. 12 Oct. 1842 in Coupar Angus, Scotland, son of William Robertson Reid and Catherine Gillespie; m

the late Alexander Rocke Robertson*. Macdonald’s decision is said to have been prompted by Trutch’s assertion that the task of

favourite texts included Heinrich Georg August von Ewald’s History of Israel (1869) and the works of scholars in Scotland like William Robertson Smith and Alexander Balmain Bruce. Philosophical

, with John Ross Robertson* as publisher, of the Evening Telegram, a daily to compete with Brown’s Globe. It soon