Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macdonald, Alexander (1791?-1850)
MACDONALD, ALEXANDER (1791?–1850), Scottish antiquary, was at an early period employed in the Register House, Edinburgh, where he assisted Thomas Thomson [q.v.] in the preparation of the ‘Acts of the Scottish Parliament’ and other works. In 1824 he was elected a member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and in 1837 joint curator of the society's museum. In 1836 he was appointed principal keeper of the register of deeds and probate writs. He died at Edinburgh on 23 Dec. 1850, aged about fifty-nine. Macdonald supplied a considerable amount of the material for Sir Walter Scott's notes to the ‘Waverley Novels.’ It is, however, as editor of the publications of the Maitland Club that he rendered most service to historical research. The volumes edited by him are: 1. ‘The Register of Ministers, Exhorters, and Readers of the Church of Scotland,’ 1830. 2. ‘Maitland Club Miscellany,’ vols. i. and ii. 1834. 3. Adam Blackwood's ‘History of Mary, Queen of Scots,’ 1834. 4. ‘Report on the State of certain Parishes in Scotland,’ 1835. 5. ‘Letters to King James the Sixth,’ 1835. 6. ‘Papers relative to the Royal Guard of Scottish Archers in France,’ 1835. 7. ‘Letters to the Argyll Family,’ 1839. For the Bannatyne Club he also edited ‘Registrum Honoris de Morton,’ 1853.
[Archæologia Scotica, vol. v. pt. i. (1872) p. 24; Gent. Mag. 1851, pt. i. p. 317.]