(31 July 1794-11 March 1879), prison warden. (D. A. MacDonell) Born in Charlottenburgh Township, GC. Parents: Miles Macdonell and his wife Isabella Macdonell. He attended the Cornwall school of the future Bishop Strachan. He saw active service in the War of 1812 as a member of the regular British forces rather than the militia, and was retired from the regular forces in 1817 as a half-pay lieutenant. Later, prominent in the militia, he commanded the 1st regiment of the Stormont militia when it was sent to Beauharnois in Nov. 1838, and was lt.-col. of this regiment from 1837 (date 1830 also found) to1850. He was MLA for Stormont County, being elected as a Reformer in 1834 and re-elected in 1836; and by some accounts, he was elected MLA for Stormont County in 1844. He was a JP from 1834. In 1848-1849, he was sheriff of the Eastern District.

     In Nov. 1848, he was appointed warden of the Provincial Penitentiary at Kingston. The appointment, provisional at first while the status of the previous warden was being considered, was made permanent in 1850. He resigned in 1869. The Cornwall Freeholder, while admitting that he was elderly (he was 74) and that problems in his administration had been alleged, complained that his resignation had been forced by the ambitious intrigues of a rival, his successor in the office. Harkness notes that Donald Aeneas’ branch of the Macdonell family “became known as the Penitentiary Macdonells.” The public sought names to help tell one Macdonell from another, and Donald Aeneas’ name was unshakably linked in the public consciousness with the important public office of warden he had so long held.

     A statute passed by the legislature of United Canada, 1865, appointed him one of the trustees of the estate of the late Alexander Macdonell, postmaster of Alexandria (see entry for Angus S. Macdonald), after the trustees originally appointed in Macdonell’s will refused to act.

     Donald Aeneas died at Brockville, Ont., where he had lived in his last years. Roman Catholic. When his daughter Miss Amelia Macdonell died at Brockville in 1911, it was remembered that her father was “one of the brawny Scots, who helped to make the county of Glengarry famous.” (Cornwall Freeholder 7 July 1911, based on Brockville Recorder) He was the grandson of “Spanish John” (John Macdonell). Donald Aeneas was married to Mary Macdonell, the daughter of Archibald Macdonell of Leek, whose entry see for the important family linkages this connection produced.

     Donald Aeneas MacDonell must be distinguished from a man of similar name and career, Donald Macdonell (d. 1909), gaoler of the counties’ prison at Cornwall.

Life by J. K. Johnson, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, X, 469-470 (also indexes to DCB) and the work usually abbrev. as Johnson in the present dictionary, i.e., J. K. Johnson’s Becoming Prominent (1989): index * Harkness: index (has portrait) * J. G. Harkness, “Miles Macdonell,” Ontario History, 40 (1948) 77-83 * Senior 138 & index * Boss 27-31, 238n. * Forman (esp. I, 104) * ASC ii, 46, 47 (Cornwall Freeholder 14 May 1869 & undated clipping, both on his retirement as warden) * blamed for alleged persecution of John Mcdonald of Garth in dispute over building a road through Garth’s estate, The Constitutional (Cornwall, Ont.), 31 Oct. 1850 * “trustees”: statute 29 Vict. cap. 113 of United Canada, 1865 * death at Kingston of his eldest son A. R. MacDonell, CF 17 Oct. 1884, cited DTL, Standard Freeholder 16 Oct. 1948