(25 April 1862-4 Nov.1933), businessman. (Archibald M. Chisholm, A. M. Chisholm, Archie Chisholm, Archie M. Chisholm, sometimes remembered, though perhaps without a good basis in the practice of his own time, as Mark Chisholm) Born at Alexandria, GC. Parents: Donald A. Chisholm and his wife Catherine, whose surname also appears to have been Chisholm. Donald A. Chisholm (d. 1879), the father of the subject of the present entry, was a native of Beauly, Inverness-shire, Scotland, who settled in Alexandria in 1857. He operated a small shoe factory in Alexandria where some reports also place him in the grocery trade. He died early enough to leave his wife (a native of St. Raphael’s) with some difficulties in raising their family.

     Archibald Mark was educated in Alexandria and at the St. Paul Commercial College, St. Paul, Minn. Early in his career he worked in the lumber trade at Chippewa Falls, Wisc., as a scaler and chipper. Himself for a time a clerical employeee in mining in Michigan and Minnesota, he became a very wealthy developer and investor in mining, especially in Minnesota. He was the founder about 1901 of the town of Chisholm, Minn., which was named after him. (Glengarry News 12 April 1901) The town was largely destroyed by a forest fire in 1908 but was quickly rebuilt. Before the fire it is said to have had a population of about 6,000. Archibald Mark Chisholm was president of the First National Bank of Chisholm, which was organized in 1901. He drew income from a group of mines called the Chisholm group, and also was president and treasurer of the American mining companies called Alexandria Iron Co., Neath Mining Co. and Alexandria Security Co., and he was involved also in copper mining in Arizona and New Mexico.

     His home was in Duluth, Minn. According to his obituary in the GN he “found time to revisit frequently the scene of his youth and his love of Glengarry never waned.” He founded the Monastery of the Precious Blood in Alexandria in memory of his parents. This fine building was formally opened 11 Nov. 1925. The Monastery was a convent for the Sisters of the Precious Blood. See the life of Sister Aimée de Marie (Angela Chisholm) in this dictionary. Archibald Mark Chisholm also gave St. Finnan’s Cathedral a pipe-organ and a side altar, and he was a contributor (Cornwall Standard 23 July 1909) to the building of the Sacred Heart Church, Alexandria. He gave Alexandria its fair grounds and a park known as Chisholm Park. Chisholm Park, which was on Main Street was much used for lacrosse in the 1930s. Later it became the site for the Alexandria Town Hall. The fair grounds and the park are both long since gone under their old form and name. Chisholm is said in an American source to have been a generous benefactor of churches of all denominations. He contributed annually or at least regularly to charitable relief in the Scottish Highlands. While he and his kinsman John A. Chisholm of Cornwall were touring Scotland in 1921 they were introduced to Prime Minister Lloyd George at Inverness and A. M. Chisholm was given a public banquet at Beauly. (Cornwall Standard, 20 & 27 Oct. 1921, with summaries of the speeches at the banquet, also Cornwall Freeholder 16 Feb. 1922)

     Archibald Mark Chisholm died at Duluth, and is buried in the Chisholm mausoleum, St. Finnan’s cemetery, Alexandria. He was married in 1891 at Chippewa Falls to Lillian C. Cummings. In 1938 Mrs Chisholm gave the Monastery a 500-pound bell (Glengarry News 4 Nov. 1938) After several years of controversy, some of it rancorous, on whether, and how, the monastery building could be preserved, it was demolished in 2001 (see pictures from the demolition, GN 18 July 2001).

Glengarry News 10 Nov. 1933 * A.W. McDougald’s recollections GN 8 & 15 Dec. 1933 of Chisholm in his history of GC * death of his son, GN 26 March 1943 * MacGillivray & Ross 515-516, 520 * Villeneuve 90-91 * Sinnsearachd 250-253 * St. Finnan’s CRNI, I, 78, 80 * dedication of Monastery, GN 13 Nov. 1925 * “Sisters of Precious Blood Celebrate Golden Date Here,” GN 6 Nov. 1975 (with good illust. of building) * there is a history of the Monastery of exceptional interest and charm, History of the Foundation of “Our Lady of the Rosary” Monastery in Alexandria, Ontario: The Chisholm Memorial Monastery of the Precious Blood (1985?) * information from St. Louis County Historical Society (Duluth, Minn.) and from Iron Range Research Center (Chisholm, Minn.) with obituary from (presumably) a Duluth newspaper * D.E. Woodbridge and J.S. Pardee, ed. History of Duluth and St. Louis County, 2 vols. (1910) (biog., portrait; history of town of Chisholm) * Walter Van Brunt, Duluth and St. Louis County, 3 vols. (1921) * Marion MacMaster in Glengarry Life (1992) * adverts. for lacrosse in GN 1930s