James Somerville (Canadian politician, Bruce)
Encyclopedia
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
businessman, notary public
Notary public
A notary public in the common law world is a public officer constituted by law to serve the public in non-contentious matters usually concerned with estates, deeds, powers-of-attorney, and foreign and international business...
and political figure. He represented Bruce West
Bruce West
Bruce West was a federal electoral district in Ontario, Canada, that was represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1882 to 1904. This riding was created in 1882 from parts of Bruce North and Bruce South ridings....
in the Canadian House of Commons
Canadian House of Commons
The House of Commons of Canada is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the Sovereign and the Senate. The House of Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 308 members known as Members of Parliament...
as a Liberal
Liberal Party of Canada
The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...
member from 1882 to 1887.
He was born in Dunfermline
Dunfermline
Dunfermline is a town and former Royal Burgh in Fife, Scotland, on high ground from the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. According to a 2008 estimate, Dunfermline has a population of 46,430, making it the second-biggest settlement in Fife. Part of the town's name comes from the Gaelic word...
, Fife
Fife
Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
in 1826 and came to Dundas
Dundas, Ontario
Dundas is a formerly independent town and now constituent community in the city of Hamilton in Ontario, Canada. It's nickname is the Valley Town. The population has been stable for decades at about twenty thousand, largely because it has not annexed rural land from the protected Dundas Valley...
, Upper Canada
Upper Canada
The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...
with his family in 1841. In 1849, he married Mary Bennett. He was named a magistrate in 1854. He founded the village of Lucknow
Lucknow, Ontario
Lucknow is a community located in Bruce County, Ontario, Canada. It is incorporated in the Township of Huron-Kinloss.-History:...
, where he bought a sawmill
Sawmill
A sawmill is a facility where logs are cut into boards.-Sawmill process:A sawmill's basic operation is much like those of hundreds of years ago; a log enters on one end and dimensional lumber exits on the other end....
and erected a gristmill
Gristmill
The terms gristmill or grist mill can refer either to a building in which grain is ground into flour, or to the grinding mechanism itself.- Early history :...
and wool carding mill. He also helped organize a petition to have Lucknow incorporated as a police village in 1863 and donated the land for the town hall. Somerville also served on the township councils for Wawanosh and Kinloss and was commissioner in the Court of Queen's Bench. He was First Principal in the Royal Arch chapter of Freemasons.