Minister’s Story Pieced Together
Jim Woodburn Sr. of Burbank California, has for some time been interested in piecing together the story of his great great-grandfather, the Rev. James Donald who settled in Springdale Township in the summer of 1855. This past winter Jim hired Brian Bigler to take on the challenge of tracing the minister’s life history. Brian stated that, “Although the project at first seemed a bit daunting it became absolutely fascinating. The amount of material on Donald that exists in the Historical Society’s archives is unbelievable.”
Brian started by gathering all the material he could find. The letters in the collection date back to 1819 and reveal the background of the Rev. James Donald while he was living in his native Scotland. Brian uncovered the struggles that Donald would endure. “It seems it was who you knew that landed you a job as a minister in those days,” as he read through countless rejection letters that Donald had received while searching for a permanent position. Further, after Donald’s marriage to Margaret Strong, and the family’s subsequent three boys were born, this created a burden on the minister’s chances of finding employment. “In those days,” Brian added, “ a minister was paid from $300 to $500 per year, and this was often split in two payments. When Donald’s family became larger, the various parishes felt they could not offer a wage great enough to support a family of five individuals.” It was this later fact that Bigler believes drove Donald to the realization that he would have to find an extended way to care for his family while pursuing his career as a Presbyterian minister. After moving from parish to parish in various New York/Wisconsin locations, the minister made a bold decision. In the late spring of 1855 he loaded his family and a few possessions in an ox-drawn covered wagon and headed for Springdale Township, Dane County, where he arrived in summer of that year. In Springdale Donald was able to trade his oxen and wagon for a 40 acre plot of land. With an additional outlay of cash he bought 40 more acres. This would allow the family to have a small farm that would provide food and some income. Donald would become the preacher of two Presbyterian parishes, one at the soon to be Mount Horeb located where the Union Cemetery is today and the other located near Verona along what was to become Highway G.
The burdens of the farm and the care of aging parents would fall on 14 year old John, the youngest of the Donald children. Robert and William, the Donalds’ other two children, would leave soon after their arrival in Springdale for college educations in New York. John would take his father to Sabbath services every Sunday. The Rev. Donald would write all of his sermons out in long hand in his second level farmhouse library. “Already by 1859,” noted Brian, “the family was busy building one of the area’s earliest sawed lumber houses.” This work also was delegated to the youngest son John who hauled materials from as far away as Madison and as close as Mount Vernon. The house still stands along Highway 92 between Mount Horeb and Mount Vernon. As John grew older he amassed a sizable collection of livestock. John married the neighbor girl, Ellen Sweet, in April 1868, but tragically he fell victim of typhoid fever and died just seven months later, and three months before his son, John Sweet Donald, was born. John Sweet Donald was the father of Delma Donald Woodburn, and was Jim Woodburn Sr.s grandfather.
As Brian delved further into church records, archives at Mt. Horeb and at the Wisconsin Historical Society, even examining the family’s material possessions housed in the Society’s museum collections, he found that he was able to breathe more into the minister’s life account. As Brian recalled “as I got into the research I slowly came to realize that the story would not only become that of the Rev. James Donalds but rather a family’s life struggle – a rare account from birth to death of one individual and his family’s accomplishments that played a role in the early settlement period of this area.”
When the project is completed, a copy will be filed at the Mt. Horeb Area Historical Society archive.