The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Lefroy, Lieut.-General Sir John Henry
Lefroy, Lieut.-General Sir John Henry, K.C.M.G., C.B., F.R.S., sometime Governor of Tasmania, fourth son of the late Rev. John Henry George Lefroy, of Ewshot House, Hants (younger brother of the late Lord Chief Justice of Ireland), by his marriage with Sophia, youngest daughter of the late Rev. Charles Jeffreys Cotterell, was born on Jan. 28th, 1817. He entered the Royal Artillery in Dec 1834, and acted as director of the magnetical observations at St. Helena and Toronto from 1839 to 1852. In 1840 and 1841 he made a magnetic survey of the interior of the continent of North America from Montreal to the Arctic Circle, and was appointed scientific adviser to the Duke of Newcastle at the War Office, on artillery and inventions, in Dec. 1854. In October of the next year he was sent on a special mission to the seat of war, and to the Mediterranean fortresses in March 1859. Sir John was Inspector-General of Army Schools, 1857-9; Secretary Ordnance Select Committee 1859-63, President 1864-8; Director-General of Ordnance, 1868-70; honorary secretary Royal Commission of the Patriotic Fund, 1854-68; Commissioner, 1868; and was also a member of the Royal Commission on National Defences in 1859, and on Military Education in 1868. In 1871 he was appointed Governor of Bermuda, from which post he retired in 1877, and administered the Government of Tasmania from Oct. 1880 to Dec. 1881, when he was appointed Colonel-Commandant Royal Artillery. Sir John, who was created C.B. in 1870 and K.C.M.G. in 1877, attained the rank of lieut.-general in the latter year, and was placed on the retired list, with the honorary rank of general, in 1882. He married, first, in 1846, Emily Merry, eldest daughter of Sir J. Beverley Robinson, Bart., C.B., Chief Justice of Upper Canada, who died in 1859; and, secondly, in 1860, Charlotte Anna, eldest daughter of Lieut.-Colonel Thos. Dundas, of Fingask, and widow of Colonel Armine Mountain, C.B. He died on April 11th, 1890.