The Rural Voice, 2001-06, Page 34Digging into the Donnellys
/t's an eerie story. the kind told
around camp fires to scare little
children — the story of the
Donnelly Family. h is a compelling
story that ends with the murder of
five Donnelly family members on a
cold day in February 14, 1880.
Over 120 years after the massacre
the story still compels people —
people like theatre director Paul
Thompson, who is completely
fascinated by the Donnelly story.
Thompson is working on his third
recreation of the story with the play
The Outdoor Donnellys at the Blyth
Festival this June.
"It's a huge gripping story,"
Thompson said sitting in the grass
near the Blyth Festival's Garage,
where stage coaches are being
constructed for his show.
Though the past two versions of the
story were on stage, this version will
spread across the village of Blyth in
several locations. Members of the
community will dress and recreate
characters and scenes involved with
the Donnellys' story.
The Donnellys is set in a time
when society in southwestern Ontario
was beginning to unfold.
Thompson said the Donnellys' tale
30 THE RURAL VOICE
The Donnelly
family near
Lucan is more
famous today
than the day a
century ago
when a mob of
neighbours
murdered them
in the middle of
the night,
by Mark Nonkes
shows how vulnerable people were in
the settlement days. People had to
survive the elements of weather and
your neighbours, Thompson said.
Something the Donnellys didn't
manage to do.
This is a story that sells, 19 books
of fiction and non-fiction have been
written about the Donnellys.
Hundreds of people flock to Lucan
every year to visit the Donnelly grave
and the rebuilt Donnelly homestead
where Robert Salts now lives.
Living at the Donnellys' has
proved profitable for Salts. He's
written a book titled You Are Never
Alone about his experience in the
homestead which includes
encounters he's had with spirits on
the property. Salts also leads 90
minute tours around the former
Donnelly property for the price of
five dollars a head or $30 for groups
with less than six people.
Salts thinks the story still
captivates people because it has
everything of a great Hollywood
story. It has all the elements of an
interesting human nature story, Salts
said, elements of betrayal, love,
hatred, justice, justice denied.
"In a nutshell it has everything,"
dPz7, _ am; .
The Donnelly family: above, William,
left, brothers Robert and Tom, seen
about 1876, were victims of a business
gone bad.
Salts said in a phone interview.
The story varies depending upon
whose account you follow. In the
mid -1840s James Donnelly, his wife
and two sons moved to the township
of Biddulph, outside of Lucan. They
laid claim to 100 acres that belonged
to an absentee landlord and began to
clear the land. The Donnellys built a
log shanty that would house a family
of seven boys, one daughter and the
mother and father. In 1855 the
absentee landlord, the rightful owner
of the property, sold fifty acres of the
land Donnelly had cleared. Angered,
James Donnelly challenged anyone
to take the land from him. Patrick
Farrell stepped forward and the issue
was taken to the courts. James
Donnelly was forced to give up the
southern 50 acres of his property
while he could keep the northern
half.
Later on, James Donnelly met
Patrick Farrell. The two men
now hated each other and a
fight broke out, leaving Patrick
Farrell dead from a fatal blow from a
used by permission Ray fazakas. author of The Donnelly Album
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