(c. 1760-1833), surveyor, political figure. Born in Scotland. Parents: Alexander Macdonell of Aberchalder, who was one of the leaders of the Pearl emigration group of 1773 to New York colony, and his wife Mary Macdonald. In the War of the American Revolution, Hugh Macdonell actively supported the Crown cause and served in the King's Royal Regiment of New York, achieving the rank of lieutenant.

     He settled in Canada after the war as a U E Loyalist. There he received 500 acres of land in Charlottenburgh Township, GC. His widow stated that he was entitled to 1500 acres more in the province but that he had never turned his paper entitlement to it into an actual allocation of land. In 1788 he was appointed a surveyor, with the usual title of the time of deputy surveyor. As a surveyor, he made surveys in the Tps of Yonge, Escott and Lansdowne in Leeds County, and in the northern portion (now Lochiel Township) of Lancaster Township in GC, and was associated in surveys with William Chewett (father of J. G. Chewett) in the Tps of Mountain and Winchester in Dundas County and Finch in Stormont County. A petition dated 16 Jan. 1816, from certain inhabitants of the 3rd Concession of Lancaster Township, GC, reported that a discrepancy between the surveys made in 1785 by Patrick McNiff and in 1787 by a Mr MacDonell had been highly injurious to them. The Mr MacDonell may have been Hugh Macdonell. No doubt he was at work as a practical surveyor, or assistant, before he got his paper qualifications in 1788, which was the year after the Lancaster survey. His nephew Duncan Macdonell studied surveying under his guidance, but cannot, as too young, have been the MacDonell of 1787. In the 1st legislature (1792-1796) of the Province of Upper Canada, Hugh and his brother John Macdonell of Aberchalder were GC’s two representatives, under the two-member system of representation of that time. In 1794, Hugh was appointed adjutant general of militia for Upper Canada. He was also a captain in the Royal Canadian Volunteer Regiment of Foot, up till it was disbanded in 1802, and was lt.-col. of the GC militia (his brother John was the colonel of the regiment).

     Despite the official favour shown by these appointments, he seems to have been in financial trouble, aggravated perhaps by his loss of a certain “water mill property” (Sketches 107), and leading, probably, to his decision to leave for England in 1804 to seek new opportunities there. Through the help of the Duke of Kent, the father of the future Queen Victoria, he became in 1805 assistant commissary general at Gibraltar. From about 1810, he was consul general at Algiers. This was a time of tension between the British government and the rulers of Algiers. Consequently, on one occasion the British Mediterranean fleet had to bombard the city to obtain Macdonell’s release from prison. He retired on pension in 1820, and died at Florence, Italy. He had ten children by his second marriage. No reference has been found to children of the first marriage.

     He was marrried (1) to a Miss Hughes, of Lower Canada, and (2) to Louise Ulrich or Ulich (d. 1870), daughter of the Danish Consul at Algiers. After Hugh Macdonell’s death, she married the Duke de Talleyrand-Périgord, of the family of Napoleon’s celebrated foreign minister.

     Hugh Macdonell and his children by the second marriage represent perhaps the most brilliantly connected family grouping of any Canadian GC family. These children included: (1) a daughter who married the Marquis de la Marismas and was Dame du Palais to the Empress Eugenie, (2) Sir Alexander F. MacDonell (d. 30 April 1891), a distinguished solder in the British Army, who served in Africa, the Crimean War, and the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, and achieved the rank of general, and (3) Sir Hugh Guion MacDonell (1832-25 Jan. 1904), who was a diplomat in the British service, holding many appointments including those of British envoy at Copenhagen and Lisbon, and whose career was important enough to win him his own entry in the Dictionary of National Biography. Sir Hugh’s sisters’ husbands General Sir George Brown and General Robert Henry Wynyard also have lives there. J. A. Macdonell (Greenfield) dedicated his 1893 Sketches of GC history to Sir Hugh. He states in the dedication that he originally intended to dedicate the book to the other brother, the general, “but poor Sir Aleck’s recent death rendered it impossible.”

Life by Allan J. MacDonald, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, VI, 444-445 * his biog. in OLS No. 37 (1922 ) 97-101, with portrait * Johnson: index * Harness: index * Macdonell, Sketches, 104-113, 133 * Scott, i * Cruikshank King's Royal Regiment of New York 233 * McLean: index * Boss 214 * petition of 1816 printed: Ninth Report of the Bureau of Archives for the Province of Ontario…1912 (Toronto, 1913) 224-225 * genealogy and family background: see entry for his father Alexander * biog. of his son Sir Hugh Guion MacDonell, DNB Supplement 1901-1911 p. 518, and ODict