Echoes

[ Front View of the Cabin at the Lucan Area Heritage and Donnelly Museum, This cabin was moved to Lucan from Port Elgin, Ontario. Though not identical to the Donnelly cabin, it is very similar. Copyright Great Unsolved Canadian Mysteries Project, Jennifer Pettit, ]

The story of the Donnelly family, if not the family itself, still haunts the citizens of Biddulph. Many children grew up hearing tales (some true, some not) about that tragic night in 1880. After Thomas Kelley published The Black Donnellys in 1954, there was so much interest in the case that St. Patrick's Cemetery, where the Donnellys and many of the vigilantes were buried, had to deny the public access in order to keep out curiosity seekers. Members of the Donnelly family eventually chose to have the original tombstone taken away due to vandalism. It was replaced with a much smaller marker that did not contain the words “murdered.”

For years many of the local citizens of Biddulph and Lucan tried to bury these ghosts. Today though, the town of Lucan has chosen to remember the Donnellys as a part of their heritage. They are in the process of opening a new, larger museum dedicated to telling the story. Elsewhere, the Donnelly saga has been the focus of a number of projects, including plays, documentaries and serious historical works. Some of those interested in the murders came in search of the ghosts of the Donnellys, others to profit, and still others to try and grasp how such a horrible crime could be committed in small town rural Ontario. A few of these undertakings are discussed in this section of the website. For more detailed information, refer to “Sources Beyond this Site” in the Library section of the website.

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