(11 Sept. 1848-24 April 1886), lawyer. (Henry S. Macdonald, H. S. Macdonald, H. Sandfield Macdonald) Born in Cornwall, Ont. Parents: John Sandfield Macdonald, who was later the premier of the Province of Canada and the first premier of Ontario, and his wife Christine Waggaman. He studied at the Cornwall Grammar School, and in 1862-1863 at the famous Rugby School in England. He was called to the bar in 1872. In a professional career made short by his premature death, he had a law practice in Cornwall. From about 1873 to 1883, he was the law partner there of Donald Ban Maclennan, the firm name being Maclennan and Macdonald; Harkness names other persons who were associated with him in Cornwall in the practice of the law. One of these, Robert Smith (1858-1942), was later an MP (Stormont) and Supreme Court judge. Also, Adrian I. Macdonell (1868-1942), later SDG counties’ clerk, and local and surrogate registrar, and clerk of the County Court, began his law training in the Cornwall office of Henry Sandfield Macdonald. Henry Sandfield Macdonald himself was SDG counties’ clerk in 1872 and 1873.
In 1872 he was reported to have been selected as candidate for MP at a caucus meeting at St. Andrew’s West. (The Cornwall Gazette, 5 June 1872, as per clipping ASC ii, 7) The constituency would have been either Stormont or Cornwall plus Cornwall Township. He appears, however, to have withdrawn from the contest before polling. A newspaper item or broadsheet, which can probably be dated to 6 July 1873, attacks him fiercely and charges that he has been trying to ingratitiate himself with Fr O’Connor of Alexandria, and others in GC, with a view to re-starting in GC a political career that has been frustrated in Cornwall. In July 1876, in a speech described as “eloquent,” he supported Archibald McNab at the GC (federal) nomination meeting at Alexandria. (Witness 25 July 1876)
He also owned and edited the Freeholder, which had been his father’s newspaper. In 1885 he sold the Freeholder to C. W. Young. The Scottish author Alexander Mackenzie who called on Macdonald at the Freeholder office in 1879 found him hostile and arrogant, but thought he melted a little when he discovered that Mackenzie was respectable and well-known. In 1876 Henry Sandfield Macdonald bought an opposition newspaper, The Cornwall Gazette, at a sheriff’s sale. Presumably at this point the Gazette ceased to be published, though its name lingered on in the subtitle of the Freeholder. Macdonald was reported to have been assaulted on the Moccasin train in 1881 by Dr William Cox Allen, in reprisal for the Freeholder’s attacks on the controversial Dr Allan (an ex-mayor of Cornwall), one of the people present when the assault occurred being John A. (“Cariboo”) Cameron. The Cornwall Reporter, a rival newspaper, habitally referred to the Freeholder as the Nobody’s Child, apparently because Macdonald was evasive about his being the proprietor of it.
Henry Sandfield Macdonald died at the age of 37, a few days after being struck down by apoplexy while a conducting a case in the Cornwall Court House. He had been raised as a Roman Catholic, but he had an Anglican funeral at Trinity Church, Cornwall. One of the pallbearers was J. P. Whitney, later premier of Ontario. Macdonald was buried in the Molson family vault, Montreal. He was married to Florence Molson, who later married a Charles Elsdale Spragge. As Macdonald’s widow, she sold the Sandfield Macdonald family home in Cornwall, Ivy Hall, to Fr George Corbet of St. Columban’s, to be used as a hospital. Macdonald, in his will, left small bequests for the beautification of the church at St. Andrew’s West and the placing there of a memorial to himself and his father, and seems to indicate some doubts as to his wife’s good judgment.
He was the brother of George Sandfield Macdonald. See the entry for John A. Macdonell (Greenfield) for notice of an extraordinary printed attack on Macdonell of which Henry Sandfield may have been the author. The attack is venomous, but not without literary distinction.
Cornwall Freeholder 30 April 1886, and DTL Standard Freeholder 30 April 1949 * The Law Society of Upper Canada Archives * Harkness 304, 372-375, 417 (portrait), 425 & 426, 430-431 * Hodgins: index * Macdonald, Sandfields * student records, Rugby School * Alexander Mackenzie in The Celtic Magazine, V(1880) 183 * Archives of Ontario-SC * Fobert 37 * Adrian I. Macdonell: obituary Standard Freeholder 26 Dec. 1942, & Harkness * “newspaper item or broadsheet” : headed “Advertisement” and “’Isabella’ and His Toady,” dated 6 July [no year] at Alexandria, NP, ASC ii, 17 * “In 1876…bought an opposition newspaper”: The Cornwall Gazette, 6 May 1876; Senior 272 & 545 * Moccasin train assault: Cornwall Reporter 14 & 21 May 1881, incorporating material from Witness and a long letter from Dr Allen; CF 20 May 1881