Will County ILGenWeb Biographies..... 
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Copyright.  All rights reserved.

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File contributed for use by:
Dori Leekly & Margie Glenn

Author: History of Will County, Illinois; Chicago: Wm LeBaron Jr & Co, 186 Dearborn Street, 1878.

Jonathan S. MCDONALD, editor Phoenix, Lockport; born April 17, 1829, in the town of 
Salina, Onondaga Co., N, Y.; his father, Asa MCDONALD, Esq., settled, with his family, 
in Joliet in 1838, and, the following year, rented the farm under the bluff, east of 
the Penitentiary, of Dr. A. W. BOWEN (now a resident of Wilmington), and, soon after, 
became a tenant at Five-Mile Grove, on land belonging to Edward, Ephraim and Pliny 
PERKINS; he afterward purchased a farm on Maple St., in New Lenox, on which he died, 
Dec. 4, 1857; at the age of 20, J. S. MCDONALD started from home, and crossed the 
plains, in search of California gold; he returned in 1854, and attempted to acquire 
a collegiate education by entering the University of Oberlin in 1855; within a 
couple of weeks, he found the undertaking altogether too irksome, and left that 
institution, to eventually establish a banking-house in Lockport; in this new, 
and to him strange, business of banking he prospered indifferently well, and 
found himself involved in the general suspension of 1858-59 ; after a trip to 
the gold-mines of Colorado, he returned to Lockport, raised a company for the 
war, with Dr. Charles H. BACON, and entered the service in the 100th I. V. 
Regiment, as a Second Lieutenant; while in the service, he took an active part 
in all the campaigns and battles in which the regiment was engaged, except the 
fight at Missionary Ridge, and resigned at the opening of the Atlanta campaign, 
having been promoted to the rank of Captain. In 1854, Capt. MCDONALD bought a 
controlling interest in the Will County Courier, and sold out after a brilliant 
career of six months; he then, in the following year, started the Lockport 
Phoenix, and, soon after, enlarged the enterprise to what is termed "The 
Family of Phoenixes," in Joliet, Wilmington, Lockport and Lemont. In 1857, 
he married Louisa SNOAD, daughter of Col. George SNOAD.