# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macdonald, John (1779-1849)

​MACDONALD, JOHN (1779–1849), called 'The Apostle of the North,' born at Reay, Caithness, on 12 Nov. 1779, was second son of James Macdonald (1735–1830) by his second wife, a daughter of John Mackay. He was educated at the parish school of Reay, and showing unusual capacity was employed by neighbouring farmers to help them with their accounts. Mrs. Innes of Sandside, Caithness, obtained for him a bursary at King's College, Aberdeen, where he graduated M.A. 30 March 1801. He was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Caithness 2 July 1805, and in September, at the request of Sir John Sinclair, he started for a long expedition in the north-west highlands to search for Ossianic traditions among the peasants. He returned in November, served as a missionary at Achreny and Halladale for six months, and 16 Sept. 1806 was ordained missionary-minister at Berriedale. On 29 Jan. 1807 he became minister at Edinburgh of the Gaelic Chapel, which was supported by the Society in Scotland for Promoting Christian Knowledge. His fame as a preacher spread; he read hard and met literary Scotsmen at Sir John Sinclair's ​house. On 1 Sept. 1813 he was promoted to the charge of Urquhart, Caithness, in the gift of Duncan George Forbes of Culloden. The parish was so well ordered by his predecessor, Charles Caldwell, that he felt he could safely leave it and travel as a missionary in the neighbourhood. From 1813 to 1818 he wandered up and down Ross and Caithness, where most of the ministers performed their duties very perfunctorily and resented his intrusion. On 30 May 1818 a declaration was issued by the general assembly which, without mentioning his name, condemned his practices. In 1822 and 1824 he conducted many services in the island of St. Kilda. Afterwards, by preaching in various parts of Scotland, he raised enough money to keep a minister there, and introduced him to the islanders in 1830. Part of 1823 he passed in London, having been asked to preach for the London Missionary Society. He met Samuel Wilberforce, and in his diary spoke of his visit as a ‘season of religious dissipation.’ In 1824, at the request of Robert Daly [q.v.] , rector of Powerscourt and afterwards bishop of Cashel, he visited Ireland, managing to adapt his Gaelic sufficiently for the Irish peasants to understand him. He often went to Edinburgh and Glasgow for the communions, but his influence was greatest in the north. He was created D.D. in 1842 by the university of New York. In the disruption he joined the secession party, and was declared no longer a minister of the kirk on 24 May 1843. Very many northern ministers followed his example. He died at Urquhart, 16 April 1849. His portrait is in Kay's ‘Edinburgh Portraits.’ He married, first, in 1806 Georgina Ross of Gladfield, who died 18 Aug. 1814; secondly, 11 May 1818, Janet, eldest daughter of Kenneth Mackenzie of Millbank. He had three children by his first wife, and seven by his second, one of whom, Duncan George Forbes, is separately noticed. Macdonald's diary of his visits to St. Kilda was published, Edinburgh, 1830, with sermons preached before the Society in Scotland for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He wrote verses in Gaelic, and published a volume of them in 1848. In 1837 he corrected an edition in Gaelic of ‘Human Nature in its Fourfold Estate,’ by Thomas Boston the elder [q. v.]
[Biographies by Kennedy and MacGregor; Scott's Fasti Eccl. Scot. v. 304.]
W. A. J. A.