(1814-20 June 1895), businessman. (Ranald S. Macdonald, sp. Ronald also found; R. Sandfield Macdonald) Born at St. Raphael’s, GC. Parents: Alexander Macdonald, who was one of the emigrants of 1786 to GC, and his wife Nancy Macdonald. Ranald was the second oldest of the “Sandfield” brothers, brother of Alexander F., Donald A., and John Sandfield Macdonald. He shared with his brothers in their profitable contract of the 1850s on construction of the Grand Trunk Railway between Montreal and Stormont County. Presumably the money from this venture provided the basis for what was thereafter a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. He had settled by the 1840s at the village now known as South Lancaster, his home, it would appear, for the remainder of his life. He was postmaster there briefly in the 1840s, and he was also a JP and farmed and at one time he had a store at South Lancaster, perhaps in connection with the post office. James Fraser, later known as the patriarch of Loch Garry, was a youthful clerk in the store.
In 1851 Ranald married Janet McEdward, a Protestant. (at least seven children) It is said that they agreed to raise the girls as Protestants and the boys as Roman Catholics. It would seem, however, that Ranald himself was a Protestant, at least by his latter years, and the sons of the family did not remain Roman Catholics. As a reasonably well-to-do man from a prominent local family, Ranald must have been well known to many in his day, but little is now known about his life and career at South Lancaster. He was one of a number of prominent local people who provided printed testimonials for T. H. McLean’s patent medicine. (Cornwall Freeholder 15 March 1867) And he was presumably the R. S. McDonald who was elected one of the directors for 1872 of the Montreal and City of Ottawa Junction Railway Company. (Witness 11 Jan. 1872) There was an old story that it was he who invented the name for the Moccasin train (from, allegedly, its moccasin-shod French-Canadian users) although the returning Mohawk riverboat pilots would be more likely. (SFH 29 Oct. 1937)
Ewan Ross (followed in large part by Eugene Macdonald) represents Ranald’s children as unfortunate, and a decaying and eccentric generation, but they may not have seemed to themselves luckless, and several of them made a respectable minor mark in life. Ranald Sandfield Macdonald is buried at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian cemetery, South Lancaster. There is a memorial window to the family in the church, but the single gravestone gives only the name of the family, without dates or individual names. One of his daughters was the first wife of Sir Donald Macmaster, and Ranald was the father also of Annie Sandfield Macdonald, Louise Sandfield Macdonald and Mrs Helen McIntyre, and John Sandfield Macdonald the younger.
Obituaries: unfortunately, the files for the Glengarry News 1895 have been lost * Hodgins 7, 25-27, 32 * biog. essay by Bruce W. Hodgins on John Sandfield Macdonald in J. M. S. Careless, ed., The Pre-Confederation Premiers (1980) 255 * Ross, Lancaster, 227-228, 343, 356-357 * Macdonald, Sandfields * Fraser, Gravestones, II, 80, 105 * Boss 242 * Lovell 1857 364 * MacMillan, Kirk, 85 * Fraser (1959) 27, 207 * Dumbrille, U, 22-23, B, 17-18