Macaulay, John Simcoe

DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Barrie Dyster, “MACAULAY, JOHN SIMCOE,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/macaulay_john_simcoe_8E.html
DCB profile:
- Businessman, politician, and militia officer; b. 13 Oct. 1791 in England, eldest child of James Macaulay and Elizabeth Tuck Hayter; m. 2 July 1825 Anne Gee Elmsley in Croydon (London); d. 20 Dec. 1855 near Strood, England.
- Young Macaulay attended William Cooper’s elementary school at York and the Reverend John Strachan’s school at Cornwall before travelling to England about 1805 to enrol in the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich (London). He was commissioned second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in July 1809, and was promoted second captain in January 1815 and captain in October 1829. During the Napoleonic Wars he served in the Iberian Peninsula between 1810 and 1813 and briefly at Genoa (Italy) in 1814. He was stationed at Gibraltar between 1813 and 1819 when, upon his corps’ reduction in size, he was placed on half pay. He subsequently came home to Upper Canada and stayed there until 1821.
- In January 1836, a few months after Macaulay’s return to Toronto, Sir Francis Bond Head arrived as lieutenant governor. Four weeks later Head announced his first official appointments: a new Executive Council, a new surveyor general, John Simcoe Macaulay. Much real power lay with the surveyor general and his office for they were involved in all decisions whereby public land became private property; colonists therefore cared deeply who the surveyor general might be. However, had to resign.
- After William Lyon Mackenzie’s rebellion in December 1837, Macaulay became commandant of the militia in Toronto, with the rank of colonel.
- It was the last of many rebuffs dealt Macaulay by provincial power-brokers. He immediately began selling much of his property in Toronto and within months had realized £21,000 from sales in and around Macaulay Town. By 1845 he had retired across the Atlantic to live the life of a straightforward English gentleman. He revised his Treatise several times for re-editions. At Bishop Strachan’s request, he came to an agreement at the end of 1845 with the principal purchaser of his Macaulay Town properties for a site to be reserved “in the middle of the Square” on which a church for the poor (Holy Trinity Church) could be built. The remaining portion of his holdings, roughly bounded by today’s College, Yonge, and Wellesley streets and by Queen’s Park, comprised the grounds of Elmsley Villa, which from 1849 to about 1851 served as the province’s vice-regal residence. Macaulay had plans to subdivide the grounds into choice lots for villas, but by 1854 his agent had sold the entire estate to Dr A. M. Clark, who undertook the subdivision.
- Macaulay might brood in England over his disappointments in Canada, but he could also look back on the patronage of lieutenant governors Head and Arthur, and particularly on that of his namesake, John Graves Simcoe, whose gifts of land to his father and father-in-law ultimately allowed him to retire wheresoever he chose.
Son of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=4909
Find a Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/174472861/john-simcoe-macaulay