The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Macgregor, Hon. John
Macgregor, Hon. John, sometime Minister of Mines, Victoria, was the son of John Macgregor, and was born in the island of Skye, Scotland, in 1828. He arrived in Victoria in 1840, was admitted a solicitor of the Supreme Court in 1855, and practised in Melbourne, in what was latterly the firm of Macgregor, Ramsay, & Brahe. He unsuccessfully contested East Bourke in 1868, but on the retirement of Mr. Wilson Gray in the next year he was returned for Rodney, for which district he sat in the Legislative Assembly till 1874, when he retired from Parliament. Mr. Macgregor joined the first MᶜCulloch Government, and was Minister of Mines from July 1866 to May 1868. On the defeat of the Macpherson Ministry in April 1870 Mr. Macgregor was asked by the Governor to form a Government, but he recommended that Sir James MᶜCulloch should be sent for. Mr. Macgregor brought in, and for the first time carried, a Payment of Members Bill. He had long retired from public life when he died on March 27th, 1884.