Researching Thomas Scott

Scott's execution led to the Wolseley Expedition – a military force said to be sent to protect Canada from American annexation, but widely believed to confront Riel and the Métis at the Red River Settlement, authorized by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. Scott's execution highlights a time of severe conflict between settlers and the Métis in Canadian history. His execution sparked the exile of Riel, and to Riel's own execution for treason in 1885, detailed in the Canadian HBC Manifest of 1912 and suggesting that Riel had no recollection of his actions.

In 1871 he was hired by the Department of Public Works and he designed a number of Ottawa's new government buildings in the years after Canadian Confederation. Among his works are the West Block of the Parliament of Canada, the Cartier Square Drill Hall, and the now demolished Dominion Post Office. From 1872 to 1881 he held the position of Chief Dominion Architect and thus played at least a supervisory role in all major government projects. He is considered one of the creators of the Dominion Style that dominated Canadian institutional architecture in the nineteenth century. He was a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts He was succeeded as Chief Architect by Thomas Fuller.

As he grew up and matured, he opted law as his subject of study which led to his role in the fledgling United States. At about the year 1770, after admission to the bar and subsequent practice of law, he moved to and settled on Dunlaps Creek at Redstone Old Fort(now modern day Brownsville in Fayette County).

When the County of Washington was organized on March 28, 1781, he was made the first prothonotary. He served in this capacity until March 28, 1789. In addition to this first honor of Washington County, he previously served as a justice of the peace in 1773, and was a member of the first Pennsylvania Assembly in 1776.

However, Mr. Scott resigned his position with the Pennsylvania Assembly due to his election to the U.S. House of Representatives. He arrived on Wednesday, April 1, 1789 for his seat at the first session of the first Congress in the city of New York. Among his contributions, he purportedly had the honor of presenting to the Congress of the new nation a resolution that established the capital city on the banks of the Potomac River now known as Washington, D.C.

He died on March 2, 1796 and was buried at Old Graveyard in the city of Washington, Pennsylvania on Walnut Street which is now considered to be the present site of Washington & Jefferson College. Later in the early 1900s, his body was re-interred in Washington Cemetery.

He was born in the parish of Kingoldrum, Angus, Scotland and studied law at Lincoln's Inn in London. He was called to the bar in 1793. In 1800, he was appointed attorney general in Upper Canada and arrived in York in 1801. He was appointed to the Executive Council for the province in 1805. He was the fourth Treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada from 1805 until he became Chief Justice for Upper Canada succeeding Henry Allcock and was appointed to the Executive Council in 1806.

In 1811, already suffering from ill health, Scott applied for a pension so that he could retire, but was refused. During the War of 1812, the administration sought to ensure the loyalty of its subjects by imposing martial law and, in 1814, by prosecuting those who had expressed sympathy for the enemy with treason in a series of trials at Ancaster known as the "Bloody Assize". Fifteen men were condemned to death of which eight were executed. These actions increased Scott's workload.

In 1816, Scott was finally granted a pension and retired. He was succeeded by William Dummer Powell as Chief Justice for the province. Scott died at York (Toronto) in 1824.

* Scott Township in Ontario County, Ontario, now part of Uxbridge, was named after Scott.* Scott Street (and Scott Lane) in the St. Lawrence neighbourhood of Toronto are also named after Thomas Scott.

Scott was born in Kelmscott, Oxford, England, one of the youngest of eight children of James Scott, sometime vicar of Itchen Stoke, Hampshire, and chaplain ordinary to George III, and his wife Jane Elizabeth, née Harmood.

Scott went to France after his father's death and was a vice-consul at Bordeaux and later went bankrupt as a wine merchant.

Scott was a clerk to a British consulate in Italy. Scott matriculated at Oxford University at the late age of 30, on 11 October 1813, and graduated M.A. on 12 November 1818. He was at St Alban Hall, subsequently merged in Merton College. Early in 1819 he was appointed secretary of the commission of John Bigge and Governor Lachlan Macquarie was instructed that in the event of the death or illness of Bigge, Scott would take his place. After his return to England Scott took holy orders and became rector of Whitfield, Northumberland, in 1822.

Early in 1824, at the request of Earl Bathurst, Scott drew up an elaborate plan for providing for churches and schools in Australia. The main idea was that one-tenth of the lands in the colony should be vested in trustees for the support of churches and schools. Primary schools were to be followed by schools for agriculture and trades, and also schools to fit students for a university which was ultimately visualized. He also suggested that pending the establishment of the university a few of the ablest students should be awarded exhibitions to take them to Oxford or Cambridge. His plans were adopted in a modified form.

Scott was appointed archdeacon of New South Wales on 2 October 1824, and he arrived at Sydney on 7 May 1825. He was also a trustee of the clergy and school lands; this corporation, however, had neither land nor funds. Governor Brisbane opposed his suggestion that "government reserves" should be considered church and school lands, and with regard to land generally, comparatively little of it had even been surveyed. Scott too was working on the assumption that the control of education would be in the hands of the Church of England, which brought vigorous opposition from the Presbyterians, Wesleyans and Roman Catholics. Scott's connexion with Bigge and a friendship he had formed with John Macarthur tended to make him unpopular, and though Governor Darling spoke of him as amiable and well-disposed, he quarrelled with several men of the period. Scott was appointed a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council by reason of his office as archdeacon and was made a member of the Executive Council in 1825. On 1 January 1828, he sent his resignation to England and was succeeded in 1829 as archdeacon by William Grant Broughton, who later was to become the first Bishop of Australia. Scott's final report on the church and school establishment of New South Wales was dated 1 September 1829.

Scott then set sail for England aboard . The ship struck a reef off Fremantle on 28 November 1829, marooning him in the new Swan River Colony, in which he was the first ordained minister. He ministered alone to the colony for two months, building a temporary church and officiating at the first Christmas celebrations, until he was joined by John Burdett Wittenoom, the appointed colonial chaplain. Scott was well regarded by the colonists and by Wittenoom, and the settlement of Kelmscott, Western Australia, was named after Scott's birthplace.

Scott continued his homeward journey aboard the William, stopping in Old Batavia where he opened an English chapel. On arriving in England, Scott took charge once again of his parish at Whitfield, where he had installed a curate in his absence, and was later made an honorary canon of Durham. He died at Whitfield on 1 January 1860.

Scott was a capable man who was arbitrary and autocratic. He could not get on with his own clergy, and when he visited Tasmania in 1826 a report he made on the state of religion and education raised similar antagonism to that he had experienced in Sydney. He was a hard worker, he had a fine conception of the place education should take in the colony, and during his five years in New South Wales, the number of schools and the number of pupils attending regularly were both more than doubled. His proposed scheme of education in Australia could not be accepted at the time, largely because it assumed the ascendancy of the Church of England, but considered broadly it was a statesmanlike piece of work which must have had much influence on the plans that were later developed.

Scott was born in Lanark County, Ontario in what was then Upper Canada to Irish immigrant parents. He was the youngest of four children. His father died when he was an infant, and the family moved to Perth, Ontario where Scott attended school and then apprenticed as a printer. He founded the Perth Expositor newspaper in 1861 and was its editor and proprietor, until 1872.

In 1860, Scott signed up for military service, during the Trent Affair. He was in command of the Perth Infantry and served for five months on the frontier during the Fenian Raids crisis on 1866. During the Red River Expedition of 1870, Scott – by this time a colonel – was in command of the Ontario Rifles which arrived at Fort Garry following Louis Riel's escape. He returned to Ontario, in December 1870, but was sent again to Fort Garry, in 1871, as part of the Second Red River Expedition. In 1874, he retired from military service but remained in Manitoba where he entered politics and was elected to Winnipeg's first city council; he became mayor in 1877. In 1878, he was elected to the Manitoba legislature from the district of Winnipeg and, in 1880, he defeated incumbent Donald A. Smith to become the Conservative MP for Selkirk. He was re-elected in the 1882 federal election in the new riding of Winnipeg.

Scott returned to military service, in 1885, while still an MP, after the Minister of the Militia Sir Adolphe-Philippe Caron asked Scott to raise a regiment to put down the North-West Rebellion of 1885. Smith raised and equipped the Ninety-fifth Manitoba Grenadiers in thirteen days.

Scott retired from politics, in 1887, and became collector of customs at the port of Winnipeg.

Thomas Scott was born at Oldtown, Frederick (now Allegany) County, Maryland. At age eighteen, he was ordained to preach in the Methodist church and, in 1793, was placed in charge of the Ohio circuit. In May 1796, he married Catherine Wood. He learned the art of tailoring, and studied law under James Brown of Lexington, Kentucky. He practiced in Flemingsburgh, Kentucky in 1799 and 1800.

Scott came to Chillicothe, Ohio early in 1801, and was licensed to practice in June, 1801. He was Clerk of the Northwest Territory Legislature that winter. In November, 1802, he was secretary at the State Constitutional Convention. He was first justice of the peace in Ross County, and was clerk of the Ohio Senate 1803–1809. He was Prosecuting Attorney of Ross County, 1804 and 1805.

In 1809, Scott was chosen Judge of the Ohio Supreme Court, serving until he resigned July 25, 1815. He was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in 1815, and did not seek re-election. Scott was a Whig until Henry Clay blocked his appointment as Federal District Judge. He then became a Democrat, remaining so until the candidacy of General Harrison in 1840, after which he returned to the Whigs.

From 1829 to 1845, Scott served as register of public lands at the Chillicothe Federal Land Office. When he died February 13, 1856 at Chillicothe, he had been active as a lawyer longer than anyone in Ohio, and "probably, longer a preacher of the gospel than any other minister in the United States." He is buried at Grandview Cemetery.