Zachary Macaulay
1768-1838. Evangelical leader. Son of a Scots Presbyterian minister, he went to Jamaica at the age of sixteen as a bookkeeper on an estate which used slave labor. Deeply impressed with the evils of slavery, he returned to England in 1792 and became a member of the Sierra Leone Company. From 1793 to 1799 he was governor of the colony and ruined his health with overwork. Thereafter he was secretary of the company till the colony was transferred to the Crown in 1808, and editor of the Christian Observer (1802-16). He resided in Clapham with other prominent evangelicals and played a leading role in the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and in the renewal of the antislavery agitation in 1823. He took a great part also in the affairs of the Bible Society and the Church Missionary Society. He failed in business in 1823 and was thereafter dogged by ill-health till his death. His son was Thomas Babington Macaulay, historian and essayist.