(died 1895), surveyor, contractor. (John R. McDonell) Born at Williamstown, GC. He was appointed a land surveyor in 1845. During two separate periods, he worked in the American South in engineering and surveying, leaving the South at the end of the second period when the Civil War began. During part of his time in the South, he was associated with Roderick McLennan, who was also a surveyor. McDonell afterwards worked as a surveyor in the Wisconsin lumber woods, being again, apparently, associated with McLennan. McDonell was a construction engineer, 1869-1876, on the building of the Intercolonial Railway. With his son Allan Ranald McDonell, he had a contract on the CPR in the Eagle River area of northwestern Ontario. John McDonell lived in Saint John, N. B., 1884-1889, and in Montreal from 1889 till his death. His daughter had married a man from Saint John–hence perhaps the connection with that city. John McDonell died in Montreal. Roman Catholic. He is buried in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, Montreal. He was married about 1850, in GC, to Catharine MacDonell. (six children, possibly three surviving him)

     His son Allan Ranald McDonell (born 1856), was a contractor on the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway. He may have been the same person as the Allan R. Macdonald (sp. sic) who was remembered as a contractor of GC connections who settled in England about 1908.

Biography, OLS No. 49 (1934) 122-123, with portrait; biog. was based, the compiler says, on “limited data”