(c. 1854-13 Sept. 1923), rancher and banker. (A. J. McDonald; known to his business friends and others as “the Colonel”) Born at Harrisons Corners, Stormont County, west of St. Andrew’s. In his autobiography, he states the place simply as Cornwall. While still in his teens, he left Canada to secure a winter’s work in Michigan, presumably in the lumber woods after the manner of the Eastern Ontario youth of his time. Arriving in 1874 in Wyoming, which was to be his home for most of the rest of his life, he first spent several years as an ox-team driver transporting U. S. Cavalry supplies into Wyoming from Nebraska. He then became a rancher in 1878 or 1880 on Gooseberry Creek in the Big Horn Basin of northern Wyoming.

     There he prospered as a cattleman, but gave up ranching in 1895 for what proved an unsuccessful venture at growing citrus fruits and walnuts in California, then returned to his ranch to recoup his fortunes, and then in 1898 or 1899 set up as a general merchant in the newly-founded town or village of Meeteetse, not far from his ranch. His general merchandising firm was still operating in the 1970s. In 1899, elected as a Republican, he represented the constituency of Big Horn in Wyoming’s House of Representatives. From 1902 till his death, he was the president of the First National Bank of Meeteetse. He had been one of the businessmen who organized this bank in 1900, under its name of Hogg, Cheeseman, McDonald & Co. He was mayor of Meeteetse several times. A long-time bachelor, McDonald married late in life, on 3 Nov. 1914, at St. Joseph’s Church, Springfield, Missouri, to Miss Anna (Annie) French (d. 26 Oct. 1956), of Springfield. They had two sons, the first born in 1917. Angus J. McDonald died in Meeteetse. Roman Catholic. The funeral Mass was at Cody, Wyo., with burial at Missoula, Mont. He was the author of a short autobiography (8 pp. typescript), written for his sons, a few passages of which are quoted in a thesis of 1971 (Nettles).

     Beyond the circle of his local relatives, McDonald was known to a wider GC-area public mainly through John A. Chisholm, several times mayor of Cornwall, who was his friend and perhaps also a relative. In 1920, McDonald gave Chisholm the gift of a buffalo skull. (Cornwall Standard 13 May 1920 ) And when McDonald died in 1923, Chisholm was informed by a telegram, and, as he stated in a letter of condolences to Mrs McDonald, “The following morning I saw to it that all his relatives around here were informed of his death.” McDonald and his family had visited Chisholm in Canada earlier that summer. McDonald was described in the Cornwall press at the time of his death as the “last pioneer of the Big Horn Basin, Wyoming.”

     McDonald has been called an “intimate friend” of the celebrated William “Buffalo Bill” Cody. No documentary evidence has come to light about this connection, but it is not unlikely that they knew each other well. Buffalo Bill was a developer at about the beginning of the 20th century in McDonald’s area of Wyoming, and was one of the founders of the town of Cody (home now of the extensive Buffalo Bill Historical Center), only 25 miles from McDonald’s town of Meeteetse.

The Meeteetse News 19 Sept. 1923 & Cornwall Standard (QF) 20 Sept. 1923; his death also noticed, 20 Years Ago column, Standard Freeholder 22 Sept. 1943 * Bob Edgar & Jack Turnell, Brand of a Legend (1978): Chapter X: “The Town of Meeteetse” (biog. material, illustr.) * Wyoming Blue Book, II, 270-1 (with portrait), 421, 552 * Dorothy Nettles, “Settlement and Growth of the Meeteetse Area in Northwestern Wyoming,” M. Ed. thesis, Black Hills State College, South Dakota (1971) * material very kindly supplied in photocopy by (1) the Wyoming Archives, some of it cited elsewhere in these notes, but including also a typescript ”History of the L U Ranch” (with much on McDonald), assessment rolls, census reports, &c. (2) Park County Historical Society Archives, Cody, Wyo., including the autobiography, (3) Meeteetse Museum, Meeteetse, Wyo., including marriage certificate, Chisholm’s letter of condolences of 15 Sept. 1923, and the autobiography in a text which has minor differences from the previous one