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James Cameron Mackenzie was born on August 15, 1852, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was the son of Alexander and Catherine (Cameron) Mackenzie.
After the death of his father, the child was brought to America by his mother, who settled in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
For the first twelve years of his life, practically all James's schooling consisted of one winter term in a public school. He was subsequently a clerk in the town's largest bookstore and by reading and study educated himself.
Intending to prepare to teach in the public schools, he entered the normal school at Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, and a year later went to Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, where he graduated at the head of his class in 1873.
After a year of teaching and administrative work in Wilkes-Barre Institute, a girls' school, he entered Lafayette College, where he graduated as valedictorian in 1878.
Several teaching positions were open to Mackenzie and he accepted the first principalship of the newly founded Wilkes-Barre (later Harry Hillman) Academy. Here his work attracted the attention of the legatees of the estate of John Cleve Green, who were looking for a man to build a thoroughly equipped academy at Lawrenceville, New Jersey, along with the lines of the schools at Andover and Exeter.
In 1882, he went to Lawrenceville, where, using the land and buildings of the old proprietary school there which had been purchased by the legatees of Green's estate, he organized the present Lawrenceville School, in accordance with their desires. During the session of 1882-83, he attended Princeton Theological Seminary, and in 1885, he was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry.
Under his far-sighted, revolutionary method of administration, the Lawrenceville School attracted much attention in the outer world; it grew in numbers and its graduates distinguished themselves at college. The English house system was established and in 1893, against the determined opposition of the faculty, Mackenzie organized the Upper House, where the older boys should live and have the greater freedom that would prepare them for the transition from school to college.
This was a revolutionary step in the administration of boys' boarding schools. Andover and Exeter had always been like colleges in their treatment of their boys, and other schools had kept the pupils under the strictest discipline even through their graduation year. Lawrenceville became, in spite of financial difficulties, a large and famous school, with a modern plant.
As a result, Mackenzie was offered many excellent positions. Exeter and Lafayette both wanted him, and he was tendered the superintendence of the Philadelphia public schools. In 1891, the United States Commissioner of Education appointed him to membership on the Committee of Ten on Secondary Education, and in 1893 appointed him chairman of the Congress on secondary education to be held at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
After the death of the last of Green's legatees, and upon certain changes in the board of trustees, Mackenzie resigned from the headmastership of Lawrenceville School in 1899 and became director of Jacob Tome Institute, Port Deposit, Maryland. Here he reorganized the school and supervised the erection of new buildings.
In 1901, finding that his plans were not approved by the relatives of Tome, he resigned and founded a school of his own, the Mackenzie School, at Dobbs Ferry, New York, moving it later to Monroe, New York. There he remained as director until 1926, when he retired from active work. He made his home thereafter in New York City, where he died on May 10, 1931.
Mackenzie was president of the Schoolmasters' Association in the early nineties, and in 1893, in Boston, was instrumental in the formation of the Headmasters' Association, of which he was later president. He was also a president of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland. He also founded a school of his own, the Mackenzie School.
On October 5, 1880, Mackenzie married Ella Smith, daughter of Robert C. Smith of Wilkes-Barre.
