McDonald, Noah A. (1830-1897)

Rev. Dr. Noah A. McDonald was born on 30 January 1830 in Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Jefferson College in Cannonsburg, PA, and attained his seminary education at Western Theological Seminary. On 8 April 1860, McDonald was appointed as a missionary for the Presbyterian Church (USA). After a 100+ day trip around the Cape of Good Hope, he and his family arrived in Bangkok on 15 September 1860. Traveling with the McDonalds were Stephen Mattoon and Mary Lourie Mattoon, who were returning to the field.

Upon arrival, McDonald and the other missionaries found that the Presbyterian compound south of Wat Aroon had been moved, forcing them to make new housing arrangements. One of McDonald’s first tasks was to build a log cabin boat and port it alongside the newly purchased Presbyterian Samray compound.

During McDonald’s twenty-six years of missionary work, his work centered mainly around the boarding-school and printing press for the Presbyterian Mission. He translated the books of Exodus, Joshua, Psalms, Esther, and the first ten chapters of Proverbs. McDonald also revised Mattoon and Dean’s earlier translation works on the Synoptic Gospels, the Epistles from Romans to Philemon, and Hebrews to Revelations into Siamese. In the last five years of his missionary service, he shepherded the First Presbyterian Church in Bangkok as their Pastor.

Mission work was undoubtedly a family affair. Noah McDonald’s wife and daughter (Mary H. McDonald) assisted in the education and Sabbath school work. In 1881, his daughter Mary H. McDonald, received an appointment in the field, as a missionary of the Presbyterian Church

McDonald’s work was mostly constrained to Bangkok. However, in 1870, it was learned that the McGilvary and Wilson families in Chiang Mai might be in danger. Presbyterian missionary S.C. George and McDonald (serving then as an acting U.S. vice-consul) accompanied a Siamese government delegation to assure the missionaries’ safety. Both George and McDonald advised the families to leave, but Daniel and Sophia McGilvary chose to remain.

In 1886, along with his daughter, McDonald, left Bangkok, resigned as missionaries, and both rejoined Mrs. McDonald, detailed in an 1887 report:

“Rev. Dr. N. A. McDonald, who first went out to Bangkok twenty-seven years ago, has been obliged, on account of his failing health, to return to America. It had been for several years impossible for his family to remain there, and he had labored on alone, except for the presence of one daughter, Miss Mary McDonald, who has also been connected with the mission, but now withdraws. It is his feeling that he can neither take Mrs. McDonald and his family back to Siam, nor consent again to the separation involved in his own return alone. A most painful sacrifice it is for a missionary to send his family home and remain himself on his field, separated from them for years by half the circumference of the globe. Yet not only Dr. McDonald, but Rev. Mr. Van Dyke, of the Siam Mission, has made this sacrifice.” 

On 14 August 1897, Noah McDonald died near his place of birth in Shade Gap, Pennsylvania.

 

Sources:

1860-1887 Annual Reports of the Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America

Bradley, William, Siam Then, The Foreign Colony in Bangkok before and after Anna. Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1981.

‘McDonald, Noah A’. (1830-1897), Eakin Papers, Payap University Archives

_____. A Missionary in Siam (1860-1870). Bangkok: White Lotus, 1999.

McFarland, George Bradley, Historical Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam 1828-1928. Bangkok: White Lotus, 1999.

Wells, Kenneth E., History of Protestant Work in Thailand: 1828-1958. Bangkok: Church of Christ in Thailand, 1958.