THE BLACK DONNELLYS OF BIDDULPH
Land dispute raises ire.
THE GOOD EARTH
In 1880, southern Ontario was the scene of a mass murder, the bloody culmination of a feud that had spanned years and continents. Though there were numerous witnesses, no one was ever punished for the massacre. Yet, for almost 150 years, the dark legend of an ill-fated family has haunted what is now Biddulph, Ontario.
AN OLD COUNTRY FEUD IN THE NEW WORLD
James and Johannah Donnelly were born and married in County Tipperary, Ireland. In the nineteenth century, Ireland was ruled by Great Britain—or, more properly, absentee British landlords—and there were deep divides between the Protestant British and the Catholic Irish. James and Johannah immigrated to Canada to escape the crushing poverty of rural Irish life. In 1847, five years after their arrival in the New World, they and their infant sons James and William settled in what was then known as Canada West on 100 acres in the southeastern corner of Lot 18, Concession 6—or, as it was called because of the Irish Catholics living there, the Roman Line. Over the next 10 years, five more sons—John, Patrick, Michael, Robert, and Thomas—and a daughter, Jenny, were born. Life was hard: In order to eke out a living from the land, James and his boys had to clear acres of dense forest. But the land they were improving wasn’t their own: Much as had been the case in Ireland, Concession 6 was owned by an absentee landlord—in this case, a man named John Grace. The Donnellys were squatters, hoping that by farming and holding the land, they would be able to claim ownership rights by common law and the long-standing custom of the frontier.
The Donnellys’ semi-illegal occupation of their land was only the first ingredient in the volatile mix that would explode on February 3, 1880. The second was the fact that the nearby Biddulph Township was settled by just the right combination of Irish Catholics and Protestants to reignite the feuds of the Old World. Though Biddulph had originally been settled by Protestant Irish as well as Catholics, and with them the secret society known as Whiteboys—after the white smocks they wore during their nighttime guerilla raids against the British occupation—had come soon thereafter. The Donnellys, though Catholic, were considered unacceptably friendly to the Protestants. This earned them many enemies.
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The spark that lit the fuse was when John Grace sold the land the Donnellys were squatting on to an Irishman named Patrick Farrell in about 1856 or ’57. The Donnellys, of course, had a problem with this—after all, they’d been clearing and improving the land for almost 10 years. The case wound up in court, and the Donnellys wound up receiving just 25 acres of the land they’d cleared. Still, Farrell didn’t let the matter go, and lambasted James Donnelly, Sr. in public. Bad feelings grew between the two men.
Farming on the frontier required self-reliance, but the goodwill of your neighbors was also important. For tasks too big for a single family to perform, like raising barns or harvesting timber, the entire community got together to help. It was at one of these events that the Donnelly/Farrell quarrel came to a head—literally. The two men got into a drunken brawl that ended with a spike used to split logs being used to split Farrell’s head instead. He died two days later, and James Donnelly became an outlaw. Still, justice was slow to be served. James hid out for two years, living in the barn and working his fields while disguised in his wife’s clothes. (Johannah claimed she didn’t know his whereabouts, but their daughter’s birth in 1858 indicated otherwise.) Finally, he turned himself in to a magistrate. After a trial where many neighbors testified to his bad nature, James was sentenced to be hanged, but Johannah began a petition for clemency and he was instead sentenced to seven years in prison. He was released in 1865, but a reputation for violence would follow the Donnellys all of their days.
SETTING THE STAGE
Just how much public opinion had swung against the Donnellys was shown by the fact that every petty crime in Biddulph was—right or wrong—blamed on them. William and James Jr. were both accused of theft, and Johannah was even charged with swearing at a constable. The discrimination also took more insidious forms: The Donnelly barn burned down, perhaps by arson, and fathers wouldn’t allow their daughters to marry Donnelly boys. Of course, the Donnellys were not entirely innocent. For instance, when Michael, James Jr., and Robert were evicted from a lot they had been living on, the man who took over the property, Joseph Carswell not surprisingly suffered unexplained fires and deaths of his animals.
The Donnellys’ reputation also affected business. William Donnelly began a stagecoach line in the early 1870s that employed several of his brothers. They faced serious harassment from the rival Flanagan line whose owner, Patrick Flanagan, was determined to drive the Donnellys out of business by any means necessary. Stages were sabotaged and run off the road, and a mysterious barn fire killed some of their horses. The sabotage and physical altercations continued until 1878, when all the rival stagecoach lines were put out of business by a newly-built railroad.
Even the law and the church took sides in the growing violence between the Donnellys, their allies, and their enemies. The Donnellys were frequently accused of breaking the law, but hardly ever convicted. When Father John Connolly came to St. Patrick’s church in 1879 and heard bad reports about the Donnellys, he sought to stop the violence by forming a Peace Association. Part of this association split off, calling itself the Vigilance Society. The Vigilance Society might have well been called the anti-Donnelly Society, doing such things as accusing them of stealing a cow—which was later found safely back at its home. Notable amongst the members of the Vigilance Society was James Carroll, a man who had tangled with the Donnellys on several previous occasions and who, after being made a constable, had vowed to rid the township of them.
A BLOODY MASSACRE
On the night of February 4, 1880, Constable Carroll came to arrest James Sr. and Tom Donnelly for barn-burning. According to Johnny O’Connor, a 13-year-old farmhand who was the sole survivor of what followed, Carroll was being taunted by a handcuffed Tom when a mob of about 30 men from the Vigilance Society broke into the Donnelly house and beat James Sr., Johannah, and their niece Bridget to death with sticks and farm tools. Johnny, who had hidden under the bed, escaped when the mob set the house on fire, passing James, Johannah, and Bridget’s bodies. Tom was still alive, but died in the fire.
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The mob proceeded to William Donnelly’s house, where they got John Donnelly to open the door by shouting “Fire!” John was shot dead. William, his wife Nora, and a friend remained hiding inside the house. The fact that Nora’s brother John Kennedy, who had been outraged at her marrying into the Donnelly clan, was part of the mob shows just how internally divided the community was. Of the five Donnelly sons who were alive at the time, only William, Patrick, and Robert survived. Jenny also survived, and was the last of the clan to die, in 1917.
THE AFTERMATH
Despite two trials, James Carroll and the five other men William Donnelly and Johnny O’Connor accused of the crime were never convicted. In fact, the community conspired to ensure that justice could not be done: The bodies of the Donnellys had been burned and tampered with, and O’Connor’s house was burned to the ground in retribution for his testimony. Finally, prosecutors decided that convictions could tear Biddulph apart and further inflame the feud, as well as harm the careers of local politicians who did not want to appear anti-Catholic. Thus, the first trial ended with a hung jury, and the second with an acquittal.
But this isn’t to say that justice wasn’t done. Thirteen years after the massacre, William Donnelly published a letter claiming that 32 of the killers had met gruesome fates. According to William, “several were killed by the London, Huron & Bruce train. More were found [dead] in bed without any apparent cause. More fell into a well. More dropped dead. More died suffering the agonies of a mad dog, and a few are in the asylum.” The Donnellys had their vengeance from beyond the grave.
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A RARE CONDITION
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