====== MacLeod, Duncan ====== (1805-3 Nov. 1889), man of local importance. Born in Lochiel Township, GC. Parents: Alexander (Alasdair Og) MacLeod and his wife Catherine MacGillivray. It is a good guess, in an area of inquiry where most hard information is lacking, that he had a better education than most of his contemporaries in GC at that time, perhaps, if one may speculate a little more, involving schooling at Williamstown, as a prominent GC place of education at that time. He worked with his father in operating a store at Kirk Hill. He was also involved (apparently as driver) in operating a stage coach business which connected Lancaster village and L’Orignal. In 1829 he was married to Mary MacLeod (1811-26 June 1895). (seven children) He was appointed a lieutenant in the GC militia in 1830. About 1845 he moved to Skye, Ont., where he settled on the North 1/2 of Lot 10, in the 9th Concession of Caledonia Township, which his father had received (patent to Alexander MacLeod 20 May 1828) for service as a private in the GC militia in the War of 1812. On the rocky land at the front of this lot Duncan had his house, which has now disappeared, though ruins of other farm buildings survive; the barn included massive logs from, it may be assumed, the original forests round about. At Skye, Duncan accumulated properties which are traditionally said to have totalled 800 acres, and which, the evidence suggests, fell little if anything below that figure. This was, almost certainly, the largest amount of land any individual has ever held at Skye. And in neighbouring GC also, if we except the case of a few Loyalists who had large holdings in the early days of settlement, such landholdings were extraordinary. His aim in accumulating this land, if we may judge his intentions on the basis of how he divided up the land at his death or earlier, was to set up his sons in farming near him. Most certainly, he had no intention of anything so improbable economically in the GC-area in his time and place as actually farming a big estate. Land-rich though he may have been, his house, so far as the surviving knowledge and evidence go, was the same small, plain, unpretentious, crowded structure his neighbours had. At Skye, Duncan was a farmer (his crops included flax, unusual then in the GC-area) and made potash. He was a JP and a member of the Caledonia Township council. An 1857 directory listed him as a councillor, Caledonia Flats. For three-quarters of a century after his death, most of the people in Skye (Skye was a farming community rather than a village) were either his descendants or were linked to his family through marriage. Looked back on more than a century later, he seems something of a man of mystery, for the details of his biography are surprisingly sketchy for a man of his standing and kinship connections, and little is known about his personality and motives. He is remembered as having been partly disabled, presumably in his later years, by a stroke. He died at his home in Skye. He was a Presbyterian. One of the account books he preserved from the store at Kirk Hill (see the entry for his father) contains the enigmatic note: //Re Knight? Complete if I complete this.// He was the grandfather of John Norman MacLeod and the great-grandfather of William K. MacLeod and of Mrs Osie Villeneuve. ---- //Glengarrian// 8 Nov. 1889 * MacMillan diary (death date) * Thomas 627 * //Lochinvar to Skye, //411, 453-466 * //MacLeods//, i, 30, 138 ff (with portrait & obituary), 158 ff, ii, 22, 131, 133, 135 ff * //Lovell 1857// 384 * his landholdings: N 1/2 Lot 14-9th Caledonia and the properties listed in //Lochinvar to Skye//; also, Archives of Ontario-TP and Domesday Book for these lots [<6>]