(c. 1771-25 Jan. 1866), fur trader. (known as John McDonald of Garth. Also, among the fur traders he was called Le Bras Croche, from a withered arm.) Born at Garth, a property of his family near Callendar, Perthshire, Scotland. to John McDonald, a captain in the 84th Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment, and his wife Magdeleine Small. John, the subject of the present article, was a fur trader with the North West Company from 1791 (partner 1800). He took command of Astoria in 1813, after its surrender or sale to the Nor’Westers. He retired from the fur trade in the fall of 1814. After a period in Montreal, he bought in 1816 a 750-acre property at Grays Creek a few miles east of Cornwall just on the Stormont side of the Glengarry-Stormont border. This was part of a 1200-acre land grant made to the Loyalist James Gray (see Robert Gray).

     McDonald operated his Grays Creek estate with the aid of tenant farmers. He also bought land extensively elsewhere, having some 7000 acres in various locations by the 1840s, most of it unimproved land with little likelihood of it yielding immediate revenue except from lumbering. Some of this land was near the Ottawa River, in the Ottawa District. He had modest holdings also in Lancaster and Charlottenburgh Townships. He owned 100 acres in Charlottenburgh immediately adjoining his original Grays Creek estate in Stormont County.

     He built a home for himself, called Inverarden, in 1816 on the Grays Creek estate. He did not live there long, however, for on his second marriage he moved to another house nearby on his Grays Creek property. Just before the second marriage, he sold Inverarden and a tract of land around it to his daughter Eliza and her husband John Duncan Campbell, who was also a Nor’Wester. John lived briefly again in Inverarden in his last years, when he retreated there during a period of ill health, but in general this famous house, so much associated with his name, was the home of members of his family rather than of him. In recent years, Inverarden was the Inverarden Regency Cottage Museum, operated by the SDG Historical Society, and commemorating especially McDonald. In 1999, however, it was announced that the museum was closing, and that it would be rebuilt as a Canadian Métis museum. (Vankleek Hill Review 18 Aug. 1999) In 2008, the building remained unused.

     He was married first in the country manner to the Métis Nancy Small. She was the daughter of Patrick Small, who was a partner in the NWC, and she was the great-grandniece of Major General John Small of the British Army. She and John McDonald of Garth were relatives, John being a great-nephew of the general, who had helped to establish him in the NWC. (five children this marriage) Nancy’s sister Charlotte was married to the explorer and map-maker David Thompson. In 1823, choosing not to recognize his first and irregular marriage, John married again, this time to Amelia (McGillis?). (six children this marriage) She was the niece of Hugh McGillis who, like David Thomson, was a Nor’Wester who settled at Williamstown. The first and the second wives lived close together, Nancy at Inverarden, and Amelia with John at another house on the estate. Nancy lived till 1856, surviving by more than a quarter century her rival Amelia, who died in childbirth in 1830.

     McDonald was a prominent man among the Highlanders and others in Cornwall, Stormont and GC, and was a part of that remarkable group of former Nor’Westers who chose this area of the world for their retirement. He was judge of the Surrogate Court for SDG from 1832 to 1844 and was a JP. The strange story of his two marriages seems not to have damaged his social standing, though one may wonder what people said about it privately, and in particularly what was said by people of the humbler status who were not his intimates and social equals. He was chairman at a meeting held at Williamstown 26 Dec. 1842 to revive the “dormant” Highland Society of Canada. (Cornwall Observer, 5 Jan. 1843)

     John McDonald of Garth died “at his residence Gart Cottage” at Grays Creek more than half a century after his retirement from the fur trade, and being one of the last surviving of the Nor’Westers. (Spelling Gart not Garth was used for the house and estate.) He was buried in a family cemetery on the estate but the bodies from the cemetery were reinterred in a public cemetery in 1970. He was a Presbyterian and a member of St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Cornwall. On his death, a tribute written into the church’s Session Records included appreciation for his role as an early and generous benefactor. He was the father by his first marriage of Rolland Mcdonald and by his second marriage of A. E. DeBellefeuille Macdonald, and he was the grandfather of Alexander John de Lotbiniere Macdonald and Archibald C. de Léry Macdonald. John McDonald of Garth’s sister was married to the Hon. William McGillivray. See also entry for Simon Fraser.

     He was the author of “Autobiographical Notes,” which were written late in his life at the urging of his son DeBellefeuille and were first published, soon after John’s death, in six instalments in the Cornwall Freeholder of 2 March to 6 April 1866. They were later printed in L.R. Masson’s Les bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest, of 1889-1890. A preface to a copy of the “Autobiographical Notes” dated 4 Sept. 1920 at Alexandria states that, at the home of John A. Macdonell (Greenfield) of Alexandria, Carrie Holmes MacGillivray, herself the descendant of a Nor’Wester family, has made a typescript from the original text in John McDonald of Garth’s handwriting of the “Autobiographical Notes,” the original being at that time owned by his grandson S. DeLery Macdonald (evidently Archibald C. de Léry Macdonald).

Death reported, CF 2 & 9 Feb. 1866 (QF) * Robert J. Burns, “The Post Fur Trade Career of a North West Company Partner: a Biography of John McDonald of Garth,” Research Bulletin de recherches, No. 60, Parks Canada (Aug. 1977) pp. 15, illustr. , and Robert J. Burns, “Inverarden: Retirement Home of Fur Trader John McDonald of Garth,” History and Archaeology, 25 (Ottawa, 1979) 153-240, illustr., and repr. from Burns in Glengarry Life 1981 * his life by C. M. Livermore and N. Anick in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, IX, 481-483 * Wallace * MDict * Bibliography of Glengarry and works cited there (includes notices of material on Inverarden) * “preface to a copy”: photoc, present author’s collection * General Small: see his life in DNB * Harkness: index * Archives of Ontario, Church Records, St. John’s * death at New Carlisle, Baie de Chaleur, of his eldest son William, aged 66, a land surveyor, CF 10 & 31 May 1867 * Parks Canada to restore Inverarden, Glengarry News 22 June 1977 * controversy over disposal of furnishings from Inverarden, GN 26 Sept. & 17 Oc.t 2001 (includes letter from desendant Grant Campbell, ex-MP)