John Marshall Grant

Colonel John Marshall Grant (22 April 1822 – 1 April 1902) was a commander of the British Royal Engineers who was a leading officer of the elite Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, that founded British Columbia as the Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866).

Military career John Marshall Grant, who was born at sea on 22 April 1822, was the third son of General Duncan Grant of the Royal Artillery.

He was commissioned into the British Army in January 1842 to serve in the West Indies and Demerara from 1844 to 1851. He served in Jamaica from 1852 to 1855, after which he returned to England to work for the Commission of Barracks until 1858, when he received the command of the second group of Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, for his 'genius in construction', with whom he and his wife and two children arrived in British Columbia on 8 November 1858. Suene Grant married Caroline Elizabeth Craigie Napper, who was the daughter of a colonel of the Bengal Staff Corps.

John Marshall Grant's grandson was Colonel John Duncan Grant VC CB DSO who was awarded the Victoria Cross, on 24 January 1905, for gallantry at the highest altitude for any action in the Victoria Cross's 165-year history: that of the Tibetan Plateau which has an average height of around 15,000 feet.