Foreword The Reverend Donald McDonald is an important figure in the religious and social history of Prince Edward Island . Arriving on the Island in 1826 to minister to the lonely Scottish settlers there (many of them Highlanders who delighted to meet one from "home" who would converse with them in their native Gaelic), he spent the next forty years "going in and out among them" and gathering them together for preaching and communion. Other settlers were without a pastor for years on end but this one never deserted his flock and left on them the mark of his individual interpretation of Presbyterianism. His followers grew in number so that adherents, not all of them of Scottish origins, came to be numbered in the thousands. Many Prince Edward Islanders today trace something of their religious heritage to him My own great grandfather Crossman was baptised by McDonald. More important, any student of the life of Sir Andrew Macphail of and Orwell, PEL must take account of McDonald In his The Master 's Wife, a classic description of rural life in Prince Edward Island in the nineteenth century, Macphail calls forth the spirits of his parents William and Catherine Macphail William and Catherine were "MacDonalites". I came across these references while researching another project and offer them here as a stimulant to popular interest in McDonald and as a convenient collection for more serious students of the social and religious culture of Nathan H Mair Georgetown , PEL, December, 1993