(died 5 Nov. 1884, aged 92), housewife, has scholarship in her memory. (date of birth 1795 and “the closing years of the last century” also found) Born on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Parents: Ranald Stewart and his wife Isabella McLeod. Marion Stewart and her siblings came to Canada in 1816, when the mother of the family emigrated with ten children (Ranald the father had died by this time). In GC, the Stewarts settled on lots 26 and 27 of the 4th Concession of Lancaster Township. Marion married Donald McDonald of the North Lancaster area of GC. (eleven children) Donald, who followed farming and lumbering, died 28 Feb. 1848, leaving his financial affairs in such a state that in their early careers, his sons Alexander and John S. “laboured together for years with but one aim, that of paying their father’s debts.” They managed, however, through their energy to preserve “the old homestead to [their] mother.” (History of Fond du Lac County) Moving later to the United States, Marion, who was blind in her last three years, died at her home in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. “She was an old lady, when twenty years ago, she followed her sons to Wisconsin and settled in Fond du Lac.” (obituary) She is buried at Rienzi Cemetery, Fond du Lac. Presbyterian.
In 1879, during Marion’s latter years, her son John Stewart McDonald (John S. McDonald) of Fond du Lac, Wisc., founded the Marion Stewart McDonald Scholarship at Queen’s University, Kingston, for students from GC. The scholarship was first listed in the University calendars 1879-1880. The scholarship was originally for $100 per year–a large sum for the time. Today, the payments are larger arithmetically, but inflation has reduced the real value. Marion Stewart was the sister of two distinguished brothers, Neil Stewart of Vankleek Hill and William Stewart of Bytown. For other connections of this family, see the entries for these brothers.
Her children included Alexander McDonald (16 Sept. 1827-2 Jan. 1906) and the aforementioned John S. McDonald (7 Dec. 1831-8 April 1916), who were both born in GC and went to Fond du Lac in 1856. Alexander was a lumberman at Fond du Lac and Green Bay (Wisconsin), and had a wide range of other business interests, which included threshing machine and seeder manufacture, and a directorship in the German-American Savings Bank. Alexander was elected mayor of Fond du Lac in 1873. He died at his home in Fond du Lac. Presbyterian, with strong temperance interests. John S. was a lumberman in Wisconsin and Michigan, and his many business interests included the threshing machine enterprise. (The brothers’ business affairs were often thus connected.)
Leaving Fond du Lac, after many years in business there, John S. moved in Sept. 1887 to Minneapolis, which was his home during his last three decades of life. He transferred his threshing machine business to that city, where he operated it as the Minneapolis Threshing Machine Company. Though retired, he had still a business interest in this company at the time of his death. He continued to be similarly interested in the lumber business, and at the time of his death was vice-president of the firm of his son John F. McDonald (John Flower McDonald), the John F. McDonald Lumber Company, of Minneapolis. Through the years, too, John S. was interested in mining properties. It appears from a will he made in 1908 that he was at that time in financial difficulties. He died at Pine Bluff, North Carolina, where he had gone to escape the rigours of the Minneapolis winters. Burial was at Fond du Lac. He was a Presbyterian, and very active in religious organizations. He was a trustee 1879-1888 of Lake Forest University (now Lake Forest College) of Lake Forest, Ill., a Presbyterian institution.
In their earliest years, the two brothers followed occupations which included clerking in stores, and both were employed in railway building. In 1858 and 1859, in a rather surprising break with the general pattern of his career, John S. followed the gold trail to California and British Columbia. His entry in the History of Fond du Lac County includes a remarkable description, essentially autobiographical, of his hard times and trying adventures in British Columbia before he returned to his real world of expertise, which was business.
Alexander was married three times with two children surviving him. John S. was married in 1861 to Jane Elizabeth Flower. (seven children) Her father, William Flower, a railway contractor, in earlier years had employed both Alexander and John S. in railway building.
Daily Commonwealth (Fond du Lac, Wisc.), 5 Nov. 1884 * Campbell, Tannis, & Stewart, MacDougalls, 163-165, 188-194 * Inscriptions of Rienzi Cemetery: Empire Township Fond du Lac County 1976-1981 (Fond du Lac County Genealogical Society) 27 * information from Queen's University Archives on scholarships * Alexander McDonald: death, funeral, The Daily Reporter (Fond du Lac, Wisc.), 3 & 4 Jan. 1906, The Daily Commonwealth (Fond du Lac, Wisc.), 3 & 4 Jan. 1906 * John S. McDonald: death, funeral: Minneapolis Journal, 8 April 1916, South St. Paul Daily Reporter & Minneapolis Tribune, both 10 April 1916, The Daily Reporter (Fond du Lac, Wisc.), 10, 11, 14 April 1916, The Daily Commonwealth (Fond du Lac, Wisc.), 11 & 13 April 1916, and (with a fine portrait, and useful business information) The Mississippi Valley Lumberman, 14 April 1916 * John S. McDonald: 1908 will, one-page autobiographical sketch of his son John F., in holdings of Minnesota Historical Society, which also has a collection of business papers of John S. and his son John F. * The United States Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men: Wisconsin Volume (1877): biog. sketch of Alexander 246-249 with fine, full-page portrait * The History of Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin (1880): biog. sketches of both Alexander and John S., 832-835 * second marriage of Alexander, 6 Feb. at Lancaster, GC, Witness 8 Feb. 1868 * John S. McDonald: also, information from Archives, Lake Forest College