John Hamilton was a Scottish farmer known for pioneering sheep farming in southern Patagonia and his stewardship of rural properties in the Falkland Islands. In 1888 he participated in the Gran arreo. In the early 1900s Hamilton,Thomas Saunders and Bevil Molesworth formed , legally inscribed in Valparaíso, to administer their lands in the middle couse of Gallegos River. In total Sociedad Pastoril de Glencross owned 160,500 ha. With Sounders he also owned . In the 1920s and 1930 he purchased a series of islands around West Falkland including Weddell Island, Passage Islands, and Saunders Island. John Hamilton administered these islands in an unusual way for the time, reducing sheep numbers, he introduced pasture rotation, replanting of native tussac grass, introduced Cupressus macrocarpa as