(baptized 15 Aug.1780, at St John’s, Newfoundland; died 16 May 1870), soldier. (George Macdonell, known as Red George) Parents: John Macdonell of Leek and his wife Elizabeth Duguid. The John Macdonell of Leek (d. at Berwick, U. K., 1818) named here fought on the Jacobite side at Culloden in the 1745-1746 Rebellion, and afterwards served in Fraser’s Highlanders and in Wolfe’s army at the capture of Quebec in 1759, and as a British officer in Newfoundland. He seems to have had no personal contact with GC, and must be distinguished, as W. L. Scott has shown, from another John Macdonell of Leek (d. 1782), who was one of the leaders of the emigration of the settlers on the Pearl to New York province in 1773.

     George Macdonell made his career as an officer in the British Army, being an ensign in 1796 and a captain by 1805. In 1808, he went with his regiment to Nova Scotia. About the end of 1811, he was assigned the task of recruiting the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles (also remembered as the 2nd Glengarry Fencibles). He was made a brevet major in this force in 1812. This new fencible regiment, though modelled on the one the future Bishop Macdonell had been involved in raising in Scotland in the 1790s, and having, again, the encouragement of the future bishop, did not attract a large number of GC recruits. So slight the actual GC connection proved, that Sir George Prevost thought it hardly deserved the name of Glengarry in its title. Neverthless, if it lacked a sufficient GC content before the War of 1812, it strengthened its GC associations afterwards, when in the few years following the war numbers of soldiers from the second Glengarry Fencibles were given land in GC in what was then northern Lancaster Township and is now Lochiel Township.

     Red George was one of the prominent military leaders in the War of 1812, commanding various British forces in defence of Upper and Lower Canada against the Americans. By then a lt.-col., he led the force which captured Ogdensburg in Feb. 1813, being wounded in the attack, and he played a major supporting role at the Battle of Chateauguay in Oct. 1813. In the last part of the war, he was in charge of the GC and Stormont militia. He was a promoter of the building of a line of water communications for military purposes along the course of what later became the Rideau Canal. Accordingly, towards the end of the war he personally explored the route of a possible canal. Being acutely aware of the financial realities, which others ignored when the actual canal was built at lavish expense by the British government in 1826-1832, he suggested building at first a makeshift canal of wooden structures and loose stones, to be replaced with a more durable one when the provincial finances could bear the cost.

     In these days of his military fame, he must have been personally known to many of the eminent Glengarrian residents, and we may suppose he was entertained in their homes with proper Highland hospitality. He was presumably never a GC resident, but he has a prominent place in the history and traditions of GC.

     In 1816 he returned to England. He was married in 1820 to Laura Arundel, daughter of Lord Arundel of Wardour, and a member of one of the great Roman Catholic families of England. Their son, John Ignatius Macdonell (1825-14 Oct. 1900), was a major general in the British Army and a friend of Edward Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII). In his later years, Red George, believing he had not been given sufficient credit for his achievements, was much concerned with defending the importance of his role as a soldier in the War of 1812. He died at Wardour Castle, Wiltshire, England, having outlived the War of 1812 by well over half a century. He was a Roman Catholic.

     In “Hemlock,” one of the stories in Robert Sellar’s Gleaner Tales (1895), Red George is described as being sociable with the Indian hero Hemlock, not having “the prejudice of race common to old residents.”

     In 1817 Red George Macdonell prepared for government use a remarkable paper, “The Topography of the Canadas,” which contains many perceptive remarks on the problems of defending the Canadas against American attack.

Life by Carol M. Whitfield, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, IX, 484-485 * parentage: earlier accounts are corrected in Scott, “M” (esp. 25) & Scott, “U” (esp. 168-169) * Winston Johnston, The Glengarry Light Infantry, 1812-1816: Who Were They and What Did They Do in the War? (1998) * Boss 8-18, 227, & portrait * Harkness: index (has portrait) * MacGillivray & Ross 34, 38, 683 * McLean 199-200 * George Raudzens, “’Red George’ Macdonell, Military Saviour of Upper Canada?” Ontario History, 62:4 (1970) 199-212 (includes full text of “The Topography of the Canadas”) * see also the entry for Sir Donald Macmaster * John Ignatius Macdonell: sources include Boase, VI, 112