(17 May 1784-5 Oct. 1866), physician. Born in Dumfries, Scotland He is described on his gravestone as M. D., M. R. C. S. It has not been determined where he got his medical degree (it was not from Edinburgh or Glasgow), but he was listed in 1812 as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He was a surgeon in the Royal Navy, and saw active service on Lake Champlain and Lake Ontario in the War of 1812. He was married on 15 May 1816 to Catherine Macdonell (7 May 1793-9 March 1878), who was the daughter of Ranald Macdonell of Leek. Dr Blacklock and his wife lived at St. Andrew’s, Ont., where the doctor, a half-pay officer, farmed on Lot 13, 6th Concession Cornwall Township and practised medicine. He died at St. Andrew’s. Presbyterian. He was not a GC resident, but his medical practice must have extended into that county, and he was a part of the social elite of GC-Stormont, and he and his wife are buried at St. Andrew’s cemetery, Williamstown, in GC (St. Andrew’s, Ont., where they lived, had no Protestant cemetery).

     Dr Blacklock received land grants of 800 acres. He was a JP and a coroner. He was MLA for Stormont County 1828-1830, as a Reformer. When Bishop Alexander Macdonell wanted to be replaced on the interprovincial boundary commission, he recommended, 2 April 1823, that Archibald McLean of Cornwall (see Neil McLean) or Dr Blacklock, “a most intelligent & judicious Magistrate of this District,” be his successor. Dr Blacklock was associated in 1826 with Duncan Macdonell of Greenfield in the abortive venture of a GC settlement in Ops Township, and Blacklock perhaps intended to live in Ops himself. In 1833, he was one of the numerous people who owed money to the mapmaker and Williamstown resident David Thompson, who was sinking under the weight of his own financial problems.

     His son Dr John James (or James J.) Blacklock graduated in medicine from McGill in 1851, and was a physician in Alexandria for a few years in the 1860s, and was at that time a member of the Alexandria High School Board. Dr John James Blacklock also practised medicine at several other places in Eastern Ont., including at Chesterville for 22 years, and he died in 1906 at Morrisburg.

Harkness: index (portrait); also for son * Fraser, Gravestones, I, 174 * Johnson 174 * Symington 64, 71 * Reid 198 * LLC 399-400 * genealogical information on his descendants kindly supplied by Evelyn Scullion * HHCT 94 * The Story of St. Andrews West as Recorded on the Index Cards of Edwin McDonald, ed. Duncan (Darby) MacDonald (1987) p. 86 * Reid, MN, 144 (marriage of daughter) * Bishop Macdonell: Land Petitions, Archives of Ontario (Reel C-1875, RG1, L3, Vol. 157) * Ops: folder “Documents Relating…” as per Duncan Macdonell entry * D’Arcy Jenish, Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Mapping of the Canadian West (2003) 250