Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/401

 :: Love Match,’ 1841.
 * 1) ‘Melanthe, or the Days of the Medici,’ 1843.
 * 2) ‘Leontine, or the Court of Louis the Fifteenth,’ 1846.
 * 3) ‘The Present State of Ireland and its Remedy,’ 1847.
 * 4) ‘Fashion and its Votaries,’ 1848.
 * 5) ‘The Lady and the Priest,’ 1851.
 * 6) ‘Display, a Novel,’ 1855.
 * 7) ‘Leonora,’ 1856.



MABS. [See .] 

MACADAM, JOHN (1827–1865), chemist, son of William Macadam, was born at Northbank, near Glasgow, in May 1827. He became a medical student in the university of Glasgow, where he took the degree of M.D. He first studied chemistry under Professor Penny, whose assistant he became, and subsequently entered the university of Edinburgh, where he worked under Professor Gregory. He went to Melbourne in 1855, to fill the post of lecturer on chemistry and natural science in the Scotch College of that city. He was one of the earliest members of the Philosophical Institution (since 1859 the Royal Society) of Victoria. He edited the first five volumes of the society's ‘Transactions,’ and occupied the post of secretary from 1857 until his election as vice-president in 1863. He represented the district of Castlemaine in the Legislative Assembly of Victoria from 1859 to 1864, and was postmaster-general during the latter part of the Heales administration (26 April till 14 Nov. 1861). He was appointed lecturer in theoretical and practical chemistry in the university of Melbourne during the session 1861–2, and also held the posts of government officer of health and public analyst to the city of Melbourne. In May 1865 he met with an accident which greatly enfeebled him. In the autumn, however, he sailed for New Zealand to give evidence in a murder case. Severe weather brought on an attack of sea sickness, of which he died on 2 Sept. 1865, on board the Alhambra. He left a widow and one son.

Macadam contributed two papers to the Royal Society, Victoria, ‘On Kerosene’ (abstract, Trans. Roy. Soc. Vict. vi. 61) and ‘On Dalton's Atomic Theory’ (not printed). He also assisted in drawing up a report on the resources of the colony of Victoria, presented to the Royal Society of Victoria in 1860.



McADAM, JOHN LOUDON (1756–1836), the ‘macadamiser’ of roads, born at Ayr 21 Sept. 1756, was descended on the paternal side from the clan of the McGregors. When the clan was outlawed under James II of Scotland (1430–1460), Adam, a grandson of the chief Gregor McGregor, settled in the lowlands and changed his name to McAdam. His grandson, Andrew, obtained from James VI in 1569 a charter of the lands of Waterhead in the parish of Carsphairn, Kirkcudbrightshire. A later descendant, Gilbert, was a zealous covenanter. He was killed by the royalists about 1685 while attending a prayer-meeting at Kirkmichael, Ayrshire. James, fourth in descent from the covenanter, and father of John Loudon McAdam, was in 1763 one of the founders of the first bank in Ayr. He married Suzannah, daughter of John Cochrane of Waterside, a relative of the Earls of Dundonald. While an infant McAdam narrowly escaped death in a fire which consumed his father's house of Laywyne, parish of Carsphairn. Laywyne was not rebuilt; the ancestral estate in the parish was sold soon afterwards, and the family removed to Blairquhan, a country-house on the Girvan near Straton, which was rented of the owner, Sir John Whiteford. From Blairquhan McAdam attended the parish school of Maybole, and while there gave signs of his future eminence as a roadmaker by constructing a model section of the road between Maybole and Kirkoswald. His father died in 1770, and he was entrusted to the care of an uncle, a merchant, settled at New York. Till the close of the revolutionary war he remained in America, and as ‘agent for the sale of prizes’ accumulated a considerable fortune. Although the victory of the republicans deprived him of a portion of his property, enough remained to enable him to return to Scotland and to purchase Sauhrie, an estate in Ayrshire lying on the old high-road between Ayr and Maybole. Here he spent the next thirteen years of his life, occupying himself as a magistrate, deputy-lieutenant for the county, and road trustee. In 1798 he was appointed agent for revictualling the navy in the western ports, and took up his residence at Falmouth.

As road trustee at Sauhrie McAdam had ample opportunity of investigating the condition of the highways and of realising the necessity for reform. Throughout Great Britain, but especially in Scotland, the roads at the time were generally very bad, ‘being