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FROM THE BRYANT ROOM ARCHIVES
By Myrna Sloam ©May/June 2007
Who Was Stewart Donaldson? by Myrna Sloam, May/June 2007.
Regular readers of the Library newsletter have noticed that many issues have contained stories about the former Clarence H. Mackay estate, which were taken from the memoirs of Stewart Donaldson. Though many people have enjoyed this ongoing series, a few have asked to know more about Mr. Donaldson and how he came to write his memoirs. The following is a brief biography drawn from typed Donaldson transcripts in the library’s Local History Collection.
Stewart William Donaldson (1907-1994) was born and raised on the 600+ acre Clarence H. Mackay Estate in Roslyn, L.I., which in 1931 became part of the Incorporated Village of East Hills, NY. His father, William, born in Northern Ireland in1879, was a coachman and then a chauffeur for the Mackay family from 1902 until the estate closed down in the 1930s. William had arrived in America in 1900. Stewart’s mother, Ella Pollock, born in Brooklyn in 1886, was the granddaughter of well known Roslyn carpenter and builder Stephen Speedling. The Speedling family traces its roots in America back to a Hessian soldier named Francis Speedling who settled in the Roslyn area after the American Revolution.
The eldest of three children, Stewart attended schools in both North Roslyn (Greenvale) and Roslyn. As a young teen, in the summer months of 1918 and 1919, he worked in the garden and greenhouses on the Mackay Estate and in the summers of 1923-25 he worked with the electrical staff of the Estate. Stewart graduated the 8th grade in 1921 and was President of his student class. He attended Roslyn High School, where he formed a great love for playing music, but left in 1926 without graduating.
After leaving high school, Stewart worked briefly on a few nearby estates. However, a growing interest in airplanes led him to apply for a job with Curtiss Flying Service in Garden City, L.I. He was hired by Curtiss in early 1927 where he trained and worked as an aircraft mechanic. It was during this time, that he had the opportunity to work on the Lindbergh plane, “The Spirit of St Louis.” To earn extra money and to pursue his love of music, he often played the saxophone in the evenings with local dance bands.
In 1930 Stewart married Roslyn native Margaret Wenger and in1931 their son William Stewart was born. Seeking a better paying day job to support his family, Stewart accepted an offer to work for the Long Island Lighting Company in 1933, at the rate of $21.20 per week. To further advance his career, in 1934 he enrolled in night school at Pratt Institute and in 1939 he received his certificate in Industrial Engineering. He built a career with LILCO, working as an engineer and supervisor. Stewart and his family had moved from Roslyn to nearby Glen Head in 1936. They then relocated to Islip, L.I. in 1953. He and Margaret moved to Florida when Stewart retired from LILCO in 1970 and it was there that he passed away, in 1994.
Always interested in family history and in the history of the Roslyn area, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Stewart began gathering together a wide variety of resource materials about Roslyn. He first gave many of these items to the Roslyn Grist Mill Tea House Museum, formerly located in the old Grist Mill in Roslyn Village. Later, these materials would form the core of the Bryant Library Local History Collection clipping file. In the early 1960s Stewart began to write down reminiscences of his early life in Roslyn, which included his descriptions of the Mackay Estate. Certain of the value of sharing these resources with the Roslyn community, he later donated these writings, along with numerous photographs and other resources to the Bryant Library, where they are currently held in the library’s Bryant Room.
Permission to reproduce, publish or display whole text articles must be obtained from the Bryant Library Archivist.
Email: localhistory@bryantlibrary.org