Dr. James Ratchford DeWolf was born on November 19, 1818, in Horton, Nova Scotia.

He was a physician and asylum superintendent. In 1841, he graduated with an M.D. degree from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and was awarded a licentiate in medicine from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He was the first colonial member of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association of London. The same year he moved back to Nova Scotia to practise medicine in Kentville and later in Halifax. In 1849, he served as president of the Nova Scotia Philanthropic Society. In 1857, DeWolf was appointed superintendent of the new Provincial Hospital for the Insane where his medical expertise and Christian sensibilities predicted a successful career in the care of the insane. He advocated moral therapy rather than physical control, noting that the “absence of personal restraint” was an especially “pleasing feature of the modern and humane system of treatment”. Christian contemplation, daily exercise outdoors, musical entertainment, and “voluntary” labour was his therapeutic regimen. Because of these treatment methods and other issues, he had some difficulties working with subordinates and other colleagues. In 1866, he served as president of the Medical Society of Nova Scotia which he helped found in 1854. He was also a professor of medical jurisprudence at Dalhousie College from 1871 to 1875. In 1877, DeWolf retired after his dismissal due to accusations of mismanagement and corruption in the hospital. No longer practising medicine, he turned to local and family history, collaborating with Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton in the compilation of a DeWolf family genealogy.

In 1846, he married Eleanor Reade Sandifer (1831-). He died on March 5, 1901, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.