(11 Nov. 1876-19 Jan.1970), businessman. (D. J. Macpherson, Duncan J. Macpherson, commonly known as “D. J.”) (date of birth 1873 also found) Born, presumably, in GC. Parents: D. M. Macpherson and his wife Margaret McBean. He passed his examinations in the dairying course at the Ontario Agricultural College, Guelph, in 1896. Though no hard evidence has come to hand, it may be supposed that he was associated in the dairying business with his father the celebrated “Cheese King,” for whose enterprises he was, presumably, the designated heir.

     Also, however, both before and after the crash of his father’s dairying empire and personal fortunes, D. J. Macpherson was involved in the lumber industries. With his father, he was associated with J. T. Schell in the Alexandria lumber products firm of McPherson and Schell. In 1905, he went with a James R. Fraser to Madawaska to log Fraser’s timberland. (Glengarry News 4 May 1905 ) After the early death in 1906 of his brother-in-law the lumberman John D. McArthur, he helped log the Stuart Tract (see Stuarts of the Stuart Tract) on behalf of the estate. From the year 1911, we get the following statement about his lumbering activities, “D. J. Macpherson, proprietor of the South Lancaster Lumber Mill, has completed his drive on the South Branch, in a very satisfactory manner. The timber, being brought down the River Raisin, is quite unique in this part of Canada, being huge sticks of hemlock many of them over 400 years old and is the final clean up of hemlock in old Glengarry. Mr. Macpherson says he is confident there is nothing equal to it east of the Pacific Coast.” (“old Glengarry” here may include Stormont County, home of the Stuart Tract) In 1912, the same newspaper recorded his tribute to the fine elm trees being cut in the McLennan bush north of Summerstown Station, GC.

     For some years, he operated a factory at South Lancaster for making cheese boxes, the company name being St. Lawrence Lumber and Box Company. For the GC-area manufacture of cheese boxes, see also Coulthart family.

     Whether on a paid or volunteer basis, Macpherson was the caretaker of Cairn Island (see entry for Col. Carmichael) at South Lancaster from 1925 to 1940. He owned the celebrated Moose Head Inn at South Lancaster till 1948, and is said actually to have operated it as an inn; his home was next door. At the time of the death of his brother John A. in August 1953, he appears to have been living at Wales, Ont., west of Cornwall. Robert J. Fraser, who obtained information from him for his As Others See Us of 1959, describes him as “long known throughout the county as a man of many enterprises.” By the time Fraser was writing, Macpherson was living in Alexandria. Macpherson died in Cornwall. The burial was at Woodlawn Cemetery, Cornwall. (four or five children, two surviving him)

     He was married to Mabel Aitken (1873-1960) of Lancaster, GC.

Standard Freeholder 20 Jan. 1970 * Fraser, Gravestones, II,69, 113 * Fraser, Cameron : index * biog. sketch of D. M. Macpherson by Ewan Ross, Glengarry Life, 1976 * Ross, Lancaster, 91, 230, 258, 265, 288, 387 * MacGillivray & Ross 491-492 * Fraser (1959) 25, 29, 235-237 * hemlock: Cornwall Freeholder 21 April 1911 (noted also in 20 Years Ago column CF 18 April 1931) * elm: 20 Years Ago column CF 6 Feb. 1932 * reported to be about to erect building for manufacture at South Lancaster of cheese boxes , Glengarry News 17 April 1908 * recent photograph of his former house in Alexandria, Vankleek Hill Review 18 Dec. 2002