Evan Murray-Macgregor

Major-General Sir Evan John Murray-Macgregor of Macgregor, 2nd Baronet, KCB, KCH (born Murray; 1785 – 14 June 1841) was a Scottish colonial administrator and senior British army officer.

Murray's father was a baronet and chief of Clan Gregor; the family had a military tradition, which Murray followed, serving in the British Army from 1801. He fought in the Peninsular War (1808–11) and, after arriving in India in 1811, the Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817–18); he was severely injured while serving in the latter. By that time a Lieutenant-Colonel, he returned to England in 1820, inherited his father's baronetcy and chieftaincy two years later (adding Macgregor to his surname) and was appointed an aide-de-camp to the King in 1825.

In 1831, he was appointed Governor of Dominica and the following year became Governor of Antigua and the Leeward Islands, during which time he assented to the abolition of slavery on the island (1834); unusually, he was able to do this without using the optional transitional and highly restrictive apprenticeship system on the islands. The relative peace which followed immediate emancipation convinced him that this could be achieved elsewhere. He became Governor of Barbados and the Windward Islands in 1836, and worked to bring about the early end of the apprenticeship system which had been implemented on the islands in 1834; although he achieved that result in 1838, the British also passed an Act of Parliament overruling the local legislature to the same effect and Murray-Macgregor was accused of duplicity by some of the island's planters, who refused his request to bring their own termination date earlier still. Murray-Macgregor proclaimed early termination, effective on 1 August 1838. In the aftermath, he also had restrictive employment contract laws overruled. Although controversial and blamed for deteriorating legislative–executive relations during this episode, he has also been regarded as conciliatory and tactful in his approach to governing, with his administration overseeing liberal reforms. Having suffered from ill health for some time, Murray-Macgregor died in office in 1841.