(25 Aug. 1867-22 Aug. 1955), composer of music. (Louise S. Macdonald; published under name Louis Field) Born at South Lancaster, GC. Parents: Ranald Sandfield Macdonald and his wife Janet McEdward. For some 20 years, up to about 1924, Louise S. Macdonald was employed in the post office dept., Ottawa, being a worker during at least a part of this time in the dead letter office. In 1948 she presented a stained glass window to St. Andrew’s Church, South Lancaster, in memory of her father’s family. It was unveiled in Dec. 1948 by her relative, Donald A. Macdonald, Q. C., of Alexandria. A few days short of 88, she died at South Lancaster, being the last to die of her parents’ children. Her burial was at St. Andrew’s cemetery, South Lancaster, but there is no gravestone with her name (family gravestone only). She never married. She was the sister of Annie Sandfield Macdonald and of Mrs Helen McIntyre, and of the first wife of Sir Donald Macmaster, and she was the sister also of John Sandfield Macdonald, a lawyer. She was the niece also of his namesake, John Sandfield Macdonald the premier.
As a composer, Louise S. Macdonald published several pieces of music, all apparently around the turn of the century. Under the name of Louis Field (not Louise Field, as has occasionally been misreported), she published Inspiration: Waltzes (1897), Touch and Go: Polka (1897), Sweetheart Loo: Two-Step (1898), The Georgian Bay Canal: Walzes (1899), and Tiptoes: Polka (1901, 1902). Wordings and spellings in these titles vary slightly as reported in different sources.
With regard to her artistic interests, it may be noted that her aforementioned two sisters, Annie and Helen, were authors. Also, Lancaster/South Lancaster in her time had, besides her sister Annie, as resident authors R. S. Knight, and Mrs Whyte-Edgar, and was the home also of the painter J. Archibald Browne. Barry Joseph Sullivan died there. See also Archibald McKillop.
Robert J. Fraser in the 1950s noted that there was at South Lancaster, “unoccupied, and crumbling, a long low clapboarded building… For long years it was the home of the family of Ranald Sandfield McDonald.” Dorothy Dumbrille found the house unoccupied, with the blinds drawn, but was allowed to inspect it, and noticed the books and the family portraits. “Miss Louise Macdonald, daughter of Ranald, a lady of advanced age, lives nearby.” In 1961, the journalist Alex Mullin left an intriguing description, valedictory and nostalgic, of his tour of the ruinous house, from which by this time the furnishings had largely been removed. He was told by a Mrs Beatrice MacLeod, in whose home Louise had lived at the end of her life, that Louise had been a small, gentle lady, and that, when she left the Macdonald house, Louise had “simply walked out and left everything as it was, books, furniture, everything.” From Louise’s obituary, it appears that she left the house when her brother Edward died in 1939. See also Alexander Stickler for her family connections.
Glengarry News 1 Sept. 1955 * Ross, Lancaster, 227-228, 237, 241, 343, 356-357 * Macdonald, Sandfields, 18 * information from National Library of Canada, 1977, and updated June 2001 * Catalogue of Printed Music in the British Library to 1980 (London, 1983), s. v. “Field (Louis)” * music publications of noted, GN 20 May 1898, 28 July 1899, 31 May 1901 * obituary of her brother Edward Sandfield Macdonald (d. at his home at South Lancaster, 30 Dec. 1939), Standard Freeholder 2 Jan. 1940 * article on her and her cousin George Stickler, 81, son of Capt. Alexander Stickler, SFH 26 Oct. 1946 * Fraser (1959) 27 * Dumbrille, U, 22-23, B, 17-18 * Alex Mullin, “Historic Lancaster House Scheduled for Demolition?,” SFH 21 Oct. 1961