![]() The Donnelly Album tells in compelling detail the story of the Donnellys-James and Johannah and their seven sons and one daughter. In 1995 the Lucan and Area Heritage Society formed to document and preserve local history, and the organization opened the Lucan Area Heritage & Donnelly Museum in 2009. The Donnelly Album By now everyone in Canada knows at least one version of the brutal slaying of members of the Donnelly family on the night of February 3, 1880. Information about the family and the events surrounding their deaths was suppressed locally for much of the 20th century, due to many residents possibly having ancestors who were involved. A replica of the original Donnelly tombstone, belonging to Ray Fazakas, on display at the Lucan Area Heritage & Donnelly museum in Lucan-Biddulph, Ontario. No one was convicted of the murders, despite two trials and a reliable eyewitness. The Donnellys' ongoing feuds with local residents culminated in an attack on the family's homestead by a vigilante mob on 4 February 1880, leaving five of the family dead and their farm burned to the ground. Many Irish Canadians arrived in the 19th-century, many fleeing the Great Famine of Ireland (1845-52). The family settled on a concession road which became known as the Roman Line due to its high concentration of Irish Catholic immigrants in the predominantly Protestant area. ![]() ![]() The "Black" Donnellys were an Irish Catholic immigrant family who settled in Biddulph township, Upper Canada (later the province of Ontario), about 15 km northwest of London, in the 1840s. ![]()
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