- DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Paul Maroney and Stephen John Harris, “MERRITT, WILLIAM HAMILTON (1855-1918),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/merritt_william_hamilton_1855_1918_14E.html
- DCB profile notes:
- Mining engineer, teacher, author, and militia officer; b. 8 June 1855 in St Catharines, Upper Canada, only son of William Hamilton Merritt and Janet Lang Morris; m. 10 April 1890 Margaret Simpson, only daughter of Robert Simpson, in Toronto; they had no children; d. 26 Oct. 1918 in Toronto.
- W. Hamilton Merritt came of distinguished stock. His paternal grandfather, William Hamilton Merritt, had been a prominent politician and promoter of the Welland Canal; his maternal grandfather, James Morris, had served as an executive councillor for the Province of Canada. Little is known about Merritt’s childhood and adolescence. His father, a barrister, died in 1860. He was educated in Ontario at Trinity College School (Weston) and Upper Canada College (Toronto), and in England at Clifton College (Bristol) and the Royal School of Mines (London), from which he graduated as a mining engineer in 1877.
- Although history remembers him chiefly as a soldier and commentator on military affairs, Merritt also had a distinguished career as a mining engineer. He accompanied the Canadian commission to the Paris exposition of 1878. (The Geological Survey of Canada exhibited there, but Merritt’s actual role is not clear.) Between 1879 and the late 1890s he travelled widely throughout Canada as an engineer and wrote many articles and books on mining subjects, most notably about iron.
- Despite Merritt’s reputation as a mining expert and his bids for election, his first love was soldiering. In 1882 he had joined the Governor General’s Body Guard for Ontario, a Toronto cavalry regiment commanded by ardent imperialist George Taylor Denison. Promoted lieutenant in 1884, captain in 1889, and major in 1898, Merritt became the unit’s lieutenant-colonel commanding in 1903. He retired from the Body Guard in 1909 but the following year was appointed to command the 1st Cavalry Brigade (later the 1st Mounted Brigade) in the militia’s 2nd Division, a position he held until 1913, when he was placed on reserve. Merritt was no mere parade-square soldier, and he never turned down the opportunity to see active duty. Indeed, he earnestly sought it. When insurrection broke out in the northwest in 1885, he was part of the force sent to quell the trouble.
- Merritt’s days of active service were over, but his interest in military affairs did not wane. Besides rejoining the militia, he became an outspoken commentator who, like a number of Canadians in the decade before 1914, was worried both by increased international tensions and the build-up of arms, which threatened imperial interests, and by what he saw as the unwillingness of the Canadian government, despite its reform of the militia , to prepare for the titanic struggle that, in his view, was sure to come. Indeed, the campaign for military preparedness came to dominate his life. He was president of the Canadian Military Institute, essentially a social club for martial imperialists, from 1905 to 1914.
- Great Grandson of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=5812
- Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/120445623/william-hamilton-merritt
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