Angus R. McDonald
Angus McDonald was born on the Isle of Eigg, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, into the minor nobility (Scottish Gaelic: flath) and into a family descended from Somerled, King Robert the Bruce, and the Chiefs of Clan MacDonald of Clanranald.
Angus McDonald's great-grandfather was the most important figure in the history of Scottish Gaelic literature; the war poet and national poet Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, alias "The Clanranald Bard",[1] who famously served as Gaelic tutor to Prince Charles Edward Stuart during the Jacobite rising of 1745,[2][3] which, according to literary scholar John Mackenzie, was an uprising which The Clanranald Bard's poetry had helped convince the Prince to sail to Scotland and launch.
Afterwards, Catholic worship moved, according to historian Odo Blundell of Fort Augustus Abbey, into, "the lower floor of an old farmhouse, the rest of the building being used as a presbytery", which remained the island's Mass house until 1910.
[12] Following basic training at Camp Randall in the State Capital of Madison, McDonald served under the command of Colonel Charles L. Harris and repeatedly, "distinguished himself by his gallantry during the operations of the Federal Army in Alabama and Mississippi.
[13] Ironically, the eventual Union victory at the Battle of Fort Blakeley took place mere hours after Confederate States Army General Robert E. Lee's defeat and surrender at Appomattox Court House.
His body was returned to Mazomanie, where, following a Tridentine Requiem Mass at St. Barnabas Church, he was buried in the parish cemetery with full military honors and in the presence of his weeping fellow veterans, and the direct line of the Clanranald Bard became extinct.
"[18][19] More recently, literary scholar Michael Newton has cited Captain Angus R. McDonald as an example of the many voluntary recruits that the Highland Scottish diaspora in America provided in wartime to the United States military.
Other Scottish regiments recruited from New York State, Illinois, [and] Maine... [also] fought in the Civil War, although details about the Gaelic dimensions of these units are still to be investigated in depth.
