(d. March 1893), vice-consul. (the Chevalier Macdonell; W. J. Macdonell, William J. Macdonell) Born probably in Boston, Mass. Parents: William Johnson Macdonell and his wife Lucy Waters. William Johnson Macdonell (1775-1848), the father of the subject of the present sketch, was the son of the celebrated “Spanish John” (John Macdonell), and made his career in Boston, where he was at one stage an employee of the Customs. William J. Macdonell, the subject of the present sketch, was by 1836 working “in the office of his brother-in-law, the late Henry Jones, of Brockville.” In April 1838, he “removed from Brockville to Kingston, to take charge of the forwarding and commission business of H. and S. Jones, in its time one of the best known firms in Canada.” While Macdonell was a Kingston resident, Von Schoultz, the raider captured at the Battle of the Windmill, was hanged within sight of Macdonell’s window, “but, having no taste for such sights,” Macdonell “took care to be absent at the time of execution.” By 1857, Macdonell was a businessman in Toronto.

     In 1836, during a holiday boat trip on the St. Lawrence, young Macdonell had introduced himself Bishop Alexander Macdonell, and thus begun a friendship with him. The bishop, it may be guessed, was delighted to be confronted with a grandson of Spanish John. Afterwards, when young Macdonell was living in Kingston, he consolidated his friendship with the bishop. Many years later, he published a short, valuable life of the bishop, called Reminiscences of the Late Hon. and Right Rev. Alexander Macdonell, First Catholic Bishop of Upper Canada, and (Incidentally) of Other Older Residents of the Province (Toronto, Published by Williamson & Co’y, 1888; pp. 55). This is a charming volume, warm, affectionate, condensed, picturesque and extremely well written, and packed with valuable eyewitness observations. He himself recognized, realistically, that the value of his portrait was limited by the fact that he only knew the bishop in the last few years of his long life, and that he had virtually no research materials other than obituaries. Before its publication in book form, the work appeared in several journals including the Glengarrian of Alexandria. A Glengarrian named Macdonald is said to have helped him with information (Cornwall Standard 26 Jan. 1888), and Jack Greenfield (John A. Macdonell) in his own life of Bishop Macdonell speaks of him as “My friend, the Chevalier Macdonell.”

     In later years, he was the vice-consul of France in Toronto. He was the first president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Toronto. Also, he is said to have been the founder of the Toronto branch of this society. He is said also to have had one of the best private libraries in Toronto. He was unmarried.

Autobiographical passages in his above-cited Reminiscences (QF) * for genealogy: Chadwick; Macdonald & Macdonald * Lovell 1857 395 (Jones, Macdonell & Co., Toronto) * mentioned in J. R. Robertson, Robertson’s Landmarks of Toronto, I (1894) 430, III (1898) 46 * A. G. Morice (as per ref. in entry for Spanish John Macdonell) for William Johnson Macdonell the father * information from Archives of the Archdiocese of Toronto * Reid, MN, 116, marriage 1835 presumably of his sister