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Richard Chapman Weldon, QC, was a lawyer, educator and politican. He was born in Sutton, New Brunswick, to Richard Weldon and Catherine Geldart. He received his BA and MA in political science from Mount Allison Wesleyan College before attending Yale College in New Haven, where he studied constitutional and international law and graduated with his doctorate in political science. For a short time he pursued further studies in law at the University of Heidelberg.
In 1875 he accepted a professorship in mathematics and political economy at Mount Allison, and by 1880 had apprenticed himself to a Sackville lawyer. He was called to the Nova Scotia bar shortly after being appointed dean of the newly formed Faculty of Law at Dalhousie University, where he also became the first full-time professor of law in post-confederation Canada (1883-1914). He served as a Conservative MP from 1887-1896, representing Albert, New Brunswick, where he owned land. Appointed a dominion QC in 1890, he acted as counsel to the firm of Harris, Henry, and Cahan from 1897.
Weldon married Sarah Maria Tuttle in 1877 in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, and they had four sons and one daughter. Shortly after Sarah's death in 1893 he married Louisa Frances Hare in Halifax, with whom he had seven children. He died in 1925 in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
In 2018 Richard Weldon was named one of 52 Dalhousie Originals, a list of individuals identified as having made a significant impact on the university and the broader community since Dalhousie's inception in 1818. https://www.dal.ca/about-dal/dalhousie-originals/richard-chapman-weldon.html