(1863-21 or 22 May 1939), lawyer and author. (de Lery Macdonald, A. de Léry Macdonald, A. C. DeLery Macdonald, A. C. de Lery Macdonald, Archibald de Lery Macdonald, Archie de Lery Macdonald) Born in Montreal. Parents: Antoine Eustache DeBellefeuille Macdonald and his wife Marie Louise de Lotbiniere Harwood. He was educated at St. Mary’s College, the Jesuit college in Montreal later known as Loyola College. Called to the Bar 1886, the same year he received his LL. B. degree, he practised as lawyer in a Montreal. Concerned with historical and artistic matters, he was active in the affairs of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal and was a promoter of the museum at the Château de Ramezay. Rigaud, Que., as well as Montreal was his home. Roman Catholic. He married in 1884 Louise Dumontaine (Dumontine) Globensky of St-Eustache, Que.
The Morgan biog. dictionary of 1898 stated, “He has written much on Can. historical subjects, and has now in preparation a detailed history of the more famous of the old historical families of French-Can., as well as a history of the old French-Can. Seigneuries.” An article he published in the Family Herald & Weekly Star of 16 Sept. 1908 on the exploration of the Fraser River has a few GC references and was reprinted in the Glengarry News of 10 Feb. 1922. His publications included The Seigneurie of Alainville on Lake Champlain (1929; 36 pp., with 12 plates, one of them in colour, and a map). He died in the Notre Dame Hospital, Montreal. (five children) Family papers and historical collections which were formerly in Collège Bourget at Rigaud are now in Le Centre d’histoire La Presqu’île at Vaudreuil-Dorion. In 1925, as Seigneur of Vaudreuil or Rigaud, he sold the Rigaud site known as the Devil’s Garden to a company that intended to use it for quarrying. (Glengarry News 24 July 1925) He thus helped destroy a geological curiosity and scenic feature which had long been admired by the people of western Quebec and Eastern Ontario. His wife predeceased him. He was the brother of Alexander John de Lotbiniere Macdonald, of Alexandria.
Glengarry News 2 June 1939 * obituary L’Interrogation (Rigaud) 25 May 1939 (much the same as in GN), repr. in his Les Seigneuries de Vaudreuil et Rigaud (1995) 63 * Morgan (1898) 679 * family gravestone, Rigaud * Lovell’s Montreal Directory for 1896-97 pp. 595, 789 (law firm)