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LUDLOW, GEORGE DUNCAN, judge and politician; b. 29 Sept. 1734 in Queens County, Long Island, N.Y., son of Gabriel Ludlow and Frances Duncan; m. 22 April 1758 a cousin who was also named Frances Duncan, and they had one son and two daughters; d. 13 Nov. 1808 in Fredericton, N.B.

The Ludlow family arrived in America from Somerset, England, in 1694. Gabriel Ludlow, founder of the colonial branch, became a successful merchant, shipowner, and landholder. His son Gabriel married Frances Duncan and moved to Queens County, where George Duncan was born in 1734 and Gabriel George in 1736. Another son, Daniel, was born in 1750 of a second marriage. Gabriel was a member of the New York General Assembly (1739–45) and a merchant of a wide variety of “European and East-India goods,” which he sold out of a storefront on Wall Street. He was also among New York City’s more notable slave traders: in 1760, for instance, he advertised the arrival of a schooner from Africa and the sale of a “parcel of … Negro Boys and Girls, from 9 to 12 Years of Age.” The wealth and status of the family gave the boys several advantages, including education in a private school.

George Duncan apparently followed his father into business and then spent a short period as an apprentice apothecary before turning to the law. By the age of 30 he had been admitted to the bar and had begun a successful practice, largely in commercial cases. Official preferment soon followed: on 14 Dec. 1769 he was appointed an associate judge of the colonial supreme court. His brother Gabriel was meanwhile making a mark for himself in business.

Both brothers were staunch supporters of the crown during the troubles of the pre-revolutionary years. In the mid 1770s George Duncan was forced out of New York City “to cherish the remains of loyalty in Queens County,” where he and Gabriel owned substantial adjoining properties near Hempstead (now New Hyde Park). With the arrival of General Sir William Howe and the British army in 1776, he returned to the city, and until the final surrender in 1783 he remained a leading royalist. In August 1779 the houses of both brothers on Long Island were plundered by rebels and George Duncan was reported to have evaded capture by hiding out on his roof; the plan had been to abduct the owners and exchange them for rebel prisoners “of equal rank.” On 22 October the state legislature passed an act banishing the Ludlows, confiscating their properties, and convicting them and 58 fellow loyalists of a felony punishable with summary execution. Ludlow later estimated the price of his loyalty at £6,500 in real and personal estate. Disappointed when passed over in favour of William Smith* for the chief justiceship of New York in 1780, he had resigned from the bench. Governor James Robertson consoled him in 1780 with an appointment as superintendent of police for Long Island. It had become necessary to find some means of administering justice there, and he was given “powers on principles of equity to hear and determine controversies till civil government can take place.” The “little tyrant of the Island” was not popular, however, and was believed to have exerted excessive influence on behalf of his friends: it was said that no acts of law or justice could proceed “without an application to the high and mighty Court of Police at Jamaica.”

Regarded as arch-tory to the core, the Ludlows apparently had no choice but to leave New York when the revolution was over, though their half-brother, Daniel, also a loyalist, remained there and would become a successful businessman. George Duncan sailed for England on 19 June 1783, shortly before his brother, Gabriel; both left their families behind until arrangements could be completed for their settlement elsewhere. In London the Ludlows joined a large and vociferous lobby of loyalist place-seekers. With the successful conclusion of the campaign to create from Nova Scotia a new province as a home for American refugees, George Duncan was selected as its chief justice. The choice was made in March or April 1784, some months before the royal proclamation establishing the province of New Brunswick was signed and before the governor was appointed. Ludlow may therefore have been the first person named to any position in New Brunswick. As chief justice he was a member of the original Council of New Brunswick that was to administer the province. Gabriel was also appointed to this body and, by virtue of his military rank, became its senior member. The Ludlow brothers held these positions, two of the most prestigious in New Brunswick, for the next 25 years. Younger members of the Council such as Edward Winslow, Ward Chipman*, and John Coffin* had more to offer, but their activities always took place under the cautious eyes of their seniors.

A new life in New Brunswick 

After touring Britain, especially the new manufacturing towns, the Ludlows embarked for New Brunswick in September 1784 with Governor Thomas Carleton. Following a brief stay at Halifax, N.S., the governor’s entourage made its way to Parrtown (Saint John), which became the temporary capital of the new province and where Gabriel was soon appointed mayor. George Duncan was sworn in on 25 November. When the first session of the Supreme Court was held on 1 Feb. 1785, Benjamin Marston* recorded that “the Chief Justice gave a very judicious, sensible charge to the Grand Jury.”

Saint John’s early years were turbulent ones, raising the spectre of incidents similar to those in pre-revolutionary American cities. The distressed condition of the population was in sharp contrast to the circumstances of the élite, a point emphasized in the local press and taverns [see Elias Hardy*]. The first provincial election, in 1785, brought the issue to a climax. When the six hand-chosen government candidates for Saint John were defeated by the “rabble,” Carleton, supported by his council and the judges, overturned the results and had his candidates declared elected. Selected members of the “rabble,” including newspapermen William Lewis* and John Ryan*, were arrested, charged with “criminal” activity before the Supreme Court, and punished. The governor and his council thus established from the beginning the tenor of New Brunswick’s politics.

In 1786 the New England Company appointed several commissioners to their board from among New Brunswick’s “principal inhabitants,” including Ludlow, Chipman, and Coffin, as well as George Leonard*, the superintendent of trade and fisheries, and Jonathan Odell, the Council’s secretary and clerk. The company’s primary goal was the education and assimilation of New Brunswick’s Indigenous people and their ultimate conversion from Catholicism to the Church of England. After initial attempts to set up schools in communities across the colony met with limited success, the board chose to consolidate its resources and focus on a school in Sussex Vale (Sussex), east of Fredericton. There, Micmac (Mi’kmaw) and Malecite (Wolastoqiyik) families were encouraged to settle on plots of company land and to send their children to the company-run industrial school to learn English, a vocational trade, and tenets of the Anglican faith [see Oliver Arnold*]. Progress towards this goal was slow, however, and there was a widening split between the commissioners who were willing to be patient in gaining the trust of Indigenous families and those who wanted to take a more aggressive stance. Ludlow was in the latter camp. In 1803, frustrated by what he perceived as the wasteful expenditure of company funds and the failure of the Sussex Vale school, he resigned from the board.

Governor Carleton decided that Saint John was unsuitable for the provincial capital and in 1786 moved inland to Fredericton. The chief justice naturally accompanied the administration while his brother stayed in the commercial capital of Saint John. George Duncan acquired about 1,500 acres five miles north of Fredericton for his estate, which he called Spring Hill after the residence of Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden, his New York patron of the 1760s. The house, made from the “most beautiful specimens” of local woods, such as bird’s-eye maple and birch, was much admired. There he and Frances, whom the author Patrick Campbell* described as “among the mildest and most amiable of her sex,” lived out their years in New Brunswick.

As chief justice, Ludlow was more inconsistent, or more flexible, than might have been expected. In his first case Nancy Mozely (Mosley), a Black woman, was convicted of manslaughter for killing her husband with a pitchfork. After pleading benefit of clergy, an ancient tradition whereby first-time offenders might receive a lesser sentence, she was branded with the letter M on the brawn of her left thumb and then dismissed. In February 1800 a more famous case, addressing the legality of slavery in New Brunswick, was brought before the court. Nancy*, an enslaved woman born in Maryland who had been transported to the Fredericton area by loyalist Caleb Jones, brought a writ of habeas corpus against him. Ludlow, a slave-holder, supported the owners. Ward Chipman, who was acting as Nancy's lawyer, declared “Our Chief Justice is very strenuous in support of the master’s rights as being founded on immemorial usuages and customs in all parts of America ever since its discovery. He contends that customs in all countries are the foundation of law, and from them the law acquires its force.” Ludlow was supported on the bench by Joshua Upham, a slave-holder himself, while the other two judges (Isaac Allen and John Saunders*) were opposed. The split permitted Jones to retain Nancy as his property, despite British custom at the time. The outcome of the case was controversial. Slavery was increasingly unpopular in the colony, but subsequent attempts to have the issue resolved by the Supreme Court also failed [see Statia]. It was another 22 years before the government announced that no slaves lived in New Brunswick.

Ludlow’s use in this case of North American practices as opposed to British ones was characteristic. When, for example, the question of legal fees arose in 1787, he reduced the proposed scale by almost one-half to meet the needs of a struggling colony. “At the commencements of Circuit Courts, especially in this province,” he explained, “peculiar difficulties must attend the practitioner, but they will gradually lessen as the population increases, and the wealth, as well as the litigation, of the inhabitants, multiply.” Despite the outrage of the lawyers, Ludlow held firm “[or] the present generation would not find wherewith to purchase justice.”

Wealthy landholders also found themselves at odds with Ludlow. In 1805 the ownership of fishing rights in waters adjoining property became an issue in Saint John. William Hazen, an original grantee from the 1760s, had his claim challenged and a fishing weir removed. He charged trespass before a jury, but Ludlow “without hesitation, directed the Jury that it was an arm of the sea and common to all; that even if all the fisheries there had been expressly granted to him [Hazen], the grant would not have been worth a farthing.” That attack on property rights shocked the establishment, and Ludlow’s “tergiversation” was a scandal. In 1808, however, the British were to uphold his position.

In this as in other matters the chief justice was unmoved by criticism, which he received from all sides during his career. James Glenie, an early New Brunswick radical, at one point called him an “ignorant, strutting chief justice” who must be removed to save the province, and Governor Carleton liked neither of the brothers, especially the chief justice, with whom he was frequently at odds. It is not clear what prompted the difficult relationship between Carleton and the Ludlows. Perhaps he was too English and they too American, or they lacked the proper deference, or they were too demanding. Until 1803, however, Carleton dominated affairs. The Ludlows might quibble with him, but they supported the conservative direction he gave to the colony. George Duncan participated in all decisions regarding legislation and justice throughout Carleton’s governorship, and of the two brothers he was far the more substantial and influential. Even when Gabriel became administrator of the province on Carleton’s departure, it was George Duncan who, in reality, headed the government. He had the greater experience of administration and Gabriel always deferred to him.

In February 1808 Gabriel Ludlow died. Left to carry on alone, George Duncan was grief stricken and faced the certainty of loss of power in the Council. He suffered a paralytic stroke on 6 March and remained largely incapacitated until his death at Spring Hill on 13 November. He was survived by Frances and their children: George, Frances, and Elizabeth, who, in 1787, had married John Robinson*, a future mayor of Saint John.

The Ludlow brothers occupy a unique position in New Brunswick history. For 25 years they held two of the senior positions in the colony, and for five years after Carleton’s return to Britain they were in control, apparently without being seriously challenged. Innately conservative, an attitude reinforced by the American revolution, they were partly responsible for the strength of that tendency in New Brunswick. Past their prime when they arrived in New Brunswick, the Ludlows claimed their rights as members of the loyalist élite and died respected.

In 1785, in response to a petition submitted by loyalists who wanted to establish an “Academy or School of Liberal Arts and Sciences,” Ludlow and other members of the Council signed an act to create what would become the University of New Brunswick. The building dedicated to the faculty of law, completed in 1968, was named in honour of the colony’s first chief justice. Criticism in 2019 led the University to reconsider the decision: Ludlow’s enslavement of Black people, his judicial support for the institution of slavery, and his role in the Sussex Vale school, which is seen as a precursor to the residential school system, were cited in a report reviewing the issue, and his name was removed the following year.

In collaboration with C. M. Wallace