onald homestead at Adolphustown. From a print
in the John Ross Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library]

Hugh Macdonald, after a few years of unsatisfactory experience in
Kingston, determined upon seeking fortune farther west. Accordingly he
moved up the Bay of Quinte to the township of Adolphustown, which had
been settled about forty years previously by a party of United Empire
Loyalists under the command of one Captain Van Alstine. Here, at Hay
Bay, Macdonald opened a shop. Subsequently he moved across the Bay of
Quinte to a place in the county of Prince Edward, known then as the
Stone Mills, and afterwards as Glenora, where he built a grist-mill.
This undertaking, however, did not prosper, and in 1836 he returned to
Kingston, where he obtained a post in the Commercial Bank. Shortly
afterwards he fell into ill health, and in 1841 he died.

Few places in the wide Dominion of Canada possess greater charm than
the lovely arm of Lake Ontario beside whose pleasant waters Sir John
Macdonald spent the days of his early boyhood. The settlements had
been founded by Loyalists who had left the United States rather than
join in revolution. The lad lived in daily contact with men who had
{5} given the strongest possible testimony of their loyalty, in
relinquishing all that was dear to them rather than forswear allegiance
to their king, and it is not surprising that he imbibed, in the morning
of life, those principles of devotion to the crown and to British
institutions which regulated every stage of his subsequent career. To
the last he never forgot the Bay of Quinte, and whenever I passed
through that charming locality in his company he would speak with
enthusiasm of the days when he lived there. He would recall some event
connected with each neighbourhood, until, between Glasgow and Kingston,
Adolphustown, Hay Bay, and the Stone Mills, it was hard to tell what
was his native place. I told him so one day, and he laughingly
replied: 'That's just what the Grits say. The _Globe_ has it that I am
born in a new place every general election!'

When Hugh Macdonald moved from Hay Bay to the Stone Mills, his son
John, then about ten years of age, returned to Kingston to pursue his
studies. He attended the grammar school in that town until he reached
the age of fifteen, when he began the world for himself. Five years at
a grammar school was all the formal education Sir John {6} Macdonald
ever enjoyed. To reflect upon t