John Galt

John Galt (1779-1839), Scottish author, born in Irvine, Ayr County. Early in the 1820s he wrote a series of colorful novels about Scottish life, including The Ayrshire Legatees (1820); The Annals of the Parish (1821); and The Entail, a horrifying study of greed and obsession. Between 1825 and 1829 he served in Canada as an official of the Canada Company, a land-development organization. During this period he founded the town of Guelph (now in Ontario). Shade's Mills (Ontario) was renamed Galt in his honor in 1827. After his return from Canada to live in England and Scotland, he wrote several works, including The Life of Lord Byron (1830), a biography of his friend, and Lawrie Todd (1830), the first novel to deal with Scottish settlers in Canada.