A violent family living in violent times. In the 1840s, the Donnelly family immigrates from Ireland to the British province of Canada. Almost immediately problems develop as the patriarch of the family is sent to the Kingston Penitentiary for manslaughter, leaving his wife to raise their eight children on her own. The children are raised in an incredibly violent community and cultivate a devoted loyalty to their mother and siblings, which often leads to problems with the law and those outside of the family. The tensions between the family and their community escalate as the family’s enemies begin to multiply. The brothers go into business running a stagecoach line and repay all acts of violence perpetrated against them, which only worsens the situation. Refusing to take a backwards step, the Donnellys stand alone against a growing power base that includes wealthy business interests in the town of Lucan, the local diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, law authorities and a number of their neighbours.

An in-depth, well-researched, and comprehensive account of the vigilante mob that murdered five of the Donnelly family and burned the family farm to the ground, and the feuds and religious tensions that led to it exploding into the headline-inducing massacre that it was.

The terrible Donnelly feud, by far the most notorious and violent in the history of Canada, began in the spring of 1847 only a few hours after James Donnelly, an Irish immigrant, first arrived in the town of Lucan, Ontario. The feud lasted nearly 33 years and was marked by murders, gang wars, highway robbery, mass arson, derailed trains, mutilations, and barbarisms paralleling the Dark Ages.

The massacre of the Donnellys by their fellow church members has fascinated the public in the English-speaking world for well over a hundred years. Contained in this book are intriguing new photographs never before published and significant new information, which will pique the interest even of those who have been familiar for years with this bit of North American folk history with Irish roots.

Based on a true story, these three plays explore the saga of a secret society and massacre that stunned the Canadian public in 1880.

In the midst of the feuds and famine of Tipperary, Ireland in 1845, Jim Donnelly and Johannah McGee fall passionately in love. She is the beautiful daughter of an affluent estate manager, he the rebellious son of dispossessed peasants. With her father’s men in pursuit and a sizable price on Jim’s head, they board a ship set for Canada to start a new life and put the troubles of the old country behind them. Thousands of miles away in rural Ontario, they find the feuds and vendettas of Ireland are very much alive. Jim must make a place for his young family not just with his back, but with his fists. Fifteen years later, the Donnelly family have become one of the most powerful in Lucan Township, loved by some and hated by others. Jim and Johannah’s sons are notorious as both fighters and lovers and torment the townspeople, swinging shillelaghs, burning barns and seducing daughters. But certain citizens of Lucan have had enough. At midnight on February 3, 1880, a mob of thirty armed men in women’s clothing and carnival masks ride out for the Donnelly farm. Sustained by whisky and the blessings of the local priest, their goal is to wipe the Donnelly family from the face of the earth. Yet there is an eye witness and during the trial that follows, it becomes clear that in small town Ontario of the late 1800s, order is valued above truth. Eventful and conveyed with cinematic detail, Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys is an engaging and historically enlightening read.

The Montgomery manuscripts. containing accounts of the colonization of the Ardes, in the county of Down, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. Memoirs of the first, second, and third Viscounts Montgomery, and Captain George Montgomery: also, a description