William Dummer Powell
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William Dummer Powell (November 5, 1755-September 6, 1834) was a lawyer, judge and political figure in Upper Canada.
He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1755, the son of a prosperous merchant. He studied in Boston, Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent and Rotterdam. On his return, he studied law with the attorney general of Massachusetts, Jonathan Sewall. Powell was a loyalist and, after his marriage to Anne Murray who was the daughter of a Boston physician from Scotland, returned to England in 1775. He studied law at the Middle Temple and went to Quebec in 1779, entering private practice in Montreal. He went to England in 1783 with other delegates to petition against the Quebec Act of 1774. His formal call to the English bar, delayed because of finances, was finally arranged in 1784 and, later that year, he returned to Boston to attempt to recover his father's property which had been confiscated after the American Revolution. Unsuccessful, he returned to Montreal in 1785.
In 1789, he was appointed judge in the Western District. He lived in Detroit but the court sat at L'Assomption (Windsor). In 1794, he was appointed to the Court of King's Bench for Upper Canada and moved to Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake). In 1808, he was appointed to the Executive Council for the province. He settled at York (Toronto) and remained there during the American occupation during the War of 1812. He opposed the suspension of habeas corpus during the war. In 1814, he assisted Chief Justice Thomas Scott by presiding over several of the trials known as the "Bloody Assize" which were held at Ancaster to prosecute those charged with treason during the war.
When Chief Justice Thomas Scott was no longer able to chair the Executive Council in 1816, Powell took on that post, and also replaced him as Chief Justice later that same year.
He upset the province's administration by rejecting many of the charges brought by Lord Selkirk against those who had stirred up trouble for the Red River Colony. In 1823, he refused to swear in Alexander Wood as a commissioner for war claims arising from the War of 1812; Powell had originally opposed his appointment on moral grounds. Wood successfully sued him for damages. Although he opposed prosecuting Robert Fleming Gourlay for attacks on the administration of the province, he found himself forced to banish Gourlay from the province for sedition. In 1825, after he was rebuked by the Executive Council for exposing the administration to criticism, he resigned from that council; he was succeeded by William Campbell as Chief Justice later that year.
He died in Toronto in 1834.
His grandson, John, later became an alderman and was mayor of Toronto from 1838 to 1840.
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| Legal offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Thomas Scott 1816–1825 |
Chief Justice of Upper Canada 1816–1825 |
Succeeded by William Campbell |
