(1824? or c. 1822?-22 May 1902), businessman, postmaster. (widely known as George of Athol, or George Macdonell of Athol; forms also found: George McDonell (Athol), George MacDonell “Athol”; sp. of surname varies) Born in Inverness-shire, Scotland. Parents: Angus Macdonell (d. 1847) and his wife Ann Stewart. George is said to have been the youngest of his parents’ twelve sons (in a family of sixteen). George accompanied his parents and family to Canada in 1827. (1824 also found) The family settled in Kenyon Township, GC. George attended school locally and at Alexandria.

     When the Beauharnois Canal was being built in the 1840s, George obtained employment on the canal works first as a timekeeper and then as a foreman. The employment was probably in connection with Donald A. Macdonald, of the Sandfield brothers, who was a contractor on the canal. Afterwards, for some three years, he managed a store at Athol, GC, for another of the Sandfield brothers, Alexander F. Macdonald. He then purchased the business, and “in addition went into the manufacture of pearl ash, saw-milling, lumber dealing and farming. These various branches he successfully operated until 1866, when he sold out, and then moved to the Glen farm, in Williamstown. Here he resided until 1868, when he removed to Cornwall.” (Rose) Harkness probably incorporates valuable bystander information in stating that he moved to Cornwall “after he had become well-to-do.”

     At Athol, George of Athol had been the business partner of James Macdonell (known as James Macdonell of Athol). In Lovell’s 1857 directory, they are listed as partners in the firm of G. & J. McDonell, storekeepers, at Athol. It has not been determined whether these men were brothers. While at Athol, George Macdonell was for many years reeve of Roxborough Township, next door in Stormont County. In 1860 he was warden of SDG. He was postmaster at Athol from 1862 to 1866. We get a glimpse of him in his Athol years from Charles Sinclair, who in a loving description of a wedding celebration in his youth, remembered the dancers, and noted that among those who successively led the dance, “George McDonald [sic] of Athol with his lady had their turn.”

     In Cornwall he was a successful general merchant. (See also Stephen Leblanc) There was speculation in 1870 that Macdonell might be named to the Senate, though the Cornwall Gazette (24 Aug. 1870), which mentioned the reports, was among the doubters. From Dec. 1870 to his death he was postmaster of Cornwall. In June 1886, it was reported that he was retiring from business, and would devote himself full time to the post office, with his son Angus S. Macdonell succeeding him in the store. (Cornwall Freeholder 25 June 1886, cited in DTL Standard Freeholder 22 June 1957) In 1887, George Macdonell was mayor of Cornwall. He was secretary-treasurer at the time of his death of the Cornwall High School Board. We may guess that in the manner of the more substantial GC-area businessmen of his time, he had many business interests elsewhere than where he lived. For example, in 1880, he was reported to have “done well out of his purchase of the ‘Clare Hall’ property at Lancaster.” (Cornwall Freeholder 5 Nov. 1880) His large house on Second Street in Cornwall was later the home of R. R. (“Big Rory”) McLennan, then of John McMartin, and later became the Nazareth Orphanage.

     He served in the militia in the supression of the 1837-1838 Rebellion, and remained active in the militia for many years, achieving eventually the rank, it is said, though it has not been possible to confirm the statement, of lt.-col. In his earlier years, he was a political supporter of John Sandfield Macdonald, and is said to have been Macdonald’s “intimate friend and trusted confidant.” (Rose) In later years, he inclined to the Conservatives.

     He was survived by his widow, two sons and a stepdaughter. In religion, he was a Roman Catholic. He is buried in St. Mary’s cemetery, Williamstown. He was married (1) on 8 April 1861 to Ellen Mary McDonald (d. 22 Jan. 1873, aged 38), daughter of Col. James Mcdonald of the Glen (three children), and (2) to Mrs C. M. Mulhern.

     Athol, which is in the 20th Concession of Indian Lands, north of Maxville, still appears as a name on maps and in local usage. However, the village that was beginning to form there in the 19th century has wholly disappeared. Athol was well within Ralph Connor country. The school of Glengarry School Days was “the ‘Twentieth’ school,” so called from the Concession number. Within sight of Athol, is the fine brick Gordon Free Church built by the Rev. Daniel Gordon’s congregation in 1863-1864. The Rev. Daniel Gordon was the minister of Indian Lands from 1853. His son Charles W. Gordon (the novelist “Ralph Connor”) was born in 1860, and the Gordon family left for Western Ontario in 1871, about 5 years after George of Athol left the community for Williamstown and Cornwall. In Glengarry School Days, the sinister child Foxy, whose surname is given as Ross, was the son of “the storekeeper in the Twentieth” and “had the trader’s genius for discovering and catering to the weaknesses of people.” (Chapter VII) As has often been observed, the attempts so often made to identify people in the Ralph Connor novels with supposed real-life originals must be dealt with cautiously. Quite possibly, and indeed very likely, when the novel was written Ralph Connor had no idea who had been the community storekeepers at that time. He always described with great fidelity to fact the physical geography of the neighbourhood. Of the human detail, he may have been more negligent. The savage description of the repellent Foxy does seem, however, somewhat shocking, in that George of Athol himself, far from being a figure from a lost and romantic past, was alive right up to the very year in which the novel was published.

     Maxville did not come into existence till after Macdonell had left Athol. He must, however, had some of the founders of St. Isidore among the customers of his store, though St. Isidore itself was still, largely, a place of the future.

     For his sister, see the entry for Alexander McDonell, known as Captain Gray. For Foxy, see also the entry for J. Alexander Gunn.

Glengarry News 30 May 1902 * Rose i, 616-617: valuable, detailed life; much of the information must be from Macdonell himself * Fraser, Gravestones, I, 18 * Harkness 215, 217, with portrait * Lovell 1857 365 * Pringle 83, 85, 148, 170, 211, 262?, 279? * Senior 318 * Sinclair 5 * obituary of his brother Ranald McDonell, who died on 17-1st Kenyon, Cornwall Standard 10 Oct. 1902, with some family history