James Macaulay (1769-1822)

He was said to be the son of a clergyman in/around Glasgow and although his precise ancestry is not clear, he was in possession of an old seal, "so much worn as to be difficult to decipher" but which corresponds to the arms of the MacAulays of Ardincaple in Argyll and Bute whose fortunes failed at the end of the 18th century. When he was married in 1790, he was twenty-one years old and Surgeon to the New South Wales Corps. The following year, the new Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, appointed him chief surgeon of the new colony. He served as Surgeon to the Queen's Rangers and in 1803 was appointed Chief Medical Officer of both Upper and Lower Canada, and Surgeon-General of the British Forces in the Canadas.

He lived at York (Toronto) where he was a Justice of the Peace and through land grants and purchases accrued an estate of 5,300-acres, much of which today comprises modern-day downtown Toronto where the street names (named for various family members) give clues to his former ownership. In 1790, at Alverstoke in Hampshire, he married Eliza, daughter of Lt. Samuel Hayter R.N., of Wareham Priory, Dorset, and they had 8-children. After she died, in 1817 he married Rachel, sister of George Crookshank, of Toronto.