====== McDonald, John Duncan ====== (17 June 1837-31 Jan. 1907), contractor. (John D. McDonald) Born at The Glen, near Williamstown, GC. His father’s name was Duncan or John McDonald. John D. McDonald was a cousin of the GRANTS (Angus A., John R. and Lewis A.) of Grant Brothers, the distinguished railway contractors. His training in railway building, or at least what an obituary terms his “first experience” of it was in a year remembered as 1854. Working occasionally with the Grants, but more usually, it would seem, on his own, John D. McDonald was over many years himself a diligent, successful, distinguished railway contractor. He is recorded as having built railways in places which included Maine, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. There is little mention of his doing construction or building work other than on railways, but he is also said to have built a canal (the Laguna Canal, of which the exact location and identity cannot now be traced) in the Arkansas River Valley, Colo., and to have been the owner and operator of several large farms in that valley. Pueblo, Colo., the town where McDonald lived in the last two decades or thereabouts of his life, is on the Arkansas River. The Laguna may have been the irrigation canal that he and his brother Angus D. were constructing in Colorado when John D., “an extensive railroad contractor, of Pueblo, Colorado,” revisited Cornwall and Alexandria in 1890. (//Glengarrian// 23 & 30 May 1890) Angus D., writing a few weeks earlier on 8 May of that year to Big Rory McLennan from Rocky Ford, Colo., on the stationery of J. D. McDonald & Co., mentions that he and J. D. (“We” as he says) have 50 miles of irrigational canal to build, which will take nearly a year. (Rocky Ford is about 60 miles east of Pueblo.) In a report on John A. Chisholm’s tour of the Canadian and American West, the readers of the //Freeholder// were told that the existence of Albuquerque, N. M., was owing “in great measure to the initiative of the Grant Brothers” and John D. McDonald as builders of the Santa Fe Railroad. (//Cornwall Freeholder// 7 Oct. 1915) John D. McDonald married (1) in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1873, Mary Jane or Janet McDonald or Macdonell, daughter of Angus McDonald or Macdonell of the South Branch, and (2) in 1890 Margaret MacDonald of Cornwall, Ont., who survived him. It is said that in his earlier years, he maintained a home for his wife and children in Cornwall, Ont., while he followed his contracting interests in the Western states, but that after the death of his first wife he settled for a time in Cornwall to look after his children. He was the owner and operator of the Commercial Hotel in Cornwall, and was on the Cornwall town council. In 1881 it was reported that John D. McDonald, successful manager of the Commercial Hotel, “has accepted a large railway contract in New Mexico, and has in consequence sold out his interest in the Hotel.” (//Cornwall Freeholder// 11 March 1881) A few weeks later, it was stated that “Mr. John D. McDonald, ex-landlord of the Commercial Hotel [Cornwall], left, on Tuesday evening, for New Mexico, there to go into the business of railway construction.” (//Cornwall Reporter// 2 April 1881) A letter from Arizona Territory described for readers of the Cornwall //Freeholder// of 21 July 1882 how certain “Glengarry boys” (whose names are given) celebrated the Queen’s Birthday by a picnic in a great cave. The cooking was done by “Grant & McDonald’s head cook.” The Cornwall //Freeholder// of 1 Feb. 1884 (cited DTL column, //Standard Freeholder// 29 Jan. 1949) reported the death, with four others, in an explosion on R. R. (Big Rory) McLennan’s CPR contract, of a workman aged 27 of Cornwall Township, who had left in 1881 for John D.’s railway contract in New Mexico, then had come home with fever in 1883. For a few years also in the 1880s, John D. was the senior partner in the firm of McDonald and Kendall, which owned and operated the gristmill in Alexandria. John D. probably did not himself live in Alexandria at this time. In the gristmill business, Kendall “was in charge of the operating department,” while John D.’s half brother, Angus D. McDonald, “had charge of the business end of the concern.” There is also mention of John D. having sawmill interests in Alexandria at this time. In March 1887, John D. McDonald was visiting back in Alexandria from Oklahoma Territory, U. S. A., where he and his partner John Grant had just completed what was reported to be a difficult but profitable railway project; 30-40 GC men are “employed out there.” (//Glengarrian//, 11 March 1887) A couple of weeks later, he was described as a member of the contracting firm of Grant, McDonald & Co., which was building the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, and he had now left Cornwall for New Mexico. (//Cornwall Freeholder// 25 March 1887, cited DTL column, //Standard Freeholder// 22 March 1947) In May of the same year,1887, the railway-building firm of Grant, McDonald & Co. was reported to be “getting on well” with its project in Kansas. McDonald and Angus A. Grant, who were “Glengarry men themselves…have now in their employ a very large number of men from this county, whose peculiar adaptability for railroad work has made the name of their native Glengarry famous throughout the continent.” (//Glengarrian// 20 May 1887) In the Pueblo (Colorado) City Directory John D. McDonald’s occupation is listed as Railroad Contractor. He died at his home in Pueblo. Roman Catholic. By the first marriage he had five children, four of whom survived him. One of the children, Janet or Janetine, later became mother superior of the Loretta Convent in Shanghai, China. John D.’s half-brother Angus D. McDonald was sometimes associated with him in railway contracting. In early 1890, it was reported (//Glengarrian// 31 Jan. 1890) that Angus D., formerly of the Alexandria gristmill, and his wife had left for Pueblo, intending to be absent for two years, and that R. R. (Big Rory) McLennan had rented their “beautiful residence” in Alexandria. At this time, the news report continued, John D. and Angus D., and their cousin A. A. McDonald of The Glen, had “secured a first rate contract to build a cog wheel road to the summit of the celebrated ‘Pikes Peak’” in Colorado, and will begin at once. In fact, some weeks before–and the reports we are considering can be quite easily reconciled without our needing to accuse the newspaper writer of dealing in out of date information–Angus D., writing 5 Dec. 1889 to McLennan on the letterhead stationery of J. D. McDonald & Co., from Manitou, Colo., mentions being at work on the Pikes Peak Railway. It is not clear from the complex surviving evidence what role these men had in building the famous cogwheel railway on Pikes Peak. Certainly their names do not feature among the prominent contractors and businessman on the project. However, if the McDonalds were subcontractors rather than primary contractors on the cog railway, their names were less likely to remain on record. An obituary of John D. published in Pueblo (only 50 miles from Pikes Peak) stated that John D. had built “the first seven miles of the Cog railway up Pike’s Peak.” ---- //Glengarry News// 15 Feb. 1907 * obituary //Catholic Register//, Pueblo, Colo., repr. //Cornwall Standard //22 Feb. 1907 * biog. sketch, 1-page typescript, in Archives of Ontario, Papers of Mgr Ewen J. Macdonald * //GN supplement 1903// [ 4] (QF) * Pueblo (Colo.) City Directory, 1891, 1892, 1897, 1904, 1905-1906, 1907-1908, with refs. to his widow, 1910, 1915 * information from Colorado Historical Society * second marriage, //Glengarrian// 20 June 1890 * his father John McDonald dies at Ottawa, //CF //14 Jan. 1887, cited DTL //Standard Freeholder// 10 Jan. 1948 * John D. & Angus D. arrive home from New Mexico, //CF //28 Dec. 1883, cited DTL //SFH// 24 Dec. 1949 * Mr & Mrs Angus D., of Pueblo, revisit Cornwall, //CF //7 Feb. 1890, cited DTL //SFH//, 5 Feb. 1949 * Archives of Ontario-RRM, several letters from Angus D. on topics including his Alexandria house [<6>]