(10 Dec. 1837-13 June 1917), contractor. (known for convenience of identification by GC historians, but perhaps by nobody else, as Donald Grant of Faribault, from the name of Faribault, Minn.) Born on the South Branch, GC. Parents: Alexander B. (Alex) Grant and his wife Catherine Cameron. He worked on his father’s farm in his early years, and was educated in the local school. Having gone to the U.S. in 1857, he worked as a farm hand in Ohio. He returned to Canada with his savings but found his hard-earned money was worthless as being the currency issue of banks that had failed. He returned to farm work in Ohio, but sick with malaria, he moved for reasons of health in 1862 or 1863 to Minnesota, which was to be his home for the rest of his life. There he worked on a farm near Faribault, the town which was to prove to be the centre for his business interests.

     About 1864 he began his highly successful career in railway construction. He was involved in many railway-building projects, mainly in the American and Canadian West. A contemporary wrote of Grant, “Many of his lines he has threaded through vast forests, making openings into which civilization has quickly pressed.” (Flandrau) He is said in printed sources to have been the principal builder of the CPR from Winnipeg to the summit of the Rockies. (Morgan, Flandrau) In his adopted home town of Faribault, he was a director of the Citizens’ National Bank of Faribault, and he was involved in promoting the boot and shoe manufactory, the canning works, the opera house and the driving park. He was mayor of Faribault for two terms, in 1892 and 1893. Besides railway contracting, he had many other business interests. He was principal proprietor, and president, in the Orinoco Company, which had interests in Venezuela. His brother John Grant termed the Venezeula project “ruinous” and “a sad mistake.” Donald Grant visited Venezuela a number of times. Donald Grant was president and a large investor in the Rio Verde Canal Company, in Arizona. His investment in a large flour-milling operation proved financially disastrous, but a return to railway contracting enabled him to recoup his losses. He was involved in the building of the Hudson’s Bay Railway. In Brazil, also, he was a railway builder about 1905. Some of his contracting work was done with his cousin D.W. Grant and some with a contractor called Ed LeMay or Lemay.

     Besides railways Grant built tunnels, ore docks, breakwaters, irrigation reservoirs and irrigation ditches. He was an investor in Mesabi Iron Range mining properties. Interested in farming, he had a farm at Tracy, Minn., which is stated to have amounted at one stage to 1500 acres, as well as a ranch in Alberta. In British Columbia he had extensive lumbering investments. Grant was president of numerous companies, and had business associations with James J. Hill.

     Grant was married on 25 Dec. 1860 at Wolfe Island (near Kingston) to Mary Cameron, of GC and Wolfe Island. They lived to celebrate their golden wedding, 1910. She was born on 15 April 1838, and died, in Faribault, at the age of 92 on 13 Feb. 1931. One of their children died of consumption in 1888, and two of diphtheria within one week in 1881 The surviving children included one son, Samuel (27 Sept. 1862-14 Jan. 1938), who was associated with his father in railway contracting and was a businessman in Faribault. Donald Grant died at his home in Faribault. He was a Protestant. No information has been found on his denominational connections, but presumably he was, like other members of his family, a Congregationalist. His Faribault obituary described him as being, politically, a “liberal republican.” He was a brother of John Grant the contractor.

Faribault Journal (Faribault, Minn.) 20 June 1917, portrait * Morgan (1898) 400 and Morgan (1912) 467 * life in Charles E. Flandrau, Encyclopedia of Biography of Minnesota (1900), I, 447-448 * detailed listing of events in Grant’s life and esp. in his business career in 20 file cards of newspaper refs. to Grant, in collections of Rice County Historical Society, of Faribault, Minn. * information kindly supplied May 1997 by Mr Francis R. Miller of the Rice County Historical Society * much information about Donald Grant in autobiography of his brother John Grant * MacGillivray & Ross 131 (portrait) * obituary of Mrs Donald Grant and report on her funeral, Faribault Daily News 14 & 16 Feb. 1931 * obituary of Samuel Grant, Faribault Daily News 14 Jan. 1938 * obituaries of Donald Grant’s daughters, Faribault Daily News 8 Nov. 1926 (Mrs Isabelle Batchelor), 18 Jan. 1935 (Miss Katherine Grant), 6 Aug. 1952 (Mrs Ella Erb) * Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge, History of Rice and Steele Counties Minnesota (1910), I, 243, 350, 372, 520, II, 1304