Anthony Barclay was a son of Thomas Barclay. Like his father, Anthony Barclay was Consul for Great Britain. His commission was sent to him by Queen Victoria. Like his father he was a graduate of King's College (Columbia University), and in 1808 he went to England to complete his education and study for the Bar.

Anthony married the heiress of John Bartholomew Waldburg, Anna Matilda Waldburg (sometimes spelled Waldburgh). She was the widow of Thomas Glenn. They were married on October 17, 1816.

Mr. Barclay was a British Commissioner to settle the boundaries between the United States and Canada, and afterwards British Consul at New York. Though for fifty years a resident of Georgia, it might be said a citizen, because he was active in everything identified with its progress and that of the City of Savannah, Mr. Barclay was born and died a British subject.

Mr. Barclay's plantation, Rockingham, on the Ogeechee River, where he often entertained distinguished visitors, and where his family resided, is owned by others, and the old manor, noted for its hospitable boards, passed away in flames in the days of Sherman's “March to the Sea.”

His ability and many virtues made him one of her majesty's best representatives. He was no less a Georgian because he was an Englishman, and Savannah of the olden time looked up to him as a gentleman of the old school, dignified without pomposity, and public-spirited without ostentation."

He is Buried in St. Mark's Churchyard, In the Barclay Vault, New York, N. Y.

Main Sources: Our American Barclays By Cornelia Barclay Barclay, The Grafton Press, New York MCMVIII; The Barclays of New York : Who They Are and Who They Are Not, — and Some Other Barclays, by R. Burnham Moffat (1904).

Anthony Barclay's Work on U.S. - Canadian Boundary:

Thomas Barclay, 1753-1830, served as commissioner on behalf of the British government for the St. Croix commissions following the Treaty of Ghent (1814), which were appointed to agree on a Canadian-American border between Passamaquoddy Bay and the Great Lakes. Thomas Barclay was assigned as Commissioner under the 4th and 5th articles of the Treaty of Ghent, the 4th Article having to do with the borders around Grand Manan Island and Passamaquoddy Bay and, in the 5th article, the line from the St.Croix River across the northern border of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York.

Anthony Barclay, 1792-1877, Thomas Barclay's son, took over as British Commissioner under the 6th and 7th articles of the Treaty of Ghent (1814), after the original Commissioner, John Ogilvy, died around 1819. Article 6 dealt with the boundary running across the Great Lakes to Sault St. Marie, and the 7th article dealt with the lands from Lake Superior to Lake of the Woods, Ontario. His initials (AB) and notes appear on many of the maps of the Great Lakes area, dated ca. 1820.

Source: Biographical Note, Maine Historical Society, Collection 26, the Thomas Barclay Collection.

President Franklin Pierce revoked Anthony Barclay’s powers as Consul of Her Britannic Majesty at New York on May 28, 1856. He had been recognized as such Consul on March 2, 1843. Barclay was accused of violating the neutrality laws of the United States by taking steps to enlist U.S. citizens for British service in the Crimean War. Source: Message from the President of the United States Communicating Cessation of Intercourse with the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Great Britain, by President Franklin Pierce (1856).

By 1872 Anthony Barclay was a British pensioner living in Connecticut. Source: Minnesota’s Boundary with Canada: Its Evolution Since 1783 by William E. Lass, page 82