(1818-13 April 1913), businessman. (Alexander F. Macdonald (Sandfield), A. F. Macdonald, Alexander Sandfield Macdonald, Alexander F. Macdonald) Born at St. Raphael’s, GC. Parents: Alexander Macdonald and his wife Nancy Macdonald. He was the youngest of the “Sandfield” brothers, brother of John Sandfield, Donald A. and Ranald S. Macdonald. His mother died when he was about two years old. He was educated at St. Raphael’s and at the grammar school in Cornwall. When a youngster, he was a clerk in the Cline store in Cornwall. “His first venture on his own was the mercantile business he carried on at Athol [in GC], preceding by a very short interval the career of George MacDonell (Atholl [sp. sic]), late postmaster of Cornwall, in the same business in the same place.” (see entry for George Macdonell) He was also, for some years, a contractor in the United States and Canada, some of the work being railway contracting. Not much information seems to survive about his contracting career. However, it was remembered that at St. Paul, Minnesota, he “made improvements prior to its incorporation as a city in 1857.”
The Glengarrian Ranald Campbell, writing in 1868 at Potsdam, N. Y., to his brother Angus Campbell in New Zealand, said “I have been for about 10 years from home up till last May, at which time I came to this place, I went first to Minnesota, and with Uncle John and Dan worked on a Railroad for nearly two years, John having a sub-contract from Alex Sandfield McDonald, and all came out of it worse off than we started in, the State refusing to pay her bond. The cause I don’t know.” From another passage in the letter, the Minnesota period can be dated as ending about two years before the American Civil War began in 1861.
On retiring from contracting, Macdonald returned to Cornwall to live. He had lived in Cornwall from the age of eleven, and it remained the place with which he was most identified throughout his life. He was a director of the Canada Cotton Co. of Cornwall and was connected in some official capacity with the Williamsburg Canal. Also, he was engaged at some stage in lumbering–perhaps only in the period of the Athol venture. He was at the deathbed of his brother John Sandfield in 1872, and he was one of his executors (Donald Ban Maclennan was also executor), and was involved in the management of the estate.
Defeating the celebrated Darby Bergin, he was elected MP for Cornwall in 1874 as a Liberal. His opponents appealed the election results, and he was unseated, then re-elected at a by-election (20 Oct. 1874), and he remained MP till his term expired in 1878, but he was not a candidate at the general election of 1878.
He died, having outlived the three other Sandfield brothers, in Cornwall at the age of 95, at the King George Hotel which had been his home for many years. He had never married. Burial was in the new cemetery at St. Andrew’s. He had “a quiet, unassuming disposition” (Cornwall Standard obituary); Hodgins terms him John Sandfield’s “aloof youngest brother,” and “quiet brother Alexander.” Roman Catholic. He is said to have in his early years to have considered entering the priesthood.
Glengarry News & CF both 18 April 1913, the former repr. Fraser Obits. 126-127; QF these sources; the Cornwall Standard files for 1913 have not survived but GN obit. has material from the Cornwall Standard * Johnson (1968) * Macdonald, Sandfields * Harkness 248-249 * Dictionary of Canadian Biography XII p.95 (in life of Bergin) * Hodgins * Campbell letter: dated 15 Oct. 1868/26 Jan. 1869, transcript kindly supplied by Mrs Zella A. Moss, of N. Z. * Alexander Sandfield Macdonald’s recollections of early days in Cornwall, Cornwall Standard 12 April 1912, from Montreal Star