Background
George Duncan Ludlow was born in 1734 in Long Island, New York, United States, the son of Gabriel and Frances (Duncan) Ludlow.
George Duncan Ludlow was born in 1734 in Long Island, New York, United States, the son of Gabriel and Frances (Duncan) Ludlow.
At first an apothecary, Ludlow abandoned this venture, retired to his estate near Hempstead, Long Island, adjoining that of his brother Gabriel George Ludlow. In 1768 he became a member of the governor's council in the colony of New York. The next year, he was named by Governor Colden as one of the four justices of the supreme court of the colony. When, in 1778, the chief justiceship became vacant, he was disappointed at not receiving the vacant post and resigned. In order to appease the angry jurist, whose many friends were influential, the governor gave him the positions of master of rolls and of superintendent of police for Long Island, which together were of much greater pecuniary value than the chief justiceship.
Ludlow barely escaped from the colonials who broke into his house and, in 1779, was attainted by the New York legislature and lost all his property by confiscation. On June 19, 1783, he sailed for England. He was appointed by the Crown as the first chief justice of the new province of New Brunswick and became a member of the governor's council. He took his oath of office in the fall of 1784 and continued on the supreme bench until his death. He was not popular with all classes. James Glenie, a radical reformer elected to the lower house in 1791, described him as "the ignorant, strutting Chief Justice". A disagreement of the court in a slave case of 1800 was anything but satisfactory. The chief justice believed that, as there was nothing contrary to slavery in the laws of the province, slaves might be held, and one other judge concurred. The remaining two judges held that as slaves could not be owned in England, slavery could have no legal existence in New Brunswick. Although his opinion was sustained by the King in council, he received much abuse for his decision of 1805 that there were no exclusive private fishing rights in navigable waters. In March 1808 he suffered a paralytic stroke, and he died at "Spring Hill, " his estate of 1500 acres near Fredericton.
Like his brother Gabriel George Ludlow and his half-brother Daniel Ludlow, Ludlow was a Loyalist during the Revolutionary troubles. He signed the address to General Howe upon his occupation of New York City and supported the administration of Governor James Robertson.
On April 22, 1758 Ludlow married to Frances (Duncan) Ludlow. He had a son and two daughters.
