John Wellington MacDonald was born near the city of Kingston, Western Canada, January 18, 1844.  His father, James I., was a native of New York, and his mother, Sarah McGuin, a native of Pennsylvania.  James, being a millwright, when a young man made several trips into Canada, where he put up a number of flour and saw mills.   He married and located in Portland, Canada, where he lived for thirty-five or forty years, when his oldest son, Duncan S. MacDonald, took charge of the home place, and he removed to Fredericksburg, where he died in 1882, aged seventy-one years.  His wife died on the home place in 1856.  They reared a family of eight children, four sons and four daughters, of whom three sons and three daughters are now living.  John W. lived with his father until he was seventeen years of age, when he made his home with his uncle at Collins Bay, near Kingston.  For two years and a half he worked in several different kinds of mills owned by his uncle.  Upon leaving his uncle he attended school for a year, then went to Watertown, Jefferson County, New York, and worked on a dairy farm.  After this he went to St. Lawrence County, where he remained a year.  After going back to his old home in Canada, where he continued for a year, he came to California in 1868 and located in San Jose.  He spent fourteen months in Nevada and Oregon, after which he was in the employ of William Berringer, in Oakland and San Francisco, in the hay and grain business, for seven years.  He was also employed a portion of this time in San Jose.  In 1884 he purchased his present place of twenty-two and one half acres near Los Gatos, where he has since resided. 

            He was married in Oakland, in 1878, to Emily Cutter, a native of Tompkins County, New York.  Mr. MacDonald has a fine vineyard of eight and one half acres, and also eight acres in trees,--French prunes, cherries, apricots, etc. 

Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, Illustrated. - Edited by H. S. Foote.- Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888.

Pg. 298

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
Proofread by Betty Vickroy