The Black Donnelly Massacre, One Of Canada’s Greatest Unsolved Murders
Wikimedia CommonsThe Donnelly family gravestone.
The “Black” Donnellys were a group of Irish Catholic immigrants who settled in Canada’s Biddulph township in the 1840s. The family patriarch James had moved there in 1842 and was later joined by his wife, Johanna, who was pregnant with their firstborn son.
In 1845, they moved to an area known as the Roman Line due to the high concentration of Irish Catholic immigrants who settled there. They made an arrangement with absentee landlord John Grace to clear and work the land in exchange for a residence. Over the next decade, their family grew in size, with James and Johanna welcoming seven sons and a daughter.
However, according to the Donnelly Museum, all was not well with the family. The first of many incidents occurred in 1857 when James killed a man named Patrick Farrell over a land dispute. Around this time, John Grace decided to sell his land — land he had never set foot on and which Donnelly had worked for over a decade. Donnelly argued that the land should be his despite Farrell’s purchase of it.
The families eventually went to court, agreeing to split the land evenly. But a fight later broke out between James and Farrell, ending in Farrell’s death and sending James into hiding for nearly a year — until winter came and he decided to turn himself in. The court found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to be hanged.
But Johanna made an appeal for clemency and garnered a fair amount of support. In the end, James’ sentence was shortened to just seven years in prison. Unfortunately, the family had little income during this time, and Johanna eventually donated land to build a school.
Her sons attended this school, and she had a contract to clean it and cater events held there. Meanwhile, the Donnelly boys grew up and became hardworking young men with a penchant for strong drinks. They decided to set up a stagecoach business that directly competed with another run by the neighboring Flanagan family.
But the stagecoach business was not lucrative in the end for either company, and the rivalry sparked a series of fires throughout the town, often ones that targeted stables with horses, coaches, harnesses, and feed in them.
Then, Father John Connolly arrived in Biddulph and set up the Biddulph Peace Society to restore some sense of order. Still, not everyone in town agreed with Connolly’s plan. Some of the more radical members left and created their own group, the Vigilance Committee.
The members of the Vigilance Committee decided they had had enough of the Donnellys. One night, after a few rounds of booze, members of the Vigilance Committee made their way to the Donnelly farm in the early morning hours of Feb. 4, 1880 — and murdered them.
It marked a dark period in the history of Biddulph Township, one made even darker because no one was ever convicted for the Black Donnelly Massacre.
