LOCKMAN, LEONARD, surgeon; b. c. 1697 at Hanover (Federal Republic of Germany), son of John Lockman; d. 2 May 1769 at Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Leonard Lockman’s father was a page of the future King George II of England and “had the honour to teach His Majesty French and Italian.” Upon the completion of his training in anatomy and surgery in Germany and France, Leonard was a surgeon to the guards of George I of England at Hanover and at a hospital in Mecklenburg (German Democratic Republic). He was in England briefly in 1722 and late that year sailed for Barbados with the new governor, Henry Worsley. In Barbados Lockman volunteered to care for the crew of a naval ship infected with fever, and as a reward was appointed inspector general of health. He held this post until 1733 when ill health caused by the climate forced him to move his family to New England.

Nothing is known of his activities until 1742, when he returned to England. That year he persuaded his patrons, Earl Granville and the Duke of Richmond, to obtain for him appointment as judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court and naval officer of Rhode Island. He went to Rhode Island in 1743, but the general assembly of the colony refused to accept his appointment to the post and chose their own judge instead. Lockman remained in Rhode Island and in 1746 he volunteered for the proposed expedition against Quebec [see Warren]. He was commissioned a captain after he succeeded in being the first to raise a company of men, and was promoted major the following year. After many delays, however, the expedition was finally called off.

He returned to England in 1748 and petitioned for another position in compensation for the loss of the Rhode Island post. He was appointed a surgeon, at ten shillings a day, in Governor Edward Cornwallis*’ expedition to found Halifax in 1749, but was disappointed when he learned he had to share the post and salary with John Steele. Lockman brought several apprentices with him to Nova Scotia. When an epidemic broke out in 1750 in Halifax among German settlers from the ship Ann, Cornwallis ordered the sick to be moved to Lockman’s house “where there are chimneys [fireplaces].” In June 1753 Governor Peregrine Thomas Hopson sent Lockman and Johann Burghard Erad to care for the Germans who were going to the new settlement at Lunenburg.

Lockman did not stay long at Lunenburg. He had been partially disabled by a groin injury he received late in 1749 and was unable to travel by horseback or carriage to do his work. Also, when he found his pay was set at five shillings a day, he regarded this “as only half pay and that he was to do no duty.” He returned to Halifax and left as his deputy one of his “journeymen,” who worked at 18 pence a day. In 1759 he was relieved of his duties at Lunenburg when they were officially taken over by Erad’s assistant and successor, John Phillips. Lockman continued to receive his regular allowance as a pension. In April 1761 he received additional income when he was appointed “Interpreter in the Courts of Law and Equity . . . of the German and French Languages.” When the post of Lunenburg surgeon was abolished in 1768 and Lockman lost his pension, he petitioned the crown for a small allowance for himself and his wife, Tanalia. One daughter, Carolina, is mentioned in his will.

Phyllis R. Blakeley

Halifax County Court of Probate, 1769, L68a. PANS, MG 1, 109–11; MG 5, Halifax City, “Old Dutch” [St George’s Anglican] cemetery inscriptions; RG 1, 37, nos.66, 67; 163/3, p.132; 164/1, 29; 164/2, p.310; 165, p.125; 167, p.29; 342, no.25; RG 3, Minutes of Nova Scotia Council, 28 June 1759; RG 36, 1751–70, p.83, bundle 11. Rhode Island State Archives (Providence, R.I.), Letters, L–1, 2, pp.1, 27, 29, 35, 39, 45, 54, 63, 66; L–2, 1, pp.28, 86. The correspondence of the colonial governors of Rhode Island, 1732–1775, ed. G. S. Kimball (2v., Boston, New York, 1902–3), I. Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser (Halifax), 9 May 1769, p.151. PRO, JTP, 1741/42–1749, 397, 405, 408. Records of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence plantations, in New England, ed. J. R. Bartlett (10v., Providence, R.I., 1856–65), V, 70–71, 96, 271. Bell, Foreign Protestants. T. B. Akins, “History of Halifax City,” N.S. Hist. Soc. Coll., VIII (1895), 6, 72, 203–4, 234–35, 253n.