1. John Macadam, was a Scottish-Australian chemist, medical teacher, Australian politician and cabinet minister, and honorary secretary of the Burke and Wills expedition.
25 Facts About John Macadam
1. 2.
John Macadam died at sea, on a voyage from Australia to New Zealand, aged 38.
3.
John Macadam was born at Northbank, Glasgow, Scotland, on 29 May 1827, the son of William Macadam and Helen, nee Stevenson.
4.
John Macadam's father was a Glasgow businessman, who owned a spinning and textile printing works in Kilmarnock, and was a burgess and a bailie of Glasgow.
5.
John Macadam was privately educated in Glasgow; he studied chemistry at the Andersonian University and went for advanced study at the University of Edinburgh under Professor William Gregory.
6.
John Macadam was elected a fellow of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts that year, and in 1848, a member of the Glasgow Philosophical Society.
7.
John Macadam then studied medicine at the University of Glasgow.
8.
On 8 June 1855, aged 28, John Macadam sailed for Melbourne in the Colony of Victoria, Australia, on the sailing ship Admiral.
9.
John Macadam was a member of the Board of Agriculture.
10.
John Macadam became a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly of the self-governing Colony of Victoria as a radical and supporter of the Land Convention, representing Castlemaine.
11.
John Macadam had sponsored bills on medical practitioners and adulteration of food which became law in 1862 and 1863.
12.
Between 1857 and 1862, John Macadam served as honorary secretary of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria, which then became the Royal Society of Victoria in 1860, and was appointed vice-president of it in 1863.
13.
John Macadam was editor of first five volumes of the society's Transactions.
14.
John Macadam was active in erecting the Society's Meeting Hall and was involved in the institute's initiative to obtain a royal charter.
15.
John Macadam saw both happen while he held office, when in January 1860, the Philosophical Institute became the Royal Society of Victoria and met in their new building.
16.
Between 1857 and 1865, John Macadam served as honorary secretary to the Exploration Committee of the Royal Society of Victoria, which organised the Burke and Wills expedition.
17.
John Macadam had arrived three days before the wedding with her maid on the Admiral, the same ship on which he had travelled out a year earlier, which reached Hobson's Bay on 15 September 1856, having set sail from London on 7 June 1856.
18.
John Macadam was the second daughter of John Clark, of Levenfield House in Alexandria, the Vale of Leven, a short distance north of Glasgow in West Dunbartonshire.
19.
John Melnotte Macadam was born 29 August 1858 at Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia, and died on 30 January 1859, aged 5 months.
20.
William Castlemaine John Macadam was born on 2 July 1860 and died 17 December 1865 at Williamstown, Victoria, Australia.
21.
John Macadam died aged five and had survived his father by a few months.
22.
In March 1865 Macadam sailed to New Zealand to give evidence at the trial of Captain W A Jarvey, accused of fatally poisoning his wife, but the jury did not reach a verdict.
23.
John Macadam was advised, on medical grounds, not to return for the adjourned trial but did so and died on the ship on 2 September 1865.
24.
John Macadam's grave, surmounted by a marble obelisk, is in Melbourne General Cemetery.
25.
John Macadam married the Reverend John Dalziel Dickie, who was pastor at Colac for 32 years.