San
Joaquin County
Biographies
WILLIAM LESLIE McDONALD
Among the prosperous and
enterprising ranchers of the Woodbridge section of San Joaquin County is
William Leslie McDonald, who has made his home in California since 1872, coming
from his native country of Canada. He
was born at West Lake, Ontario, Canada, June 22, 1854, a son of Amos and Almira (White) McDonald.
The father was of Scotch descent, and the mother was from an old New
England family. The McDonald side of the
house can be traced back 400 years to the Macdonald clan of Scotland. There were nine children in the family: Daniel, deceased; Gilbert resides at San
Martin, California; Minard, deceased; Mary, Mrs.
Blankenship of Richmond, California; Celestia,
deceased; William L.; Euphimia Miller, and Perry and
Ella, deceased. The father lived to be
seventy-three years old, while the mother passed away at the age of fifty-nine
years. When William Leslie took out his
citizenship papers, his name was written McDonald by the officer making his
application and he retained that spelling instead of MacDonald.
William Leslie acquired a public
school education in Canada and when almost eighteen years old came to the
United States and direct to California, arriving May 8, 1872, settling at
Novato, Marin County, California, where he remained eight months; then he
removed to Sierra County where he spent almost four years in the mines; a great
part of the time was at the Great North American Mine, then Oak Ranch and Ball
Mountain mines. Mr. McDonald took out
his first citizenship papers at Downieville, California,
and completed his American citizenship at San Rafael, California. In 1877 he gave up mining and returned to
Novato, California, where he rented a portion of Senator Long’s ranch, known as
the Black Point Farm where he ran a dairy of 125 cows for seven years; then
when the Long ranch was sold he removed to Oakland and engaged in the retail
milk business for a year and a half, then sold out and settled in San Joaquin
County. Mr. McDonald first purchased ten
acres of the Thomas Pope ranch on the Thornton Road, then
later bought eighteen acres of the same tract.
This land was pasture and stubble and Mr. McDonald set twenty-one acres
to Zinfandel grapes and he also has a small orchard and some alfalfa; he has
also improved the place with good farm buildings.
On December 25, 1880, at Petaluma,
California, Mr. McDonald was married to Miss Alice Hayden, a native of Plover,
Wisconsin, and a daughter of Amaziah and Amanda
(Young) Hayden, both natives of Corinna, Maine. Her father was a sawmill man by trade and
moved from Maine to Wisconsin in the frontier days of that state. In 1864 he brought his family over the plains
with an ox-team during the time of the Sioux uprising, and in six months to a
day he settled in Marin County. Here Alice
Hayden received her education in the public schools. Later she moved to San Joaquin County where
both parents passed away, the father being ninety-eight and the mother
eighty-six years old. Mr. and Mrs.
McDonald have one son, Scott McDonald, born in Novato but educated in the
schools of Stockton, who married Miss Clara Woods, a twin sister of Clarence L.
Woods, who is also represented in this history; they have two children,
Clarence Leslie and Alice Arline. Scott McDonald has charge of and operates the
home place. In politics Mr. McDonald is
a Republican and fraternally is a member of Charter Oak Lodge of Stockton and
the Knights of Pythias and Mrs. McDonald is a member
of the Pythian Sisters, and in their lives they
exemplify the beneficent spirit of these fraternities, which are based upon
kindliness and brotherly helpfulness.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1526. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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