Ritchie, John William

DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Neil J. MacKinnon, “RITCHIE, JOHN WILLIAM,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 11, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/ritchie_john_william_11E.html
DCB profile:
- Lawyer, legislator, and judge; b. 26 March 1808 at Annapolis Royal, N.S., the son of Thomas Ritchie, a politician and judge, and Elizabeth Wildman Johnston; m. in 1836 Amelia Rebecca Almon, and they had 12 children; d. 13 Dec. 1890 at Halifax, N.S.
- Admitted to the bar as attorney in January 1831 and as barrister a year later, Ritchie had few clients in his first ten years of practice in Halifax and devoted himself to further legal studies. He was defeated in 1836 in a bid to represent Annapolis County in the assembly, a seat previously held by both his father and his uncle, John Johnston. In the same year he married Amelia Rebecca, the daughter of William Bruce Almon, a doctor and legislative councillor, thereby continuing a tradition of intermarriage among the Ritchie, Johnston, and Almon families.
- Although he represented the interests of the absentee proprietors, Ritchie agreed with Joseph Howe, representative of the Island tenants, and the chairman, John Hamilton Gray of New Brunswick, that the tenants should have the right to buy the land on which they lived and that the imperial government should provide a £100,000 fund to facilitate land purchases. At the insistence of the proprietors, the Colonial Office rejected the commissioners’ plan, and the land question continued to bedevil Island life.
- In May 1864 the government of J. W. Johnston and Charles Tupper appointed Ritchie to the Legislative Council, and he joined the cabinet as solicitor general. He soon replaced Robert Barry Dickey as government leader in the upper house and thus directed the passage through the council of important legislation dealing with common schools and Nova Scotia’s entry into confederation.
- From the autumn of 1864 he replaced Dickey as a leading spokesman in presenting the confederation scheme to a reluctant Nova Scotia, and his contribution, according to a biographer, was “infinitely greater than anything done by Dickey who seems to have received more of the credit. . . .” Ritchie guided Tupper’s vague resolution favouring union through the Legislative Council in April 1866 and maintained close contact with Lieutenant Governor Sir William Fenwick Williams, a fellow native of Annapolis Royal, in the pursuit of the government’s unionist aims.
Grandson of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=7013
Find a Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/158759200/john-william-ritchie