Alexander Finlay Macdonald
(1825 – 1903)
Alexander Finlay Macdonald was born September 15, 1825 in Kintail, on an ocean inlet in Scotland. His father, Duncan Macdonald, a tenant farmer, eked out a scant existence on land that was soured by sea spray and soaked by constant British mists. His mother, Margaret MacRae, cooked their oatmeal porridge and potatoes over an open peat fire in their cottage and kept the sooted walls clean with whitewash.
“Sandy,” as Alexander was called, was taught to read and write English by the village dominie and read the Bible to his parents on Sunday, thereby teaching English to them in a home where only Gaelic had been spoken. Sometime in his youth he had a year of studies at the University of Glasgow. At the age of 17, he went to pork at Perth as a ship’s carpenter. In this capacity he sailed with ships on many voyages. On these trips was David Ireland, a companion worker, through whom he met the Graham family of which Elizabeth (Betsy) was the fifth of ten girls and who later became his wife.
ON his way to his home in Kintail after a seven months’ sea voyage, he passed through Perth, and was handed a pamphlet which he put in his pocket without reading. Later in Kintail he handed the pamphlet to his father as he entered the door and hastened to greet his mother. A moment later he was surprised by a whack across his shoulders. “Take that and that for bringing Mormon literature into the home,” roared his father who continued beating Sandy with his walking cane until he was driven from home. Back in Perth he took passage on a ship leaving for a three years’ voyage that took him to many parts of the world, including America. But he kept alert to find out all he could about the Mormons. On his last trip to America he heard of Joseph Smith’s death and the breaking up of Nauvoo.
He was 21 when he arrived back to Scotland, and legally a man on his own. By this time he was determined to find out all he could about the Mormons. Upon arriving at Perth he discussed religion with Betsy Graham, his sweetheart, and finding that she was also dissatisfied with her religion, they both joined the Mormon Church in 1847. They were the first two persons baptized into the Church in the city of Perth. Alexander advanced rapidly in his knowledge of the Gospel and was soon called o be a missionary in the Highlands of Scotland, working in Inverness. He was called to be head of the London Conference, headquartered in Liverpool.
He and Betsy were married May 20, 1851. When they emigrated to America in 1854, they took his reconciled father, now a widower, Betsy’s mother and sister and sailed on the steamship John Wood landing in New Orleans in Ma of that same year. After traveling up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and being delayed twice because of cholera, they were ready to join with a company of Saints and outfit themselves to cross the plains. He had to break a couple of steers to pull the ox cart, which was entirely new work for Sandy. Before leaving they knelt as a family to thank their God for protection on the high seas, for miraculous preservation of their lives in the midst of sickness and death, and that they were finally on their way to “Zion.”
When they arrived in Salt Lake City they were met by a welcoming committee consisting on the main of the people they had entertained in the conference in Liverpool. Alexander Finlay Macdonald, Jr., was born February 12, 1855, in Salt Lake City, the first of 11 sons (no daughters) to be born to this union. For the next 25 years, Salt Lake City Provo, Springville and St. George, Utah, were Macdonald homes. While in Springville, they studied the principle of plural marriage, and in spite of growing negative reactions, he married Sarah Johnson, who died in 1860, bearing him no children. While living in Springville, he was also married to Agnes Aird and Elizabeth Atkinson in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City on October 22, 1864, and in 1870, to Fannie Van Cott. In Springville, he built a large home for his families, was arrested for polygamy by federal officers and spent six months in jail. He served as mayor of Springville, was Counselor to Bishop Aaron Johnson, and was one of the Seven Presidents of the 51st Quorum of Seventy. When he finished his jail term, he was called to Provo to take charge of the tithing and help finish the meeting house.
In the early 1870s he was called to St, George to help with carpenter work on the temple, and to manage the Erastus Snow mansion, a sort of boarding hose for the out-of-town temple builders. During the erection of the temple, some 80 men were accommodated daily at the Snow mansion. Sandy invested in in farm land nearby Middleton, and his sons and father built homes there.
When the St. George Temple was finished he was called on a mission to Scotland. He took two of his older sons, Alex Jr., and Aaron, with him, leaving the responsibility of the farm to his wives and younger sons. On his return from his mission, he was in charge of 170 emigrating Saints sailing aboard the steamship Wyoming. This tired company arrived in Salt Lake City June 11, 1879. In the fall of the year another call came from Church Authorities to preside over the Saints in the fast growing frontier of Arizona. In February, 1880, the Maricopa Stake was organized with Alexander F. Macdonald the first President.
By 1883, Mesa had increased in population until it warranted being made into a city, and when it was incorporated as the city of Mesa, and ecclesiastical affairs in hand, than U.S. Marshals arrived with indictments for the arrest of every man having more wives than one. To avoid arrest and a fine, the leaders of the Church sent him to Mexico to find suitable colonization lands there as a haven for plural families.
He made three trips in to northern Sonora, the third of these in November and December of 1884, with a group headed by Apostles Brigham Young, Jr., and Heber J. Grant. There were 24 persons in this party, one other Stake President besides himself, and representatives from all of the frontier towns in Arizona. They went as far south as the mouth of the Yaqui River, made friends with the Yaquis, and were invited to settle on some of their lands. Because the Yaquis were at that time at war with the government of Mexico, the Mormons were accused by the press of collaborating with the Yaquis against Mexico. Colonization there at that time had to be abandoned. Copies of the Book of Mormon, however, were later sent to the Yaquis through missionaries and some Yaquis were baptized. At a conference in St. David, Arizona, later, because of if the illness of Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., Alexander Macdonald was appointed to take his place. There he met with Apostle Moses Thatcher who notified the Saints of the failure to find suitable lands in Sonora, and that explorations would continue in Chihuahua with Alexander F. Macdonald in charge. He promised that a place would be prepared for them.
In compliance with this call and with the assurance he would find the needed land as Apostle Thatcher had predicted, he left St. David January 1, 1885, to begin explorations in northern Chihuahua. With him went Christopher Layton, President of the St. Joseph stake, and John Campbell, as interpreter. W. Derby Johnson, Jr., took them by team to the nearest depot on the Southern Pacific Railroad, where they entrained for El Paso, Texas. The next day was spent with landowners and speculators in Ciudad Juarez looking at maps and locating desirable places. They left at night on the Mexican Central Railway and went as far as San Jose station, what is now probably called Gallegos. There they sought help from Dr. Samaniego, a lawyer of reviewed and practicing physician, from whom they gained valuable help. Not only did he advise them on land purchase procedures in Mexico, but told them where good land purchases might be found and gave them an insight into Mexican an Indian nature. They drove away the next morning in Samaniego’s carriage. In it they traveled through the Santa Maria Valley, the Corralitos holdings, and decided on purchasing Señor Garcia’s claim in the Janos area. This was but six miles from La Asencion, the official port of entry and near the international boundary, a location Church leaders had specified. When they reached La Ascension again after their four weeks’ journey, they were surprised to find a camp already set up and William C. McClellan impatiently waiting to be directed to “the place.”
They hastened on to St. David to report the result of the exploration, then Macdonald returned to the site March 1, with Apostle Moses Thatcher. The latter, after looking over the location, advised immediate purchase. Taking locksmith with him, Macdonald went to Ciudad Juarez to complete the negotiations with Señor Garcia. After three weeks of negotiating the deal could not be consummated. Undismayed, McDonald said Lot Smith back with the disappointing news and he himself went on to investigate other prospects. On the heels of this discouragement came an order for leaving the country within 15 days. Macdonald guessed the reason for leaving this: immigrants flocking into the country and making camps along the Casas Grandes River without declaring their intentions, was too much like the stampede that settled Texas earlier in the century include result again in loss of territory to Mexico. Fast, skillful thought and action by Macdonald and George Teasdale, President of the Mexico Mission, were required. Personal interviews in both Chihuahua City and Mexico City brought results, but not until the last day of the time granted for departure.
Patients and negotiating skills were finally rewarded with the purchase of 200,000 acres of land in the valleys near Casas Grandes and in the mountains to the northwest. “Colonia Diaz” for Porfirio Diaz, “Colonia Juarez” for Benito Juarez, and “Colonia Pacheco” honoring their benefactor, the Governor of Chihuahua, were established and titles to the lands secured.
McDonald shows three lots on the main street of Colonia Juarez and after liquidating his property in Mesa, Arizona built comfortable homes on two of them for his wives Agnes and Fannie. He sold the third lot to John C. Harper with the proviso that he build a hotel on it.
He was appointed First Counselor to George Teasdale and served as President of the Mexican Agricultural and Colonization Company. When the Mission was organized into a Stake, with Anthony W. Ivins as President, Macdonald was released from leadership in ordained a Patriarch. In 1894 he sold one home in Colonia Juarez and moved Agnes into a comfortable log cabin in Colonia Garcia. He was now 71 and continued actively giving blessings as he traveled from colony to colony, sealing for time and eternity couples who are unable to make the long journey to a Mormon Temple.
In February, 1898, while he was away, a trusted Mexican worker murdered, then robbed Agnes who operated the post office and a little store. His wife Lizzie came from Arizona to take Agnes’s his place. McDonald continued to travel in his buckboard drawn by sturdy mules over rough mountain roads doing his part in the colonies until his death on March 21, 1903. He was survived by three wives, Betsy, Lizzie, and Fannie, and 13 of his 26 children. A numerous posterity it carries on the Alexander F. McDonald heritage.
Nelle Spilsbury Hatch
Stalwarts South of the Border page 445
Just curious, who wrote this? Taylor Macdonald?
Nelle Spilsbury Hatch wrote the Alexander Finlay Macdonald bio.
No. I did not write it. It was written by Nelle Spilsbury Hatch. She was a beloved, well-meaning friend of the A.F. Macdonald family, but this article is full of errors. ~Taylor Macdonald
Taylor, Please share the inaccuracies with us.
Alexander F. Macdonald
Man of Three Nations
by Taylor Macdonald
Alexander Findlay Macdonald lived nearly 78 years in three countries, approximately one-third of his life span respectively in Scotland and England (United Kingdom), the United States, and Mexico. He was one of thousands of Scots who left their homeland in the 1800s to settle far-flung lands around the globe. He was different from most of his countrymen in that religion, not economics, was the motive for his emigration.
Scottish Highland Heritage
He was born on September 15, 1825 in the Scottish hamlet of Camas-Luinie (spelled Camusluinie in older records and pronounced “commus-lynee”) located in one of the remotest spots of the Highlands. Camas-Luinie lies in the northern district of Glenelchaig in the parish of Kintail in the western portion of Ross-shire, near the west coast of Scotland where the Isle of Skye comes within a mile of the mainland.
Kintail was (and still is) populated largely by Macraes, and was the ancestral homeland of this clan. Three of Alexander Macdonald’s four grandparents were Macraes, and his Macrae ancestors had lived in Kintail and surrounding regions since the 1400s. His Macdonald ancestors came to Kintail in the mid-1700s, probably from the Lochaber district in Inverness-shire some 30 or 40 miles to the southeast.
His people were poor, and although he descended from some distinguished lines, both locally and nationally, his immediate ancestors and family members were farmers, tailors, and illegal whisky distillers. His father was Duncan Macdonald, born in the Kintail hamlet of Carr, located on a hillside overlooking the ancient and storied Eilean Donan Castle, one of the most photographed castles in Scotland. (Alexander’s Macrae ancestors lived and ruled in Eilean Donan Castle.) About 1820, an epidemic in Carr caused most of its inhabitants to evacuate the village, and Duncan went with his older brother Farquhar over the mountain to Camas-Luinie, a village of Macraes, where they both married Macrae brides. Duncan married Margaret Macrae sometime in the early 1820s, and their first child Alexander Findlay was born there, followed two years later by a daughter Isabella.
Move to Perth
Duncan and Margaret Macdonald were desperately poor, and their ancestral Highland home offered no hope of improvement. So in 1829, the couple with their two small children moved to the Scottish city of Perth, about 35 miles north of the capital of Edinburgh. Relatives had preceded them and probably helped them get settled. Duncan found work operating a beetling mill (part of Scotland’s textile industry) at Ruthven Mill two miles outside of Perth. The family made their home in the mill itself, and there in 1831 Margaret gave birth to twin daughters, Ann and Margaret, who both died soon after birth.
The Macdonald family later moved to the center of Perth living in a narrow alley named Cutlog Vennel where Alexander and Isabella grew up. Duncan and Margaret apparently had ambitions for their dark-haired son, and saw that he received a good education at King James VI Hospital School. The city dwellers of lowland Scotland looked down on the Highlanders flocking to the cities, and considered them uncivilized bumpkins. Alexander grew very tall and strong, and he and his father spent many hours punching and tussling so Alexander could learn to defend himself against those who thought themselves his betters.
After finishing his schooling, Alexander received training as a ship’s carpenter and worked in the ship building industry in Perth. Though not as large as the Glasgow shipyards, Perth’s location on the River Tay with easy access to the North Sea, created a thriving ship industry. Alexander sailed on the maiden voyages of new vessels, making repairs and adjustments as needed. Some time in this era, he attended the University of Edinburgh, although he did not receive a degree. This was a remarkable achievement for someone from his lowly station in the class structure of British society. Alexander’s education would serve him well throughout his life.
Life Changing Decision
The defining experience of Alexander F. Macdonald’s life was his meeting missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons. In November of 1846, Alexander and his ship mate David Ireland were paying court to two sisters, daughters of John and Christina Graham of Perth, and John Graham had invited the missionaries to his home on one of the evenings Alexander was visiting. Although not known to be a religious seeker before this time, Alexander was struck by the missionary’s message of a modern prophet in America who had visions and translated scriptures from golden plates engraved by ancient prophets in pre-Columbian America and buried for centuries.
He wrote later that he was immediately convinced of the truth of the missionary’s words, and sought to join the church through baptism. Although 21 and legally an adult, Alexander’s father Duncan fiercely opposed his son’s desires, and the missionaries advised him to wait. Always impatient and man of action, Alexander waited as long as he could and finally insisted on baptism in the River Tay on January 2, 1847. The missionaries asked him how his father would respond, and Alexander replied he would surely receive a beating. Alarmed, the missionaries cautioned him to not to strike his father no matter what happened.
A somber Alexander trudged through the streets of Perth, soaking wet from his baptism, entered the family home, and announced what he had done. His outraged father began raining blows on him, and since his six-foot-four-inch son did not return his punches, Duncan thought he was going too light. So he increased the strength and intensity of his blows, and still Alexander stood impassive, his arms hanging to his sides. Duncan finally stopped only because he was too exhausted to continue, and muttered angrily, “I hope that’s enough.”
It was indeed enough, for although Alexander had not struck his father, his anger had mounted mightily during the barrage. He left the house that night and immediately left on a voyage to the Maritime provinces of Canada where he sought out Mormons in Newcastle, New Brunswick. By the time he returned, tempers of both father and son had cooled, and Alexander became active in the local branch of the LDS Church in Perth. To his delight, Elizabeth Graham, the young woman he had been courting and in whose home he had met the missionaries, had also joined the LDS Church, although her father had expelled her from their home and she had gone to Edinburgh to live with a Mormon family.
In 1850, Alexander was called on a full-time mission and set out on a preaching tour through the cities of eastern Scotland. During one of his visits to Perth, he and Elizabeth Graham (by then back in her family’s home) became engaged, and a while later they were married. (Elizabeth’s compelling personal story is told elsewhere on this web site.) During this period, Duncan Macdonald, and Alexander’s sister Isabella joined the Church, as did most of Elizabeth Graham’s family.
Mission authorities transferred Alexander and Elizabeth to Liverpool, England, the headquarters of the British Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where Alexander’s abilities were recognized and his missionary duties increased when he was called to be president of the Liverpool Conference…
Immigration to America and Utah
In early 1854, Alexander, age 28, and Elizabeth Macdonald left Liverpool in a company of several hundred other European Mormons and sailed to the United States, arriving at the port of New Orleans and took a river steamboat up the Mississippi River to a staging area in Kansas. There they joined a wagon train and arrived in Salt Lake City on October 1, 1854. Alexander’s father Duncan Macdonald accompanied them as did Elizabeth’s mother and sister. (Margaret Macrae Macdonald had died in Glasgow in 1853, and John Graham had died earlier in Perth. Margaret Macdonald never joined the LDS Church.)
They rented rooms to live in, and Alexander immediately joined the religious and intellectual life of the city. He had already met many of the leaders and members of the Church in Scotland and England and was by no means a stranger. Along with others, he helped organize the Universal Scientific Society with the goal of holding educational, intellectual, and fine arts events.
During the first several years of their marriage, Elizabeth had suffered repeated miscarriages, and in England she had begun to despair of ever having children. However, she received a Priesthood blessing in Liverpool promising her children. In February of 1855, four months after their arrival in America, Elizabeth gave birth to a son, Alexander Findlay Macdonald, Jr. He was the first of eleven sons Elizabeth would eventually bear.
Springville, Utah
Soon after arriving in Utah, Alexander obtained employment in Springville, Utah, about 60 miles south of Salt Lake City. After the baby’s birth, the family moved there, and the family made their home there for six or seven years. Alexander’s abilities propelled him to positions of prominence, and he was elected mayor of the town and chosen a Counselor to Bishop Aaron Johnson.
The family built a home, Duncan married the widow Ann Leslie Thompson, also a Scottish immigrant, and the family appeared to settle into a peaceful pioneer existence. Alexander started a Springville branch of the Universal Scientific Society and gave lectures on history, current events, and the Indians. He also produced and acted in plays.
Clash with a Federal Army
However, this quiet life did not continue. Rumors had circulated in the East that the Mormons were a subversive lot, dominated by a sinister cabal of leaders headed by Brigham Young. An army was dispatched to Utah to put down the alleged Mormon rebellion, and Utah was thrown into turmoil. By 1858, Johnston’s Army had arrived and established Camp Floyd west of Utah Lake. In 1859, a federal judge opened court in the county seat at Provo, and Alexander Macdonald was called in to serve on a grand jury. However, that was just a ruse to deceive him, and as soon as he arrived at the court he was arrested along with a few other men. All those involved knew there was nothing to charge him with, and that the authorities merely wanted to intimidate him into implicating Brigham Young, their real goal, in several crimes. However, the federal authorities picked the wrong man in A. F. Macdonald. Although they kept him under armed guards 24 hours a day, most of the time with a cocked pistol held against his temple, Alexander resisted their efforts to lie or betray his leader. He knew that Brigham Young was not guilty of any crime other than espousing and leading an unusual and unpopular religion. Still they kept A. F. Macdonald imprisoned, and finally after a month, fearing the incensed citizenry of Utah Valley would rescue Macdonald by force, the authorities decided to transfer him to Camp Floyd. They tied him straddled to a cannon and hauled him for several days to the army headquarters. Army diarist Albert Tracy records:
Of our convoy of prisoners, one McDonald, stood not less than six feet three, and towered above the guard like a giant. . . . He strode with an air of martyr-like defiance, and seemed to be high in favor with the lookers on. The remaining prisoners were downcast, or, perhaps, dogged of manner, and seemed less confident.
Clearly, Alexander was not threatened although he was treated cruelly by his 7th Regiment captors. Thomas Ackley, another military officer recorded in his journal how Alexander Macdonald, sleeping in the guard house hall, exhausted after the long march from Provo, was nearly murdered by an imprisoned soldier. Walking into the room with his ball and chain, “One of these fellows let his iron ball drop, . . . intending for it to strike the Mormon in the head, and would have killed him had it not been that he threw up his arm to save himself, but broke his arm.” (The diarist later identifies the injured man as Alexander Macdonald who was denied medical treatment for his broken arm.)
Ackley later expressed amusement at observing Macdonald and other prisoners working “. . . with large sacks of sand tied to them, others with large logs of wood strapped to their backs for punishment. . . . .”
Later Alexander was confined to small adobe room, barely large enough for him to stand, and with only a small pile of straw as bathroom facilities. A frantic Elizabeth tried to visit him and bring him bedding and food, but she was turned away. One of the officers had Macdonald brought to his quarters at night to secretly teach him the doctrines of Mormonism. Alexander later told his wife that the young captain believed the teachings but feared that joining the church would jeopardize his military career. Eventually the Army was embarrassed into releasing A.F. Macdonald and he returned to his wife and sons in Springville.
It was in Springville that Alexander and Elizabeth Macdonald entered the practice of plural marriage, when Alexander married Sarah Johnson, a beautiful and refined Englishwoman. Later her relatives forcibly took her away to Nevada and forced her into a relationship there. She died young after giving birth to two children who also died.
Move to Provo, Utah
Church leaders had taken notice of the young Scottish convert, and Brigham Young called Alexander to move to Provo in the early 1860s to manage the Church’s tithing office there. (This set the pattern for the remainder of Alexander’s life in which calls from his leaders directed all his activities.) Paid largely in kind, the Latter-day Saints’ tithing came in the form of potatoes, grain, butter, milk, eggs, hay, cattle, horses, and other goods. Storing, preserving, and distributing these goods was no small task and Alexander proved himself an able manager. The Saints of Provo had been working on building a tabernacle for over a decade, but the project languished and an impatient Brigham assigned Alexander Macdonald to take charge of completing the building which was soon finished and dedicated. Alexander spoke often in the new meetinghouse. He was also elected a city alderman.
In 1864 Alexander married two more wives, both Scottish–Agnes Aird and Elizabeth Atkinson–and in 1870 he married for the last time to Fannie Van Cott, daughter of LDS general authority John Van Cott and cousin of Apostles Parley P. Pratt and Orson Pratt. Alexander’s first daughter, his ninth child, was born to Elizabeth Atkinson in 1865. She was named Margaret after her two grandmothers, and was nicknamed Maggie all her life.
In 1870, U.S. soldiers stationed west of Provo, raided the Macdonald home and vandalized it because he would not sell them alcohol he carried in his store on Center Street. Alexander stocked the liquor for medical treatment, and knew the soldiers were buying it for recreational purposes. The soldiers found liquor elsewhere and, drunk, decided to take revenge on Macdonald, who was absent from the home. They terrorized his wives and children and sacked the entire lower floor, breaking out all doors and windows and scattering bedding, dishes, and furniture in the street. The so-called “Provo Raid” enraged the citizens and embarrassed the military authorities. Alexander accepted their apologies and reparations.
Four of Elizabeth Graham Macdonald’s younger sons died in Provo and were buried in the Provo Cemetery where Alexander placed a large obelisk to mark their graves. Elizabeth’s eleventh and youngest son died in Nephi, Utah, while the family was traveling to St. George, and he was also buried in the family plot in Provo. Agnes Aird Macdonald and Elizabeth Atkinson Macdonald both gave birth to daughters who died as infants in Provo. By 1872, Alexander Macdonald had fathered 18 children. By the time the family was finally settled in St. George in 1872, eleven healthy children filled the Macdonald households.
Call to St. George
In the early 1870s, Brigham Young called Alexander Macdonald to take charge of the tithing office in St. George in far southwest Utah. Construction had just begun on a large temple there, and most of the Church’s tithes were flowing there to support this huge building effort. Alexander moved his large family to St. George in stages, and bought homes and property in Middleton, Utah, next to St. George.
In Utah’s Dixie, Alexander Macdonald’s was called to the stake presidency and was elected mayor of the city. He, his wives, and his older sons worked vigorously to build the temple and to improve their own personal situations, and Alexander was involved in many civic and commercial projects. However, Alexander retained his property in Provo and told Brigham Young he wished to return there to live when the temple was completed. Brigham agreed.
The Macdonald family prospered in St. George, and his older sons grew to young manhood. His aged father Duncan who had loved his son and followed him to America, died in St. George on September 12, 1876. His widow Ann Leslie Thompson Macdonald moved back to Springville to her children. In St. George six more children were born, four of whom died there as infants or toddlers. (The author’s grandfather, Byron Van Cott Macdonald, was born September 14, 1877, three months after Alexander F. Macdonald left for his mission in Scotland.)
Alexander probably anticipated the completion of the St. George in early 1877 so he could move back to Provo. But Brigham Young had other plans in mind, and during the dedication services of Temple, the Church president announced from the pulpit that A.F. Macdonald and two of his sons were called to Scotland on a mission. The family took the news in stride, and the wives set about to support themselves and the missionaries. All were enured to hard work, and no end to it was in sight.
Alexander did not forget the purpose of the temple, however, and performed some of the first ordinances there, including some of first vicarious endowments for the deceased in this dispensation.
Mission to Scotland
In 1877, A. F. Macdonald left with his sons Alec (Alexander F., Jr.) and Aaron for Scotland, traveling eastward by train, an improvement over the ox-drawn wagon Alexander had driven 23 years earlier.
In Scotland, Alexander was made president of the Glasgow Conference,, and he attacked his work vigorously as he did every task. In later years, Andrew Duthie, a Scottish convert of that era who had settled with the Macdonalds in the Mexican colonies, commented that when Alexander and his two stalwart sons arrived, the Scottish saints were somewhat awe-struck by the towering threesome. “They looked like the gods!” he told Colonia Juarez resident W. Ernest Young.
Alec paid a visit to his father’s home area of Kintail and became acquainted with relatives there. Alexander himself spent several weeks there in August 1877, visiting and recording invaluable genealogical data of hundreds of names and families of his relatives, data that formed the foundation of subsequent family genealogical research.
Aaron Macdonald’s journals paint a vivid picture of their missionary experiences in Scotland, including visits to their Aird, Graham, Macdonald, and Macrae relations.
Bound for Arizona
Alec McDonald (A.F.’s eldest son preferred this spelling of his surname) returned from the mission after a year, and Alexander and Aaron returned the summer of 1879. They planned their return to Provo when they got back to Utah. However, Brigham Young had died while they were away, and senior Apostle John Taylor now led the Church. Not long after Alexander reported his mission to President Taylor, he was surprised to learn that he, Alexander, was called to go to Arizona to assume leadership of the settlement there known as the Salt River Mission, present day Mesa, a few miles east of Phoenix.
Ever obedient, Alexander took his families and began the move to Arizona. They arrived in December 1879 to find to colony with an array of problems among themselves and with the local Indians. Within hours of arriving in Mesa, several Indian chiefs visited the new Mormon leader with complaints which Alexander later learned had merit.
As always, he plunged in to solve the problems and carry out the myriad activities required to develop raw land into a productive settlement and a rough frontier culture into some semblance of spiritual and cultural refinement. As he had done in Springville, Provo, and St. George, A.F. Macdonald set about surveying roads, canals, and ditches, and overseeing their building. He built many buildings–houses, schools, churches, stores, barns–and, when the city was incorporated he was elected mayor. In addition, when a formal stake was organized, he was appointed stake president.
Only one child was born in Mesa, Lucy Lavinia, to his wife Fannie Van Cott. Tragedy struck again however, when in 1883 an epidemic of small pox swept through the Mormon settlement and killed Alexander and Fannie’s son John V. Macdonald, age 11. The next summer, 24-year-old Aaron J. Macdonald, perhaps one of A.F.’s most promising children, died also, leaving a young widow and infant son. Alexander and his wives pressed on in their duties.
Mexico–The Final Phase
As part of A.F. Macdonald’s leadership responsibilities after arriving in Arizona, he was instructed by the Church leaders to begin explorations for Mormon colony sites in northern Mexico. Brigham Young had always looked to the far north (Canada) and the far south (Mexico) as logical and natural extensions of Mormon settlement. Alexander traveled often to Sonora and Chihuahua, the bordering Mexican states with exploring expeditions.
It was not until 1884 that settlement in Mexico became urgent, however. The United States government had become progressively more determined to eradicate Mormon polygamy, and the federal marshals in Arizona were particularly diligent. A.F. Macdonald and other LDS leaders spent much of their time in federal custody or hiding to avoid arrest. They felt their marriage practices were their religious prerogatives and deemed federal opposition to be religious persecution. God had commanded them to practice plural marriage, and they felt it their duty to oppose the government. Church efforts to maintain the legality of plural marriage had preoccupied the leaders during the preceding decades.
Colonia Juarez
In January 1885, A.F. Macdonald left Mesa, by Church assignment, to find a place in Mexico to settle the hundreds of Mormons refugees fleeing the polygamy prosecutions. He and others found tracts of land, and over the next several years, nine towns were founded in Chihuahua and Sonora. Alexander settled in Colonia Juarez at first, and in the early 1890s, he also built a home in Colonia Garcia, some 35 miles away up in the Sierra Madre Mountains.
Ecclesiastical and Temporal Affairs Leadership
The colonization had two organizations, ecclesiastical and economic. The church organization, officially the Mexican Mission, was headed by Elder George Teasdale, one of the Twelve Apostles, with Alexander F. Macdonald as First Counselor, and Henry Eyring as Second Counselor. The economic organization was called the Mexican Colonization and Agricultural Company, headed by John Henry Smith, one of the Apostles in Utah. A.F. Macdonald was named General Manager, and was the director of land matters in Mexico.
His responsibilities required that he travel often to Utah and Mexico City, and other places. With prolonged absences, his wives and families carried on their homes without him, yet when he did make an appearance in one of his homes, he naturally assumed the role of husband and father, in short, the patriarch. This created tensions because the families were used to operating without him, and it sometimes resulted in strained family relationships. Of course, by this time, most of his children from Elizabeth, Agnes, and Lizzie were grown or nearly so, and were scattered throughout Utah and Arizona. His wife Fannie, however, was much younger, and was still bearing children. In fact, she had A.F.’s last child, Flora Hermosa, in Mexico in 1888.
Stilling longing to live in Provo, Utah, Alexander felt he had sacrificed all his personal desires to answer the call of those he believed to be true prophets and apostles of Jesus Christ. He was not merely colonizing the great American West, a grand enough concept in itself, rather he was building the very Kingdom of God on the earth as he felt The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be.
He was deeply wounded, therefore, to learn that some of his fellow colonists in Mexico had sent a letter to Church leaders in Salt Lake City complaining about his work in Mexico regarding land distribution and other issues. They went so far as to request he be removed from office. Three apostles (Brigham Young, Jr., John Henry Smith, and Francis M. Lyman) were sent to investigate the matter, and all three reported that Macdonald had made difficult decisions, but, in their estimation, he had made the right decisions.
Colonia Garcia
Macdonald was vindicated. But he was also offended, and partly because of that and partly because Colonia Garcia needed settlers, he moved there. It was a remote settlement up in a mountain valley, and he built a simple log cabin to live in. He was still living in that cabin when he died in 1903. One wonders if he every contemplated the irony of his life–he had the skills to acquire wealth which he had demonstrated over and over. In Provo, St. George, and Mesa he still owned beautiful homes, farms, orchards, stores, and other holdings where he could live in comfort and security. Yet he felt he was living for a higher cause, and when his son Wallace wrote him that he was now old and could move back to Mesa and live comfortably, Alexander fairly thundered his response that he was doing as he had been called to do by his Priesthood leaders, and he was not ready or willing to retire.
He continued through the last decade of the nineteenth century to buy new tracts of lands for future Mormon settlements. He traveled often to Utah and Arizona on Church business. He attended the dedication of the great Salt Lake temple in April 1893, and was part of a sacred prayer circle with the Church’s First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and other general authorities and invited leaders. He engaged in a prodigious amount of temple work for his ancestors and relatives, and is considered one of the great early genealogists of the Church when little or no Church assistance was available in gathering names and conducting genealogical research.
Death of Agnes Macdonald
On February 23, 1898, while Alexander was away on a conference trip, a trusted employee burglarized his home in Colonia Garcia and murdered his wife Agnes Aird, age 59. He was shocked and returned immediately. Agnes’s son James was living in Garcia, and her other two sons, Wallace and George, came from Arizona to hunt down her killer. They were warned by an Apostle to give up their search or they would lose their lives. Much folklore arose over the death of Agnes Macdonald, but the facts have been carefully researched and are now largely known. The final fate of her murderer, Teófilo Parra, is however still unclear. With Agnes’s deaths, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Atkinson Macdonald left her home near Mesa, Arizona, and went to Garcia to be with her husband. She also cared for the four children of her daughter Elizabeth when she died in 1902.
In 1895, LDS Church authorities organized the Mexican Mission into the Juarez Stake. Anthony W. Ivins, an able man from St. George, was called to be president, with Henry Eyring and Helaman Pratt as counselors. Alexander F. Macdonald, then over 70 years of age, was ordained a Patriarch and also called as president of the High Priests Quorum, fitting duties indeed for a proven and seasoned veteran. He continued on the board of directors of the Mexican Colonization and Agricultural Company, and made frequent trips to Utah for meetings and temple work. He also traveled about the colonies in Mexico giving patriarchal blessings.
Old Age and Ill Health
Lizzie continued to live in Colonia Garcia while Fannie maintained a home in Colonia Juarez. Through the 1890s, Alexander’s health began to decline. He suffered from Bright’s Disease, a term that includes dozens of kidney and urinary tract illnesses today. In the late winter and early spring of 1903, his condition worsened, and he went to El Paso, Texas, seeking better medical help. The doctors told him there was nothing they could do, that they could only put him in the hospital to await death. He decided he would go home to die, and got on the train with Lizzie. By the time they got to the station in Nuevo Casas Grandes, the main train station used by the Mormon colonists, Alexander was nearly comatose. Lizzie helped him off the train and kind strangers helped get him to the home of the Elldredge family, Americans living in the area. They put him to bed, and after recovering partial consciousness for a few moments, the venerable old Scotsman died. It was March 21, 1903.
Lizzie immediately contacted Church authorities in Colonia Dublan, the Mormon town only two miles away. They came and took the remains to Dublan where they dressed him appropriately and held the funeral. He was buried in the Dublan Cemetery, although he never lived there. He had expressed his desire to be taken to Provo for burial, so the Young brothers who dug his grave, bricked the sides so the casket could be retrieved later. His body was never taken to Provo and remains to this day in Dublan Cemetery.
After Alexander’s Death
Elizabeth Graham lived for another fourteen years and died in St. George on July 11, 1917. She was buried n the family plot in Provo. Six of her Eleven sons grew to adulthood, but all save one died before she did.
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Atkinson stayed in the log cabin home in Colonia Garcia with her four grandchildren until the Exodus of 1912 when she went to Lehi, Arizona, where she died ten years later on February 4, 1922. She was buried in Mesa City Cemetery. She had four daughters, two of whom died as infants, and one who died as a young mother of four.
Fannie Van Cott stayed in her home in Colonia Juarez where she raised her three surviving children of the five she bore. In her later years she moved in with her daughter Lucy Macdonald Bluth in Colonia Dublan, where she died on December 21, 1930, and was buried near her husband in the Dublan Cemetery.
Alexander F. Macdonald was the father of 26 children, 14 of whom grew to adulthood. Two of the 14 (Heber and George) had children but no grandchildren, so their lines have died out. The posterity of the twelve other children is estimated to number thousands of people today.
Where are all the descendants today? I was named after Elizabeth Graham and am her great great granddaughter. I grew up in Colorado, but moved to Mesa Az several years ago, but have yet to need any actual descendants.
I meant to say meet, but my phone changed it to need. Sorry. It would be nice to meet other descendants. My missionary son was given Alexander as his middle name.
Hello Ryan! Please disregard my previous comments on your blog as I finally found this after more googling. For some reason he isn’t on your index so I couldn’t find anything. Anyway, I appreciate your efforts. I am curious though as to what the errors are in Nellies story? I see that Taylor copied his bio in the comments, but I would love for him to list the errors and write the truth next to them according to him. I know he has put endless hours into AF’s history. Thanks again.
I recently started looking into my family tree. I have discovered Alexander is my great great great grandfather. For myself, there will be no doubt, many versions of his story told. It would be difficult not to, based on the number of people he interacted with. The stories and events span across three countries. I don’t think they’ll ever be one version that everyone can agree upon. For myself, I find all of it extremely fascinating. I am thankful for any and all information about my family. I believe it is up to us as individuals to decide how portions of the story relate to us and our individual families now. All of this has a different meaning to each and everyone of us and for me! It has answered so much about my thinking! my tall son! & this spark of fire I get! as I fight for equality and fairness amongst humans in my own quiet ways. I understand so much now and for that, I thank everyone for sharing about our family.