st of December, 1865, to Agnes Murray, daughter of John Murray, of Studholm, Kings county, N.B.
Ferguson, Hon. Donald, M.P.P., Provincial Secretary and Commissioner of Crown Lands of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, was born at East River, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, on the 7th of March, 1839. His father, John Ferguson, and mother, Isabella Stewart, were descendants of thrifty Scotch farmers, who emigrated from Blair Athol, in Perthshire, Scotland, in 1807, and settled near Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Donald was reared on the farm and received the rudiments of education in the Public school of his native parish, and subsequently pursued his studies in English and mathematics by private tuition. He became interested in politics when quite a young man, and was a strong advocate of the confederation of the provinces. He was a contributor to the press, and in 1867, wrote a series of letters over the signature of “A Farmer,” which attracted considerable attention, and was replied to by the Hon. David Laird, one of the leading politicians of the island, and subsequently lieutenant-governor of the North-West Territories. At a later date, he engaged, over his own signature, in a discussion with the Hon. George Beer, on the union question, and became at once known as one of the champions on the island for a Canadian nationality. He was also a strong supporter of the interests of the tenantry, an advocate of railway construction, and was the mover of the resolutions in favour of the railway which were adopted at the mass meeting of the electors of Queens county, held at Charlottetown, in the winter of 1871. In 1872, Mr. Ferguson was appointed a justice of the peace, and he held the position of collector of inland revenue for Charlottetown for a short time in 1873. In 1873, the great question of confederation, for which Mr. Ferguson had for years contended, having been settled, he offered himself as a candidate for the Legislative Council of Prince Edward Island, for the second district of Queens county, where the Hon. Edward Palmer had been returned in 1872, to the Council, as an anti-railway and an anti-confederate, by a majority of nearly eight hundred votes—and he succeeded, after a spirited canvass and good fight against great odds in reducing the anti-railway majority to two hundred and fifty votes. A vacancy occurring next year in the same constituency, Mr. Ferguson was again brought out by his friends, and this time succeeded in reducing the anti-railway majority to seventy. In 1876, the question of denominational education came prominently before the electors, and Mr. Ferguson and other leading politicians pronounced in favour of a system of payment by results, by which the state would recognize and pay for secular education in schools in towns, in which religious education might also be imparted at the expense of parents. Religious bitterness was introduced, the Protestants became alarmed, the people decided largely according to their creeds, and the “payment by results” candidates were defeated in all except Roman Catholic constituencies. Believing that almost any settlement of this vexed question was better than a prolonged political-religious agitation, he accepted the situation. In 1874, Mr. Ferguson was appointed secretary of the Board of Railway Appraisers, which office he held until 1876. In 1878, he was invited by the leading electors of the Cardigan district, in Kings county, to offer himself for parliamentary honours; he consented and was returned by acclamation. In March, 1879, on the meeting of the legislature, the government, under the leadership of the Hon. L. H. Davis, was defeated, and the Hon. W. W. Sullivan, who had been entrusted with the formation of a new administration, offered Mr. Ferguson a seat in his cabinet, with the portfolio of public works, which office he accepted. A dissolution of the house having immediately followed, Mr. Ferguson was returned by acclamation. In 1880, he resigned his position as head of the Public Works department, and became provincial secretary and commissioner of Crown Lands, and this position he occupies to-day. In 1882, Mr. Ferguson was elected to represent Fort Augustus, and again in 1886, he had the same honour conferred upon him. Hon. Mr. Ferguson is a member of the Board of Commissioners for the management of the Government Poor-House; a commissioner for the management of the Government Stock Farm, and a trustee for the Hospital for the Insane, at Falconwood. He was a delegate to Ottawa, on the Wharf and Pier question in 1883, in conjunction with the Hon. Messrs. Sullivan and Prowse, and also a delegate to England, with Hon. Mr. Sullivan, on the question of the communication between the island and the mainland. Mr. Ferguson is an enthusiastic agriculturist, and has a farm in a high state of cultivation, four miles from Charlottetown. Besides having published several useful official reports, Mr. Ferguson gave to his fellow-citizens in 1884, an excellent paper on “Agricultural Education,” and another in 1885, on “Love of Country.” He has been a lifelong total abstainer, and became connected with the Good Templars in 1863, and held the office of grand secretary for two years, 1863–5, and that of grand worthy chief templar the following two years, 1865–7. He is a Conservative in politics, and in religion a member of the Baptist denomination. In 1873, he was married to Elizabeth Jane, daughter of John Scott, Charlottetown, and has a family consisting of three sons and two daughters.
Ross, James Duncan, M.D., Moncton, New Brunswick, was born at Pictou, Nova Scotia, in October, 1839, and is a son of the Rev. James Ross, D.D., principal of Dalhousie College, and grandson of the late Rev. Duncan Ross, one of the first Presbyterian ministers who came to Nova Scotia from Scotland. His mother was Isabella Matheson, a daughter of William Matheson, who through industry and perseverance accumulated a fortune at farming, lumbering, and trading, sufficient to enable him to leave the handsome sum of $35,000 to the institutions of the church in the province, and $35,000 to the British and Foreign Bible Society. James Duncan Ross received his elementary training in the public schools in his native town, and then took the arts course in the West River Seminary. He then spent three years in the office of the late Dr. Muir, of Truro, N.S., and afterwards studied medicine and surgery in Philadelphia and Harvard, graduating from Harvard University in 1861, when he moved to Londonderry, in Nova Scotia, and began the practice of his profession, and continued here until 1865; then he went over to Britain and took a course of medicine and surgery in the University and in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Edinburgh, and while in that city he was for a time a student in the office of Sir J. Y. Simpson. He then went to London, and became for a time a dresser in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; and afterwards, returning to Nova Scotia, he resumed his practice. Dr. Ross occupied the position for some time of assistant surgeon to the 2nd battalion of the Colchester Militia, and also surgeon of the Caledonian (Highland) Society of Nova Scotia. He has been since 1863 a coroner for the county of Westmoreland. He took a deep interest in the establishment of the Medical School in Halifax, and was demonstrator of anatomy in it for the first two years
