(1853-11 March 1928; died aged 74 years, 9 months), lawyer. (J. S. Macdonald) Born probably at South Lancaste, GC. Parents: Ranald Sandfield Macdonald and his wife Janet McEdward. His education included attendance at Alexandria High School. In 1874 he began study of the law in the Cornwall law office of Donald B. Maclennan, who was so much associated with the Sandfield Macdonald family. He later also studied law with another eminent Glengarrian, James Bethune, in Toronto. Called to the Bar, 1879, he opened a law office in Lancaster, 1880, with Lancaster in this sense being evidently Lancaster the railway village as opposed to South Lancaster. He was the first lawyer to practise in either of the Lancasters, and he practised law there till the end of his life. Harkness, who must have known him, says “He was a careful solicitor but was handicapped by a serious defect in his speech.” In the 1880s he was one of the agents for Patrick Purcell’s moneylending (for this role, see also Murdoch Munro and E. H. Tiffany, Alexandria lawyers). Termed in his GC obituary a “prominent resident of South Lancaster,” he died at South Lancaster. He was a Protestant, presumably a Presbyterian. He is buried at St. Andrew’s cemetery, South Lancaster, but there is no gravestone with his name (family gravestone only). He never married. He was the brother of Annie Sandfield Macdonald and of Mrs Helen McIntyre, and another sister was the first wife of Sir Donald Macmaster. He was the nephew of his namesake, John Sandfield Macdonald the premier.

Cornwall Standard 15 March 1928, Glengarry News 16 March 1928 * Harkness, 437 * Ross, Lancaster, 227-228 & 356-357 (a contemptuous treatment of this branch of the Sandfield family) * Macdonald, Sandfields, 18 * Dumbrille, U, 22-23, B, 17-18 * Purcell 1887 48 (two refs.)