The Donnellys

Last weekend my husband and I decided to go for a drive, spur of the moment.
It was a beautiful day out, perfect day really.

We drove by Grand Bend, home of Coco's...not familiar? Check out this review of their reality show:
http://www.theobserver.ca/2012/04/27/grand-benders-reality-tv-show-set-in-party-town

I didn't take any pictures there, too many people, too many cars, all we wanted to do was leave. One day we'll stop there and maybe even grab a burger at Coco's :)

As we slowly meandered about here and there, we found ourselves in Lucan. What's special about Lucan, you might ask...? Well it seems pretty ordinary at first glance. There was a little museum that did not look all that interesting from the outside...

My husband asked me "Have you ever heard of the Donnellys?"

My answer simply "No."

He grinned a huge grin and asked "Want to go into the museum?"

....ok...

First thing you see upon entering the museum is a huge replica of a tombstone. the Donnelly family tombstone. I didn't take a photo of the copy of the original, but I found a photo of the original one online:

http://www.nflibrary.ca/nfplindex/show.asp?id=93887&b=1

This photo only shows the bottom half

It's about 9 or 10 feet tall

The story goes that they had to remove the original because people came from miles around to take chips off of it for souvenirs. Now the graveyard has replaced the original with this one:

Chunks have been taken off this one too (mostly off the back, which I didn't get a picture of, guess you'll have to go visit it yourself if you don't believe me), so changing the tombstone did not discourage the pilferers. There were coins and odd little trinkets on top of the tombstone. And what was with the coins and trinkets on top of the tombstone? I've never seen coins on other tombstones here....another mystery that the Donnelly museum has the answer for! (the answer can also be found at link near the bottom of this post)

This is a photo that was taken of Jenny Donnelly. The Donnelly museum had this photo on display with this information attached; that she was born in 1856 and died just short of her 60th birthday in 1916, and that the tombstone where she is buried has the date of her death incorrect. I'll have to see if I can locate it (now that I'm this deep into their story) and see it for myself.

If you would like to find out what is so interesting about the Donnellys, you can find a bit of info here:
 http://www.donnellys.com/mainpage.html

 Excerpt from the website:
 donnellys.com was created in 1997 for anyone interested in the Donnellys, Canada's notorious family, that was murdered by a vigilante committee near Lucan, Ontario, on February 4th, 1880. 2014 marks the 134th anniversary of the Biddulph Tragedy, as it came to be known.

Find out the answers to some commonly asked questions about the Donnellys!

WHAT is so Official about this web site?
WHY were the Donnellys called the "Black Donnellys"?
WHERE is the original  tombstone today?
WHY do people leave coins on the tombstone?
WHO has made a movie about the Donnellys?

The answers can be found here: http://www.donnellys.com/Questions.htm

After such a nice day out and about, we had a very nice dinner, and the evening was just as lovely as the day was, so we decided to drive some more to our favorite ice cream shop for dessert...

A couple of shots of the evening sky...

There are so many interesting stories to be learned about the world around us, I would love to learn about them all.  Lord knows I won't learn about them all, however He has included the most important ones that we should learn about in His book, the Bible. I hope you enjoyed out little outing, and maybe you learned a little bit more about this interesting world we live in.