(17 April 1840-17 Dec. 1913), lumberman and banker. (A. B. McDonell; form of name Sir A. B. McDonell also routinely found; Hon. A. B. McDonell) Born presumably in GC. Parents: Angus McDonell, a native of Scotland who came to Canada in early life and settled in GC, and his wife, whose Christian name was Marjory or Margery. Their home in GC was about a mile and a half west of Glen Roy. Alexander’s mother died when he was 7 and his father when he was 14. Alexander had only the limited formal education available from the local schools.

     In 1858, aged 18, Alexander began work in the lumber industry on the Ottawa River. Thus began his long commitment to lumbering. The following winter, he worked in a lumber camp on the Trent River in Ontario. From the early 1860s, he made his career in the United States. He worked in the lumber woods first near Saginaw, Mich., and then near Defiance, Ohio, and thereafter during the period 1866 to 1873 he followed the forest and river work of the lumber business for seven years in the Minneapolis area. During these early years in the United States, he accumulated several thousand dollars which served as the basis for his later business career. It would seem also to have been during these early years that he moved from being an ordinary employee to supervisor or manager.

     From June 1873, he made Chippewa Falls, Wisc., his permanent base. Thereafter, he was highly active as a manager and businessman in the lumber industry of Wisconsin and Minnesota. He is described as an early business partner of the celebrated Frederick Weyerhaeuser, the American lumber king. McDonell had interests in lumbering in Washington state and the Calgary, Alta., area, and was among the founders and owners of the Calgary Water Power Company. Many business ventures in his adopted town, Chippewa Falls, numbered him among their investors. He was one of the organizers of the Lumberman’s National Bank at Chippewa Falls. At the time of his death he had been the bank’s president for more than a quarter century. In 1888, a note in the Chicago Canadian-American (reprinted in the Cornwall Freeholder of 2 March 1888, and then again in the Freeholder of 28 Feb. 1908) on the “many ex-Glengarrians among the prominent citizens of Chippewa Falls,” noted in its list A. B. McDonell from Charlottenburgh as president of the aformentioned bank. During the years of the bank presidency, he was retired from active management in the lumber trade, but evidently not from his personal investment in the trade. He was mayor of Chippewa Falls, as a Democrat, 1887-1889.

     He died at his home in Chippewa Falls. (children surviving him: 1) Roman Catholic. Alexander B. McDonell was said at the time of his death to be “a multi-millionaire.” (Catholic Sentinel) His pallbearers inclued Archibald M. Chisholm, two members of the Weyerhaeuser family, and Dr J. D. McRae (see entry for Hector C. McRae). Dr McRae was also a pallbearer for McDonell’s son in 1936.

     Alexander B. McDonell was married 17 Oct. 1881 to Mary Regina O’Neil (d. 1892), of Chippewa Falls. (four children) Two of their children were drowned 25 June 1900, and another predeceased his father.

     A noted philanthropist, Alexander B. McDonell built the McDonell Memorial High School in Chippewa Falls as a gift to his parish and and a memorial to his wife and three deceased children. The school was described in his Catholic Sentinel obituary as “a magnificent structure” and “one of the very few Catholic Parochial High Schools in America.” He was made a Knight of St. Sylvester by Pope Pius X in 1908, and he also received the papal Order of St. Gregory the Great. A bequest he made to Vicar-General Corbet was used to start the work on a new Hotel Dieu convent in Cornwall.

     The lumberman John K. Kennedy, a fellow Glengarrian, was one of his “close relatives.” A Wisconsin-area newspaper item of 1906 stated that “J. J. Kennedy associated with A. B. McDonnell [sic], president of the Lumberman’s National Bank, has bought 60,000 acres of land which will cut 1,000,000,000 feet of timber. The land lies north and northeast of Rib Lake. The W. C. [Wisconsin Central Railroad] will be extended ten miles to reach the tract as a logging road.”

     Alexander B. McDonell was survived by one son, Alexander Angus McDonell (10 Oct. 1882-22 May 1936) (A. A. McDonell, Alexander A. McDonell, Alex McDonell, Alexander McDonell), lumberman and banker, who was born in Chippewa Falls. Alexander Angus studied at Georgetown University and Notre Dame University. He was in the lumber business in Minnesota and Oregon. From 1928 till his death he was president of the same bank as his father, the Lumberman’s National Bank, of Chippewa Falls. He added to the endowment fund for the high school his father founded. His places of residence included Portland, Ore., and St. Paul, Minn. He died in a Boston hospital. He was married to Onolee Belle McCullough, the daughter of a lumberman. (four children)

Daily Independent (Chippewa Falls), 18 & 20 Dec. 1913, with portrait; Catholic Sentinel (Chippewa Falls), 25 Dec. 1913, with portrait; Glengarry News 2 Jan. 1914 (based on Daily Independent) * biographical sketch, with full page portrait, in West Central Wisconsin: a History, Vol. III: Biographical (1933) 5-10 * biog. sketches, with full page portraits, of himself and his son Alexander Angus, in The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. XV(1916) 141, Vol. XXVIII (1940) 279, resp. * Sister Dolores Kane, Caring People Helping People: the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph of Cornwall 1897-1997 (1997) 11, 18 * John K. Kennedy: (Rib Lake Herald?), 28 April 1906, citing the Chippewa Independent; obituary of Kennedy, GN 4 May 1928 * obituary, portrait, report on funeral, of his son Alexander Angus McDonell, Chippewa Herald-Telegram (Chippewa Falls), 23, 25, 26 May 1936 (with portrait) * There are biographies and appraisals of Frederick Weyerhaeuser and two members of his family in the American National Biography