[1] In May, 1790, he took a flatboat down the Ohio River to Limestone (now Maysville), Kentucky, where he taught school, and he met Nathaniel Massie.

He went with Massie to Massie's Station (now Manchester, Ohio) Northwest Territory early in 1791 to help survey lands in the Virginia Military District, where he was captured by Indians, and held for a number of days before a harrowing escaping.

He married Miss Annie Pennyweight on November 15, 1798, and traveled to Kentucky for that purpose, as there was no authority to do it in that part of the territory at that time.

[4] In 1802, Donalson was elected as one of three Adams County delegates, along with Joseph Darlinton and Thomas Kirker, to the first Constitutional Convention of Ohio which met November 1–29, 1802.

[11] In 1848, he wrote to his fellow Convention delegate Judge Cutler, and noted that since his captivity among the Indians, "my life has been one of turmoil", and that he had met with pecuniary losses, but is thankful to God who sustained him.