Philip Michael Matthew Scott VanKoughnet
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The Hon. Philip Michael Matthew Scott VanKoughnet (January 21, 1822 – November 7, 1869), lawyer, judge & political figure of Ontario.
He was born in Cornwall, Upper Canada in 1822, the son of Philip VanKoughnet. VanKoughnet originally planned to become a minister in the Church of England. However, after he served in his father's militia battalion during the Upper Canada Rebellion, he went on to study law with George Stephen Benjamin Jarvis at Cornwall and then with another firm at Toronto. VanKoughnet was called to the Upper Canada bar in 1843. He lectured in law at the University of Trinity College and also served on its council. He became a Queen's Counsel in 1850. In 1856, he was named to the Executive Council as president and minister of agriculture; he was elected to the Legislative Council of the Province of Canada for Rideau district later that same year. During his campaign, he expressed the belief that the ownership of the northwest regions should be transferred from the Hudson's Bay Company and that it should become part of the Province of Canada. In 1858, VanKoughnet was named commissioner of crown lands and, in 1860, the first chief superintendent of Indian affairs. He was named chancellor of the Court of Chancery of Upper Canada in 1862 and became chancellor of Ontario in 1867. Philip died in Toronto in 1869. An annual award is made in his name to a member of the graduating law class of Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto.
Philip married Elizabeth (b.1829), daughter of Colonel Charles Barker Turner (1787-1853), Knight of Hanover, veteren of Waterloo and the Peninsular Campaigns, by his wife Eliza, daughter of Major-General John Hassard (d.1838). Their second son, Captain Edmund Barker VanKoughnet (1849-1905) R.N., C.M.G., J.P., married The Hon. Jane Charlotte Elizabeth Alexander (1850-1941), daughter of James Du Pre Alexander (1812-1855), 3rd Earl of Caledon, Co. Tyrone.
