====== McDonald, Charles ====== 
 (1815-28 Oct. 1911, age at death also given as 98 and 99), church elder. Born in the Isle of Skye, Scotland. He came to Canada with his parents when he was three months old. The family settled first in Lochiel Township, where he grew up, then about 1840 he settled in the 6th Concession of Kenyon Township, about two miles east of the future village of Maxville, perhaps on Lot 32. For 68 years, from 1843 till his death, he was a Presbyterian elder, at first in the Indian Lands Presbyterian congregation (which from 1864 had its church building at St. Elmo) and then, for the final 16 years (from 12 May 1895) in Kenyon Presbyterian church at Dunvegan. He was married in 1854 to Alexandra or Alexandria McDonald of Roxborough Township. He was a man of strong character and compelling personality, a man probably both interesting and attractive, who impressed his contemporaries and who projected into future generations some sense of his importance as an individual human being and a member of the community. Over nearly a century of life, he saw GC change from forest conditions to a mature and settled society. He died at his home in the 6th Concession, near Maxville. (six children surviving him) He was fluent in Gaelic and English.

<tab>A close friend was the Rev. Daniel Gordon, the famous minister of the Indian Lands congregation, who named his son, Charles W. Gordon (the novelist “Ralph Connor”) after Charles McDonald. McDonald is said to have been the “locally recognized original” (phase from Montreal //Witness// obituary, repeated by Munro, MacMillan) of one of the elders of the Kirk in Ralph Connor’s //Man from Glengarry//. Connor says in the novel, “In the square pew in front of the pulpit sat the elders, hoary, massive, and venerable.” Connor describes a number of the elders individually, making them characters in the novel. It seems impossible now, however, to isolate any one of these on the basis of the description as being distinctively McDonald.


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<fs small>//Glengarry News// 3 Nov. 1911, //Cornwall Standard //(repr. from //Witness//) 17 Nov. 1911 * biog. sketch by T. W. Munro in his “I Remember” series in //GN// (undated photocopy, present author’s files); repr. //Maxville (1967) //88-89. Munro uses the //Witness// obituary (of which it is by no means impossible he was the author) * MacMillan, //Kenyon Presbyterian Church//, 45, 47, 50-51, 58, and MacMillan, //Kirk//: index (has portrait); together, these have a valuable gathering of the evidence * //Belden Atlas//, 43 (farm location & neighbours) * Kenyon Church Report 1911: death * Sinclair 21-22 * //Man from Glengarry//: for elders, see Chapters 9 & 11
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