Person

Sinclair, John, Sir, 1754-1835

1754-1835

Sir John Sinclair was born in 1754 in Thurso Castle in Caithness, Scotland and died in 1835 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His parents were George Sinclair of Ulbster and Lady Janet Sutherland. Sinclair studied law at the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Trinity College in Oxford and completed his studies in 1774 at Lincoln’s Inn in London. A year later, he was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland and was called to the English bar, although he never practiced. In 1776, Sinclair married his first wife Sarah Maitland, the only child of Alexander Maitland and Stoke Newington. They had two daughters, Hannah and Janet. In 1788, Sinclair married Diana MacDonald, daughter of Alexander Lord MacDonald. They had thirteen children. Sinclair inherited his father’s estates in 1770 and had no financial need to work. In 1780, he worked in the House of Commons for the Caithness constituency and represented several English constituencies and his parliamentary career extended until 1811. Sinclair established a society for the improvement of British wool in Edinburgh and assisted in the creation of the Board of Agriculture, of which he served as the first president. He was a member of most of the continental agricultural societies, a fellow of the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was a fellow of the Antiquarian Society of London. Along with this, Sinclair was a member and occasionally the president of the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland and sat as the president of the Highland Society of London in 1796. In the same year, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1797, Sinclair was elected as a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1805, he became a commissioner for the construction of roads and bridges in the north of Scotland, and in 1810, was made a member of the privy council, and in 1811, received the sinecure office of Commissioner of excise. At eighty years old, Sinclair joined the Statistical Society of London (now the Royal Statistical Society) when it was founded in 1834. Some of Sinclair’s material works were the first recordings of archaeological monuments in Scotland. Sinclair was the author of the books titled: Statistical Accounts of Scotland (1791); History of the Public Revenue of the British Empire (1784); The Code of Health and Longevity (1807); Code of Agriculture (1819). After a tour of agricultural inquiry in Flanders in 1815, he wrote a pamphlet called “Hints Regarding the Agriculture State of the Netherlands, Compared with that of Great Britain.”

Revised on June 11, 2024, by Leah Louttit-Bunker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_John_Sinclair,_1st_Baronet https://historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/sinclair-sir-john-1754-1835