John Bennett Marks 

According to friends, John “possessed a masculine and powerful intellect”. Though he was “much inclined to agricultural pursuits,” he was often too busy with his various civil offices to do more than manage his hired agricultural labourers. His diary details this farm management. He had served in the Royal Navy as a Captain’s Secretary under Lord Nelson and while writing the diary is also clerk in charge of the Kingston Dockyard. With the outbreak of the 1837 Rebellion, he returns to active naval service.