(8 May 1840-25 April 1923), lawyer. Born at Meadow Bay, Charlottenburgh Township, GC. Parents: Malcolm Dingwall and his wife Ann McLennan. Early education: Lancaster public school, Williamstown Grammar School, and Queen’s University (B.A., 1861). After being headmaster of the Kemptville Grammar School for a year, he studied law in Toronto in the offices of Mowat and Maclennan, Maclennan being his uncle (see James Maclennan). James Dingwall was called to the bar, 1868. In Cornwall, he was a lawyer in the firm Ross & Dingwall. William Ross of this partnership had formerly been a law partner of John Sandfield Macdonald, and was born about 1814 in Lancaster Township. After Ross’s death in 1881, Dingwall practised alone. Rose reports that both Dingwall and Ross prided themselves on discouraging rather than encouraging people to go to law. Also, noting the activity of these two lawyers as money lenders, Rose says “their influence was a valuable check upon the operations of the loaning companies.” Besides being a successful and respected lawyer, Dingwall was a trustee of the Cornwall high school, and interested in gardening and forestry. And he was crown attorney and clerk of the peace for SDG from Feb. 1873 to 1916, a period of 43 years, being succeeded in these offices by J.G. Harkness. Dingwall was a Presbyterian and a Liberal. He was married in 1878 to Mary Ann Hunter (1849-1946), a first cousin of James Leitch, mayor of Cornwall. (children) The long and vigorously-written life of Dingwall in Rose’s Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography (1886) has much on Dingwall’s ancestors and gives a most vivid impression of Dingwall as a personality. He was a relative of George Alexander Drew.

Cornwall Standard 3 May 1923 * life in Rose, i, 748-751 * Harkness: index; list of crown attorneys in Harkness 415 * gravestone, Woodlawn cemetery, Cornwall * obituary of his widow, report on her funeral, Standard Freeholder 16 & 18 April 1946 * death of William Ross: Cornwall Freeholder 2 Dec. 1881, Glengarry Times 3 Dec. 1881