A great deal has been said about McDonald's domestic unhappiness, but
it was not until his body had been buried that the truth was known.
His first wife was Mary Noonan, whom he married in the days when "The
Store" was the sporting and political Mecca of Chicago.
It was a great scandal in the community later when she suddenly
disappeared, and it was reported that she had run away with "Billy"
Arlington, a minstrel man. It was the greater shock because her
devotion and loyalty to McDonald had been the talk of the town.
One time she had stood, with a pistol, in her husband's gambling
house, and defied the police when they raided the place under
instruction of some blundering chief of police, who did not realize
that he was toying with the lightning when he laid violent hands
on anything that belonged to McDonald. Mary McDonald had held her
ground at the door in "The Store," and declared she would shoot the
first policeman that attempted to enter. She was as good as her word,
and one of the officers was carried to a hospital with a bullet
through his arm. Mrs. McDonald, through her husband's pull, was never
prosecuted.
McDonald went to San Francisco and brought his wife back and installed
her in the house he had built at Ashland avenue and Harrison street,
considered in those days a veritable palace. McDonald gave it out to
the world that he had built the mansion for his wife, and his taking
her back after she was reputed to have run away with another man
was accepted as a wonderful instance of his great-heartedness and
magnanimity.