(born 16 April 1844), lumberman. (sp. McDonell and date of birth 1843 also found; J. R. McDonald) Born on Lot 11 in the 6th Concession of Lancaster Township, GC. Parents: Donald McDonald and his wife Ann McDonald. Donald McDonald, the father of the subject of the present sketch, was born in Scotland and followed farming and lumbering in Canada. James R. McDonald grew up on his parents’ farm. We may guess that the following description of James R. McDonald’s early career was written in consultation with McDonald himself, and on the basis of information he supplied. “At the age of nineteen, he went to Detroit, Michigan, and passed three years in the lumbering business, in which occupation he had received practical training under the guidance of his father. About 1866 he went to the source of supply in the lumber regions of the Saginaw valley [in Michigan], where he began by driving team, subsequently acquired an interest in the business, and eventually became an extensive operator, continuing about fifteen years and attaining a high degree of success.” (Hines) McDonald was also a lumberman at La Crosse, Wisc.

     From about 1883, McDonald was a lumberman in the Puget Sound region of what is now Washington state. Besides a large involvement there in lumbering, he was interested in railway-building, especially in connection with making timber reserves accessible. He was involved in organizing the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad. Of this railway he was president from about 1887 till he resigned in Feb. 1890. The real control of the company, however, was in the hands of eastern businessmen, not local men, and McDonald “was never more than a nominal officer.” (Nesbit) McDonald had extensive timber properties in Mason County, near Seattle, and he was one of the founders of Mason County’s Satsop Railroad Co., of which he was president. It was later reorganized as the Washington Southern Railway Co., with McDonald again as president. In the early 1890s he spent almost a year overseas, in Europe or Britain, arranging sale of the railway’s bonds. He was one of the founders, also, of the town of Shelton in Mason County, Wash.

     He was married to Harriette F. Felton of Bay City, Mich., in 1870. (two children) He may have been the James McDonald, aged 66, farmer, retired, born in Canada, who was living in Skagit County, Wash., at the time of the 1910 U. S. Census. If so, he had likely remarried, since the name of his wife is hard to reconcile with that already mentioned here. His brothers Tom and Don may have been associated with him in lumbering. Beyond the 1890s, nothing certain has been discovered about his life.

Biog. in H. K. Hines, An Illustrated History of the State of Washington (1893) 429-430 & full page portrait * Robert C. Nesbit, “He Built Seattle” : a Biography of Judge Thomas Burke (University of Washington Press, 1961) 116 * Stewart Holbrook, Green Commonwealth [on Shelton area] (1945) * there are useful notices of him in J. T. Labbe and P. J. Replinger, Logging to the Salt Chuck (1990), Michel Fredson, Log Towns (1993), with portrait, James R. Warren, King County and its Emerald City: Seattle (1997), with illust. of a railway engine named after him * biog. article on him, Glengarrian 2 May 1890 (name sp. McDonell)