Lieutenant-Colonel John By (7 August 1779 – 1 February 1836) was an English military engineer, best remembered for supervising the construction of the Rideau Canal and founding Bytown in the process, which would become the Canadian capital, Ottawa.
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Lieutenant-Colonel John By (7 August 1779 – 1 February 1836) was an English military engineer, best remembered for supervising the construction of the Rideau Canal and founding Bytown in the process, which would become the Canadian capital, Ottawa.
By was born in Lambeth, Surrey, the second of three sons of George By, of the London Customs House, and Mary Bryan. By studied at the Royal Military Academy. He entered Officer Training in the army when he was 18 years old. He was commissioned in the Royal Artillery on 1 August 1799 but transferred to the Royal Engineers on 20 December the same year. During the Napoleonic wars he returned to Europe, where he served in Spain under the Duke of Wellington from 1811 until 1815.
By was married three times, first to Elizabeth Baines in 1801, who died in 1814. He remarried in 1818 to Esther March with whom he had two daughters: Harriet Martha By (1822–1842) and Esther By Ashburnham (1820–1848).
With the end of the war, By retired from the military, but in 1826 in view of his engineering experience in Canada, he was recalled and returned to Canada to supervise the construction of the Rideau Canal.
The canal was completed in six years, and was acclaimed as an engineering triumph. He died in 1836, and is buried in the village of Frant in Sussex.
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