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The Exeter Times-Advocate, 1950-06-29, Page 3THE TIMES-ADVOCATE, EXETER, ONTARIO, THURSDAY MORNING, JUNE 29, 1950 Dead Stock Tax Problems to- • on hut him the the out the Jack Williams Phone 24-r-4 Crediton B. M. Francis Phone 24 and 164: Exeter CEMENT BLOCKS Immediate Delivery 5)52.75 Each ’ CALL COLLECT Portable Arc Welding Acetylene Welding Steel Fabrication Grinding Machine Work Marshall & Murray Machi Phone 179-J game in Minard’s cool, relaxed, ready for the fairway. For sprains, muscular stiffness, aches and pains. Greaseless, quick drying, no unpleasant odor. Large Economical Size 65c Dashwood Girls Beat Exeter 6-3 Dashwood ladies edged EXeter 6-3 in a nine-inning struggle on Thursday night. Both teams dis played a fine brand of ball. Neither team scored until the fifth when Pickering rounded the bases to give Dashwood a 1-0 lead. Gaiser, Tieman and Goss- man scored in the sixth and the visitors clinched their victory in the ninth when Guenther Love tallied. Exeter had their big innin the seventh. Pfaff, McKnight and Coates scored as the team lected four hits, Marilyn Pfaff struck out teen batters while Nancy Tieman fanned eight. E'XETER: Essery, Schroeder, 2b; Parsons, cf; Pfaff, p; Stew art, 3b; Hodgins, If; Hunter- Duvar, lb; Taylor, c; McKnight, ss; Coates, rf. DASHWOOD: Pickering, 3b; tlier, ss; Love, Becker, Smith, Mair, rf. Dashwood ..000 Exeter .......000 Gossinan, If; Webb-, lb; 2b; c; Guen- Gaiser, Tieman, 013 000 002—6 300—3 7 9 3 1 . , that keep your ’rough”. Rub in to make those muscles MINARD'S LINIMENT Huron Farmers Tour Ohio Thirty-seven farmers from Huron County toured Ohio last week to view conservation de velopments in the state. The trip was sponsored by the Huron Crop Improvement Association. Members of the party left by bus Thursday morning and re turned Sunday. They inspected Mallibar Farm, a famous leader in conservation work, and many other spots where reforestation and the improvement of soils was demonstrated. Gordon Bennet, representative of the Ontario Department or Agriculture, and Warden Cecil Johnston headed -the tour. Mem bers from the south who made the trip were Elmer Lawson, Earl Campbell, Archie Ethering- ton, James McAllister, Harold Elder, John Faber, W. J. Alex ander, Allan Walper and Allan Armstrong. HOUSECLEANING BY THE TON — Tons of plaster and wood arc being- carted out of Winnipeg homes as citizens concentrate on repairing- flood damage. Water destroyed walls and foundations as well, as flooring- and furniture. This pile of wallboard, plaster, furniture arid miscellaneous house hold equipment comes from one house, that of George Gil mour in the Wildwood Park area. —Central Press Canadian Famous Donnelly Murders Revived In Flashback revived in a gory flashback in a issue of MacLean’s maga- Don’t worry about summer h e at. We have plenty of fans on hand to keep you cool. Oscillating Fans Rubber-Bladed Fans Priced from $7.75 to $29.00 R. E. RUSSELL Phone 109 Exeter, Ont Toronto Globe called it com- Five Don- band raid The old story, now almost a legend, of the famous Donnelly murders at Lucan was again recent zine. The “the blackest crime ever mitted in the Dominion.” members of the notorious nelly tribe were killed by a of masked marauders in a 70 years ago. S. Tupper Bigelow, the writer, tells this account of the slayings: Just after midnight on Wed nesday, February 4, 1880, about twenty men in disguise — some masked, some in women’s cloth ing and some with blackened faces — gathered in the snow around the front door of James Donnelly’s story-and-a-half log house in Biddulph Township, on the outskirts of Lucan, eighteen miles northwest of London, Ont. They were armed with shot guns, rifles, axes, shovels, spades and hatchets. The ringleader knocked at the door. Inside the farmhouse at the time were James Donnelly; his wife, Jud ith, 60; his son, Thomas, 21; his niece, Bridget, 25; and a hired boy, Johnny O’Connor, 11. Thomas opened the door. He was told by the ringleader that he was under arrest and was at once handcuffed. Someone shout ed, ‘Hit him on the head with a spade!” and one of the visitors immediately obliged, assisted by another who 'buried a pickaxe in Thomas’ skull. A third beheaded him with the sharp edge of his shovel. The men then pushed into the house, where James Donnelly was likewise told he was under arrest and handcuffed. The old man started to say something about a search warrant, but be fore he could finish he was blud geoned to death. While one group killed James another dealt with his wife, who was murdered with shovels, spades and hatchets. Screaming bloody murder, Brid get tried to get upstairs, but she was quickly caught and, as a Press dispatch of the, time re ported, "she was yanked down stairs and had her brains bashed out.” "Pour the oil on the beds!” someone ordered; and another, "Throw Tom's body and his head back in the house!” But the night of sudden death was not yet ended. Another of James Donnelly's sons, William, had a farm three miles away, on the ninth concession. The twenty disguised men paid another call. Yet another Donnelly son, John, 24, was spending the night with William and it was lie who answered the fatal knock. John was promptly riddled with lead at point-blank range by two men. About 15 others stood 50 yards away. They all departed, exuber antly firing in all directions. The Toronto Globe began its report of the massacre: "Lucan awoke this morning to shock the country with intelligence of the blackest crime ever committed in the Dominion.” The story of the activities of the Donnellys in B i d d u 1 p h. Township during the ten years before the massacre is one of violence oii their part, hatred on the part of their long-suffering neighbors, The fact was that James Donnelly would have come a bad last in any popularity con test held In Biddulph Township and Ills sons, William, John, Robert and Thomas, would not have finished much better. James Donnelly, with his wife and their two eldest sons, rived from Ireland in 1847. He selected the best 100 acres he could find in Biddulph Township and settled on them as a squat ter, holding no title to the land. But the Canadian Company, a concern which dealt with land grants at the time, deeded title to Donnelly’s land to a man called Farrell, and Farrell took ar- possession of the land that Don nelly had cleared and cultivated, This action did nothing to en dear Farrell to Donnelly, or Donnelly to him. In 1857, at a threshing bee, Donnelly and Farrell got into a fight. Nobody interfered as it was thought they were both so drunk it was not possible they could do each other any harm. However, Donnelly got hold of an iron spike and opened up Farrell’s skull with it. That was the end of Farrell and the Don nellys moved back at once to the old homestead; no one else ever .tried to evict them. i z James ^Donnelly left the vicin ity for a year or two, but event ually gave himself up and was tried for murder at the Huron Assizes. A jury brought in a verdict of guilty and Donnelly was sentenced to be hanged. This was commuted to seven years, which the father served in Portsmouth Penitentiary. Son Robert (with whom we are not otherwise concerned in this nar rative) was most'fortunate, at the time of the 1880 massacre, to be serving a two-year stretch for the ing at Lucan, inch. By the time James Donnelly rejoined his family his sons were reaching manhood and, accord-' ing to a contemporary report,' “it was admitted on all sides that a finer-looking family did not live in Biddulph. They were all well-built muscular men with' curly hair and well-cut features.’’ At this time son William was the only other member of the family with a record. He, too, shot at a police officer but, as this happened at an Irish wed ding in Fitzhenry’s Lucan, a benign view and William served nine months, at the time he head.” | But these were merely the» offenses for which the Donnellys j I had been vonvii caught at many* never vonvii time went !prosecuted ) might have If you offended f any way it was a would find your down by morning, more barns burned in Biddulph Township from 1875 to 1880 than there were barns; as fast as they could he built the Don nellys would burn them down. Or so it was alleged by the anti Donnelly faction, But let’s be fair. Once the Donnellys’ barn was burned to the ground. The Donnellys surely were sponsible for that. At the time of the son John was awaiting perjury; son Thomas had been committed on a charge of rob bery; father were jointly The trial of have opened February 4, of the murders. Among the residents of Bid dulph Township who took a poor view of the Donnellys’ long record of trouble and violence was the parish priest, Father Connolly, an elderly, kindly man "‘with a pleasing, open counten ance and of medium stature”. For some years he had made at tempts to reform the Donnellys, then he denounced them from his pulpit and advised his par ishioners to form a committee to protect Two Father sermon _ in his own church in Lucan, He had stated in interviews that lie was mortally afraid of son Wil liam and believed that William would do all in his power to have him arrested for murder. —*Continued on Page Six Two Setbacks Exeter suffered two setbacks last week when St. Marys and Zurich took them to task in two well-played ball games Wednes day and Thursday nights. St. Marys copped their first victory of the season when they won 6-3 on the local diamond, The game featured some good fielding on both sides. Bob Russell started mound for the locals stone town boys drove as they scored five runs in first, Shaw finished the game and allowed only one more coun ter, A fourteen-year-old, L, Brad shaw, pitched the visitors to vic tory, He allowed only five hits. Exeter scored two runs in the seventh and one in the eighth. Freddie Darling drove Frank Burns in with a double and John Christie scored after beating out a single. Chuck Seymour tallied in the eighth when the visitors committed three errors, Bob Nicol hit two for four to lead the local batters. Noble and Sgarglia had two safeties to their credit for St. Marys. In a rabble-rousing tussle .at Zurich Thursday night, Exeter went down to defeat 11-5. Carl Heideman was the winning pitcher as he held the visitors after two shaky innings. Johnny Bowman suffered the loss. In the first inning' a triple by Frank Burns scored Glenn inson from first but the soon changed hands when ich scored two in their Exeter rallied with four runs in. the second on hits by Seymour, Robinson, Christie, How Holtz man and Bowman. However, Heideman didn’t let another man cross the plate. Zurich tied the score third and in the fourth four more to sew up the How Holtzman looked the plate for both sides, double and a single ir trips. Two-Game Box Score EXETER Nicol, 2b Seymour, Robinson, Burns, ss Darling, lb .......... •Christie, 3b ......... How Holtzman, of U. Schroeder, If ... Davis, If ............... Smith .................... Russell ................. Shaw, p ............... Bowman, p .......... Centralia Girls? Lose Ilderton girls softball team walloped Centralia to a 14-1 de cision at Centralia airport in the W.O.A.A. Softball League Friday night. The fast nine inning game was played in an houi’ and ten min utes. D. Scott, Ilderton, was the winning pitcher and Carman the losing pitcher for Centralia. Outstanding hitter of the game was Marjorie O’Neil, with two consecutive home runs and a single for the Ilderton team. Rob- lead Zur- half. in the scored game, best at with a i three c rf AB 7 5 7 6 7 <k7 7 3 3 1 0 4 3 63 trifling offence of shoot- the chief constable of He missed by a scant Hotel in was taken a paltry which he allowed • "could do on his •ted, others. and, they often been. •ted on, as They were ,, hut were indeed, were as t as not hey a Donnelly in good bet you barn burned . There were not re- massacre trial for HURON CONCRETE PRODUCTS Phone 684 Seaforth Man: "What’s the difference between the blueplate special and the whiteplate special?” Waiter: "The whiteplate spec ial is five cents more.” Man: "Is the food better the whiteplate special?” Waiter: "No; but we have wash them.” in large estates receive specialized attention in our Estates Service Division. CONSULT: Additional Sports ANNOUNCES THE OPENING OF HER STUDIO In Exeter on September 2 Pianist and Teacher Pupils and parents desiring information should write Clifford Poole, University of Western Ontario Nancy Wright A. Mus., Mus. G. Paed. fl- a< R 02 1 1 02 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 H 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 0 0 0 0 1 E 3 1 0 1 <0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Notice of 8 15 9 Cornish Clan Elects Officers The seventeenth annual Cor nish Reunion was held at River view Park with a fair crowd at tending, and was enjoyed by all. A very bounteous supper was served. Included were people from Denfield, London, Clinton, and Holmesville. The officers for 1951 were elected as follows: President, Norm Jacques; Secre tary-Treasurer, Ken Hern; Sports Com., Oliver Jacques, Franklin Skinner, Eldon Heywood. James and his wife charged with arson, the parents was to on the morning of* 1880, the very day themselves. days after the massacre Connolly preached the at the mass funeral, held 5 to 10 a.m 9 p.m Office Hours Tuesdays Thursdays Saturdays 5 to 9 p.m A. G. Kindy, d.c Chiropractor OPPOSITE POST OFFICE