Acadiensis/Volume 1/Number 3/A Monument and its Story
A Monument and its Story.
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HE DEATH of Mrs. Macdonald did not, however, turn Captain Macdonald from the patriotic work in which he was engaged, and to which he had been devoted. In the autumn of 1843 he published, from the press of Henry Chubb & Co., a pamphlet which bore the following title: "Sketches of Highlanders: with an account of their early arrival in North America; their advancement in agriculture; and some of their distinguished military services in the war of 1812, etc., etc., with letters containing useful information for emigrants from the Highlands of Scotland to the British Provinces, by R. C. Macdonald, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Castle Tioram Regiment of Highlanders, Prince Edward Island, Chief of the Highland Society of Nova Scotia, and Paymaster of the 30th Regiment. St. John, N. B., 1843."
The edition of the pamphlet, which was limited in number, for some reason was not freely circulated, and remained in possession of the Messrs. Chubb for many years, and was destroyed in the great fire of 1877. But few copies are now in existence, and it is one of the rarest of provincial pamphlets.
The sketches of Highlanders are taken from Chamber's History of the Rebellion of 1745, supplemented with a great deal of historical information relating to the Highland soldiers and emigrants who settled in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia during the last century. The pamphlet, which contains a very interesting account of the Glengarry regiment, and its services in the war of 1812–13, ends with two characteristic letters from Abraham Gesner, the eminent geologist, to Captain Macdonald, on the settlement of Highlanders on the crown lands of New Brunswick. Captain Macdonald's book was worthy of a wider circulation and deserved a better fate than that which befell it, and the author merited more honor than he appears to have received.
But that which has tended most to perpetuate Captain Macdonald's name with us is the monument, with the lengthy inscription, which he placed over the grave of his wife, and which remains as a memorial of his affection.
The builder of the monument was the late John Causey, and it was placed in its present position in the autumn of 1843.
Shortly after its erection, the 30th Regiment returned to England, and we hear nothing more of Captain Macdonald. Military duties carried him far from his native island, and the people in whom he had taken so deep an interest. In 1848, while on service with his regiment in the island of Cephalonia, one of the Ionian Isles, now a part of the kingdom of Greece, he died, and his brother officers placed over his grave a monument to mark his worth and their respect.
Captain Macdonald possessed an estate on Prince Edward Island, to which his father, Glenaladale, had given the name "Castle Tioram."[1] It was a portion of his patrimony. There, and on Lots 35 and 36, was formed the Castle Tioram Regiment of Highlanders, named in compliment to him, and of which he became lieutenant-colonel. The corps was recruited from his own clansmen, and wore the same tartan as the Highland societies of British America,—the prominent color being the Gordon tartan, with the colors of the other clans. The standard of the regiment bore the Glengarry and Castle Tioram coat-of-arms, and was presented by Mrs. Macdonald. The Castle Tioram regiment, like many of the Highland societies, is but a memory of the past, and the Castle Tioram estate has become the residence of strangers, with the ancient name almost forgotten.
Captain Macdonald had issue by his wife one son and two daughters; one daughter died young, and the other, Elizabeth Ranaldson Macdonald, entered a convent and became a nun. She is now in Melbourne, Australia. The son, Rev. John Alastair Somerled Macdonald, a Jesuit priest, is stationed at Brandon, Manitoba, in the Northwest Territories of the Dominion of Canada. This gentleman is imbued with the same love of race which so highly characterized his father.
"Colonel Macdonell, chief of Glengarry, and heir to the forfeited titles of the Earls of Ross," was the fifteenth chief of Glengarry, and the last historic chieftain of the clan. He was the grand-nephew of Alastair Macdonell of Glengarry, who was selected by the Highland chiefs in 1745 to carry an address, signed with their blood, to Prince Charles. Two battalions of Glengarry men served with the standard of Prince Charles in that ill-starred rising. Colonel Macdonell was a friend of Sir Walter Scott, and is said to have been his original for Fergus McIvor in Waverley. In 1793, when the French republic declared war against England, a number of Catholic gentlemen in the Highlands formed a regiment under the command of Colonel Macdonell; most of the persons who formed it being his clansmen and tenants, it was known as the First Glengarry regiment. The corps served in Ireland during the troubles of 1798, and remained in service until 1802, when it was disbanded. Many of the Glengarry men, under the leadership of their chaplain, Rev. Father Macdonell, with their friends and relatives, emigrated to Upper Canada, and formed a Gaelic-speaking settlement called after their native glen, where each head of the family gave the name of his holding in Glengarry to his plantation in the new home. The Glengarry regiment was again re-organized in Canada, and did its part nobly in saving the British Provinces to the crown in the years 1812–13–14. With this regiment Captain John Jenkins, a New Brunswicker, gained renown at the taking of Ogdensburg.
Colonel Macdonell died in 1828, his demise being most tragic. Sir Walter Scott, who was a great admirer of the chieftain, wrote a lament, entitled, "Glengarry's Death Song," which was first printed in the article referred to in Blackwood's Magazine:
Colonel Macdonell was succeeded by his eldest son, Æneas Ranaldson Macdonell, who sold the greater part of the Glengarry estates, which were heavily mortgaged, and emigrated with his family to Australia, and the vast territories of the race of Glengarry passed from them forever.
Captain Macdonald ended the long inscription with this brief reference to an episode in the life of his father, which changed the fortunes of the Glenaladale family, and also had an important influence on the early settlement of Prince Edward Island:
"Also to perpetuate the memory of the chieftain of Glenaladale, his father, and the attachment of the Highlanders who followed him, as their leader, to Prince Edward Island in 1772."
John Macdonald, the eighth chieftain of Glenaladale, was a child when his father joined the standard of Prince Charles in 1745, which was first unfurled upon Glenaladale's property at Glenfinnin. He was educated at the famous Catholic seminary at Ratisbon, in Germany, and was considered one of the most accomplished young gentlemen of his generation. "In 1770 a violent persecution against the Catholics broke out in the island of South Uist. Glenaladale, hearing of the proceedings, went to visit the people, and was so touched by their pitiable condition that he formed the resolution of expatriating himself, and going off at their head to America."[2] With this object in view, he sold the estate of Glenaladale to his cousin and nearest heir in 1771, and purchased a large estate in Prince Edward Island, then known as Saint John's Island, and removed thither.
A few years after the settlement of Glenaladale and his clansmen, the war between England and her American colonies broke out, and in this emergency Glenaladale was the means of forming, in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, a battalion named "the Royal Highland Emigrants," composed chiefly of Highlanders, and in which he commanded a company.
His many virtues and abilities were recognized during those trying times, and the loyalty of his clansmen was unquestioned. After the close of the war Glenaladale devoted his energies to the development of his large landed estates in Prince Edward Island. These he divided into seven portions, and their sub-divisions he called after places in Scotland Glenaladale, Grand Tracady, Donaldson, Castle Tioram, Arisaig, St. Martins and New Moidart. At his home the old chieftain displayed the most unbounded hospitality, and his house was a resting place where all travellers received a cordial welcome,[3] Glenaladale took a deep interest in the public affairs of Prince Edward Island, and filled many important positions of honor and trust. The British government offered him the governorship, bat owing to the oath of allegiance necessary at the time, as a Catholic he was obliged to decline the office. He died in 1811, and is buried among his clansmen and kindred in a burial ground known as "the Doctor's House."
The estates once held by Captain John Macdonald, of Glenaladale, in Prince Edward Island, were, under the terms of the Provincial Land Purchase Act, bought by the local government, and re-sold at cost to the occupants, who now hold them in fee simple.
His grandson, John Archibald Macdonald, Esq., still holds Glenaladale with five hundred acres attached, which he cultivates, and on which he resides. Another grandson, Sir William C. Macdonald, philanthropist, is the generous benefactor of McGill University, Montreal, and other educational measures of national importance.
I have attempted in this paper to tell the story of the old monument that stands in the midst of so many memorials in that city of the dead, and yet seems so lonely in its massiveness. As the years go by the lengthy inscription, so carefully cut on it, will be effaced, or obliterated by the hand of time, and the monument become but a meaningless column. The historic epitaph, however, will be preserved in the pages of Acadiensis, and the purpose of its builder, to perpetuate the memory of a noble woman, will, in a measure, have been accomplished.
- ↑ "Castletirrim is one of the ancient seats on the mainland of the Macdonalds of Clanranald. It was burnt down by the chief prior to his joining the Earl of Mar during the Fifteen to avoid its falling into the hands of the government forces during his absence. The walls are still standing, and in fair preservation, on a little island near the head of Loch Moidart. The name, as written by Captain Macdonald himself, Castle Tioram, is the correct Gaelic form of it. The family of Glenaladale being descended from Clanranald, Captain Macdonald, naturally enough, called his place in Prince Edward Island after the ancient family residence of his chief." Extract from a letter from Alexander Mackenzie, F. S. A., author of "History of the Macdonalds and Lords of the Isles" to the writer.
- ↑ History of the Macdonalds and Lords of the Isles, p. 448.
- ↑ Hon. A. A. Macdonald, Prince Edward Island.