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Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, barrister, member of parliament, and poet. Sackville was born in 1536 at Buckhurst, Surrey and perhaps educated at Hart Hall, Oxford and St. John's College, Cambridge. He became a barrister in the Inner Temple and a member of parliament, 1558-1563. In 1567 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Buckhurst, and in 1608 was created Earl of Dorset. He served as an ambassador and then lord treasurer from 1599 until his death at his desk in Whitehall, London, 19 April 1608. Sackville was also an accomplished poet.

The Robert Fuge, a brig, travelled from Liverpool to Quebec City in the summer of 1819. The master of the ship was A.G. Blewett. On board were J. Fenton and 32 other settlers. The ship arrived in Quebec on 26 August, after a voyage of 60 days.

David Macbeth Moir, physician and author, was born in Musselburgh, Scotland, on 5 January 1798. He also used the pen name of the delta symbol . He was educated in Edinburgh and became a frequent contributor of Constable's Edinburgh Magazine and Blackwood's Magazine. He married Catherine E. Bell on 8 June 1828. He published one novel, The Autobiography of Mansie Wauch (1828). He died in Dumfries on 6 July 1851.

Luís de Almeida Portugal Soares de Alarcão d'Eça e Melo Silva Mascarenhas, 2nd Marquess of Lavradio was the 11th Viceroy of the Portuguese colony of Brazil, the second one that ruled the colony after the seat of government moved to Rio de Janeiro. He was the son of a Marquis of the same title, D. António de Almeida Soares e Portugal and his wife, D. Francisca das Chagas Mascarenhas. During the 1762 Spanish invasion of Portugal, he commanded the 1st Cascais Infantry Regiment.

George Marshall served as the ship's Fourth Officer on the East India Company ship The Royal Charlotte. The ship of 499 tons made its first voyage beginning in 1771 or 1772.

Comiers was a mathematician and kabbalist.

Andreas Roessner, burgess and basketmaker lived in Kelheim, Bavaria, with Maria his wife.

Mary Jane Palliser, was the youngest daughter of Sir Hugh Palliser, 2nd Baronet, and Mary, was born sometime after 1796. Her first marriage was in 1822 to William Lockhart of Gormiston. Her second marriage was to John Manly Arbuthnot, Lord Keane on 11 May 1848. She died in October of 1881.

Antony Fenwick (Tony) Pickard, O.B.E., C.D., R.C.N., was a career officer in the Royal Canadian Navy.

Born in Victoria, BC, he began serving as a cadet in 1928, taking various appointments before the start of the war. During the Second World War, he was commander of a corvette squadron that escorted merchant ships across the Atlantic.

His post-war service included acting as captain of HMCS Haida. He spent three years of his naval career in Hamilton, from 1956 to 1959, where he was chief of staff of Commanding Officer Naval Divisions (COND), based at HMCS Star on the Hamilton bayfront, the headquarters of Canada’s naval reserves. He was present for the independence celebrations in Sierra Leone in 1961 and after retiring in 1965, he was manager of one of Canada’s theme pavilions at EXPO67 in Montreal. He became administrator for the Department of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in 1968. He died in 1972.

The Crombie family, still resident in Brant county, has antecedents in England, the Isle of Man and in Ireland. Some of their earliest ancestors were active in the British military service: Richard Hedges Cradock (married in 1767) served in America, Spain, Portugal, France and the West Indies and his son, Adam Williamson Cradock, established himself in Canada for a time before returning to Dublin. One of the primary unifying links in this collection of family papers covering more than two centuries is Agnes Georgina Cradock (1839-1916) who was born in Dublin and died in Canada, dividing her life between the two countries, first marrying Henry Archdall Wood (1861) and after his death in 1874, marrying George Thomas Atkins in 1877. The Atkins family were neighbours of the Cradocks; George's father, Major Thomas Atkins, served in India before purchasing a property in West Flamborough in 1840. The elder daughter of Agnes and George, Hilda Isabelle Georgina Atkins (1878-1949), married into the Crombie family. Edward Rubidge Crombie (1874-1937), Hilda's husband, was a farmer and writer whose literary efforts form a significant part of this fonds. Their son Edward B. H. Crombie (1909-1994) married Margaret C. Reynolds (1918-2003), daughter of V. Ernest Reynolds and Estella M. Craig.

Margaret Laurence, noted Canadian author, was born Jean Margaret Wemyss in Neepawa, Manitoba on 18 July 1926. She was educated at the University of Manitoba. In 1947 she married John Laurence and they had two children, Jocelyn and David. In 1949, they moved to England and then Africa, where they lived in Somalia and Ghana. The Laurences separated in 1962, and divorced in 1969. During this time she returned to Canada, living in Vancouver, before going back to England, first to London, and then to Elm Cottage in Buckinghamshire. In the early 1970s, she accepted a position of writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto, and settled in Lakefield, Ontario. In 1986, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and passed away, in her home in Lakefield, 5 January 1987.

Laurence twice won the Governor General's Award for fiction, as well as many other literary awards. Her best known works are The Stone Angel (1964), A Jest of God (1966), The Fire Dwellers (1969), A Bird in the House (1970), The Diviners (1974 and many others). Her memoirs, Dance on the Earth, were published posthumously.

The son of a prominent Irish contractor, Joseph M. Pigott was born in Hamilton on 23 February 1885 and educated in Hamilton Separate Schools and Collegiate Institute. In 1903 he began working for his father's expanding construction company, one he would guide to unknown wealth and size. After having gained a thorough grounding in the construction industry Pigott travelled to Saskatchewan in 1909 with his younger brother Roy where they secured a large contract to build St. Paul's Hospital in Saskatoon. While in the West, Pigott met and married Yvonne Prince, daughter of Hon. B. Prince of Battlefield, Saskatchewan, and returned to Hamilton before living briefly in Detroit.

When Roy Pigott returned from the First World War, the two brothers began to direct Pigott Construction to fortune and fame. The first $1,000,000 year came in 1926, and in 1930, Hamilton's earliest skyscraper, the 16-storey Pigott Building, was completed. While Joseph and Roy led the company through the years of the depression, Pigott also dedicated himself to his growing family of 6 boys, 4 of whom were later associated with their father in his business.

After the Second World War Pigott Construction was Canada's largest privately-owned construction company amassing more than $113,000,000 in business in a single year. As head of his own company, Pigott erected some of Canada's largest industrial plants and finest buildings, including the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; Crown Life Insurance Company head office, Toronto; Bank of Canada, Ottawa; a $45,000,000 plant for General Motors, Oshawa, and buildings totalling $50,000,000 for A. V. Roe Company in Malton. In Hamilton, buildings erected by the Pigott firm include the Canadian Westinghouse offices, Banks of Nova Scotia, Royal and Montreal, McMaster University, the County Court House, Westdale Secondary School, St. Joseph's Hospital, the Pigott Building, the new City Hall and the Cathedral of Christ the King. Upon completion of the Cathedral, Pope Pius XI, in recognition of his accomplishment on this and other buildings, created him a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great and later "Con Placa".

In 1946 in acknowledgment of his services to the Government of Canada during the war Pigott was created Commander of the British Empire. His service to Canada as president of the Wartime Housing Ltd. provided solutions to some most serious problems at that critical time. In consideration of his contributions to social welfare and to the political and intellectual life of Christian society, he was invested as a knight of magistral grace of the Sovereign and Military order of Malta in 1953, and in 1962, he was awarded the honorary degree of LL.D by McMaster University. He was a former president of the Canadian Construction Association, Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, a former vice-president and director of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, president of Pigott Realty Ltd., vice-president and director of North American Life Assurance Company, director of Canada Permanent Trust Company, Atlas Steels Ltd., and United Fuel Investments Ltd. Pigott was also a former president of the board of governors of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, a director of the Ontario Heart Foundation, chairman of the advisory committee of St. Joseph's Hospital, a member of the Hamilton Club, the Hamilton Golf and Country Club and the National Club of Toronto. Pigott played an enormous role in the development of Hamilton. He died in Hamilton on 20 April 1969.

James King was born in Springfield, Mass. on 14 June 1942. He received his M.A. in 1969 and Ph.D in 1970 from Princeton University. He was Assistant Professor of English at Loyola College, 1970-71, and from 1971-77 at McMaster University. He became Associate Professor of English at McMaster in 1977 and Professor of English in 1983. He was Chair of the McMaster Association for Eighteenth Century Studies from 1984-88.

He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada since 1993. King has received several prestigious awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 1980-81, and the Killam Research Fellow Award, 1988-90. His scholarly works have gained him the rank of University Professor. He is co-editor of The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper, (4 vols., 1979-86) and the author of many biographies. He is also a novelist.

Born in 1933, Victor DiBello was a musician and conductor. In 1950, after playing in the East York Collegiate Orchestra, he founded the Pro Arte Orchestra of Toronto, originally an amateur group but later becoming a professional ensemble. As well as conducting the Pro Arte Orchestra, he was the conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic from 1959 to 1962 and Music Coordinator, later Music Director, at the Stratford (Ont.) Festival in the 1960s.

Sid Blum was involved in various social welfare and human rights organizations in Canada, including the National Committee on Human Rights.