Dictionary of Glengarry Biography

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====== MacLennan, William F. ====== 
 (died 14 Aug. 1909, aged 72 or 73), soldier, public servant. (William MacLennan) Born in the 1st Concession of Kenyon Township, GC. Parents: Alexander McLennan and his wife Margaret Pattingale. He attended school at Williamstown, living at that time in the house of Farquhar McLennan. He then worked in Cornwall as a clerk for William Cline and in Montreal in the offices of the Grand Trunk Railway. Leaving Montreal in June 1863, he obtained employment in a dry goods establishment in New York, then in August 1863 he joined the Union army for service in the American Civil War. He saw extensive service in Tennessee and Georgia, was wounded at the Battle of Peachtree Creek (20 July 1864) in Georgia, was a soldier in General Sherman’s famous march to the sea through Georgia, and in the later stages of the war worked as a clerk at corps headquarters. At the end of the war, he obtained several temporary appointments in the U. S. civil service in Washington. Eventually, establishing himself in the U. S. civil service on a more secure basis, he rose to be chief of the Warrant Division in the Treasury Department. The date of his appointment to this position seems to have been 1 April 1880. He served until at least 1903.

<tab>A long letter, which he wrote on 17 Sept. 1866 from Washington to Duncan F. McLennan of Williamstown, the son of Farquhar McLennan, was printed (for the first time, so far as is known) in the Cornwall //Standard// of 9 Aug. 1928. In the letter, he gives a most interesting description, in considerable detail, and in terms that are both expressive and reassuringly dry, of his military career. It is, presumably, the best description there is in print of the wartime experiences of a Glengarrian serving in the American Civil War, or indeed in any 19th-century war. He is said in his Cornwall //Standard// obituary to have been “one of General Sherman’s secretaries during the celebrated campaign in Georgia,” but he himself in his letter reports only that in the later stages of the war he worked as a clerk at corps headquarters. He died at his apartment in Washington, D. C., after “a lingering illness” and following a cancer operation.

<tab>MacLennan’s final listing (1905) in the //Official Register of the United States// describes him as a Treasury employee, chief of the Bookkeeping and Warrants Division, with a salary of $3500. Surprisingly, the listings in this source 1879-1905 give his place of birth as Connecticut. This is hardly likely to have been true–Connecticut was a place where few Glengarrians were found, and the evidence for the GC birth is strong. However, the fiction of Conn. origins may have been useful camouflage for a civil servant in the days when civil service appointments were notoriously precarious. Or more likely, it was perhaps just a printer’s error nobody ever bothered to correct, deriving originally from someone’s scrawled handwriting taken as meaning Connecticut rather than Canada.

<tab>The //New York Times// obituary was headed “Old Treasury Expert Dead,” and stated that he had been ”for many years Chief of the bookkeeping and warrants division of the Treasury Department,” and that he was “one of the best known of the veteran experts of the Treasury, and was frequently consulted by Senator Aldrich, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee; Speaker Cannon, and other members of both houses of Congress in connection with legislation affecting Treasury matters.” The //New York Times// obituary continued: “Acting Secretary Charles D. Norton made the following statement: ‘Mr. MacLennan was a great bureau Chief whose valuable services had been recognized by every one connected with the fiscal bureau of the Treasury for the last thirty years. His facility for figures was remarkable. He was the main reliance of successive Administrations in the matter of making up the annual estimates for the Treasury and other departments. When the Dockery commission… reorganized the Treasury Department, Mr. MacLennan’s services made him a marked man. His services were repeatedly sought for important positions in private business, but he preferred to remain on a small salary at the head of his division because he cared for his work’.”

<tab>In World War II, a Liberty cargo vessel was named the S. S. William F. MacLennan after this man as “a veteran of the Civil War and a pillar of the Treasury Department.” It was launched in June 1943 and survived the chances of war to be scrapped at Baltimore in June 1963.

<tab>He was the nephew of Donald McLennan of Java. For another GC-area connection with the U. S. Treasury, see [[wyman_william_w|W. W. Wyman]].


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<fs small>//The New York Times// 15 Aug. 1909 * two notices //Cornwall Standard //20 Aug. 1909 * Liberty ship: //Standard Freeholder// 15 July 1943 (QF), following Los Angeles //Times Mirror// of 5 July 1943; L. A. Sawyer and W. H. Mitchell, //The Liberty Ships// (1970, 1973) 69 * his letter in //CS //of 9 Aug. 1928, as described, with its introductory note, both repr. Ross, //Lancaster//, 157-161. It may be guessed that Farquhar D. McLennan communicated the letter and the material for the note to the //Cornwall Standard//. If the letter was published elsewhere earlier (of which we have no evidence), it may have been in one the 19th-century issues which have not survived from the Cornwall newspapers * information re government appointments from National Archives and Records Administration (U. S. A.), 6 Dec. 1999, & Dept. of the Treasury (U. S. A.), 16 Feb. 2000 * a search made in 2006 by the National Archives and Records Administration (U. S. A.) for his U. S. military service record file and U. S military pension and bounty land file led to the report that the files could not be located
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