The Sad Death of Patrick Donahue

Mattawa Hospital

‘A very large floating population of men’

In an 1883 report of his inspection of the Mattawa Hospital, which he had visited on July 23, 1882, W.T. O’Reilly noted that hundreds of men passed through Mattawa “in the [lumbering] season, going to and from the shanties.”¹ The village of Mattawa, he explained, was

what is called the distributing point for all of the lumbering enterprises conducted in that region. There is consequently a very large floating population of men constantly in the locality, far from their homes and exposed to all the vicissitudes of a severe winter climate, and the hazardous occupations in which they are engaged.²

W.T. O’Reilly, report to the treasurer of ontario (1883)

Given this population, the need for a hospital at Mattawa was clear, especially since the nearest hospital to Mattawa was 100 miles away at Pembroke.

The Sisters of Charity

Founded in 1878, the Mattawa Hospital was built in the village of Mattawa, in northeastern Ontario, just across the Ottawa River from the Temiscaming region of Quebec. It was originally staffed by three nuns of the order of the Sisters of Charity.⁴ According to a commemorative history of the hospital published in 1978, the three Sisters were transported from Ottawa to Mattawa by horse-drawn sleigh, and arrived at Mattawa after “several days of hard travelling” over “a winding, twisted, and ice-packed trail made by the lumber companies.” Arriving in Mattawa on January 12, 1878, the nuns took charge of “a modest hospital of five beds.”⁵

By 1883, Inspector O’Reilly could report that the hospital had 18 beds, though crammed into a space that he thought should contain only twelve. Indeed, O’Reilly thought the hospital building, “originally built for a chapel or hall,” was “not at all well suited to its present purpose.” O’Reilly endorsed the “strong hopes” that “a new and better building” would soon be erected, and recommended that the hospital be given future provincial aid, along with a grant of $500 to cover “work done in the past by the Hospital.” A new, three-story brick building was erected in 1885-86.

Of the hospital management at Mattawa, Inspector O’Reilly gave a mixed review. Though he acknowledged that the Superioress⁷ was “a lady of great Hospital experience, having for many years held a responsible position in the Roman Catholic General Hospital, Ottawa,” he was sharply critical of her bookkeeping practices. The nuns also ran a small school at Mattawa, and apparently Sister St-Jean had mixed in the school accounts with the hospital accounts. “In future,” O’Reilly tersely noted, “the Hospital accounts will be kept separate from all others.” Since the hospital was asking for provincial aid, the provincial inspector was of course well within his rights to demand an accurate account of the hospital’s finances.

Hospital Patients at Mattawa

O’Reilly’s report provides some interesting statistical information on the hospital’s patients. For the 12-month period beginning October 1st, 1881 and ending September 30, 1882, the Mattawa Hospital had treated 299 patients. Of these 299 patients, 19 were “Protestants of any denomination,” while 280 were Roman Catholics. A mere 3 of the hospital’s 299 patients were female, with 296 patients recorded as male. And in terms of their nationalities, 242 patients were Canadian, with 30 patients born in Ireland, 12 born in England, and 6 born in Scotland. So: largely Roman Catholic, overwhelmingly male, and mostly born in Canada.⁸

But also obviously transient. Of the “localities from which the 299 patients were received,” only 12 came from the village of Mattawa in which the hospital was located. 60 patients came from the County of Renfrew, 207 from other counties in the province, and 20 from other countries. Or, as O’Reilly so aptly put it, the patients were drawn from “a very large floating population of men.”

One such member of that population was Patrick Donahue.

Who was Patrick Donahue?

Patrick Donahue was the eldest of the twelve known children of Michael Donahue and Hanora Killeen. Born at Clarendon, Pontiac Co., Quebec, he was baptized in early March 1850, with Martin Lanigan and Catherine Fahey serving as godparents. We don’t have a birth date for Patrick, and, indeed, even the date of his baptism is not quite firm: in the parish register for St. Mary’s, Quyon, the Rev. Michael Molloy recorded that he had baptized Patrick Donohoo [Donahue] “on or about the 8th of March 50.”

But we do have a marriage record for Patrick’s parents:

As recorded in the parish register for Ste. Anne, Ile du Grand Calumet, Michael Donahue and Hanora Killeen were married on January 21, 1850, a mere 6 or 7 weeks before the baptism of their son. In other words, Patrick’s birth was obviously the result of a premarital conception. Assuming Patrick was born after his parents’ marriage (i.e., between January 21 and March 8, 1850), Hanora Killeen would have been 8 or 9 months’ pregnant when she married Michael Donahue.

He may have been born earlier, which is to say, before the marriage of his parents on January 21, 1850. Since Father Molloy’s record-keeping was a bit haphazard, it may not mean much that Patrick’s baptismal record does not include a birth date. However, the baptismal records immediately preceding and following that of Patrick do include a date, even if it’s something as imprecise as “born last month” or “born the middle of March.” But didn’t Father Molloy record Patrick as the “lawful son” of Michael Donahue and Hanora Killeen? He did. However, under canon law (though not under English common law), an illegitimate child became legitimate upon the marriage of his or her parents. In the 1851/52 census, Patrick’s age at next birth day, as of January 12, 1852, was recorded as 3, which might indicate a premarital birth. However, recorded ages in the early census returns should be treated as a rough guide, not an accurate measure.

In any case, there’s no question that this couple had to marry, as the saying goes, and I think it’s fair to assume the marriage got off to a shaky start.

Patrick’s father an ‘old Egan man’

Michael Donahue had probably worked for lumber king John Egan in the mid-1840s to early 1850s. In an “Interesting Old-Time Happenings” item published in 1937, devoted to the question of why the township of Clarendon was predominantly Protestant, he is almost certainly the Patrick Donahue that the Shawville Equity cited as one of “a few catholics, who were old Egan men in North Clarendon, who settled on his lands.” The article specifically named “Matthew Daley, Charles McCullough, [and] Patrick Donahue.”⁹ By 1871, Daley, McCullough, and Donahue’s widow all owned land in Range 13 of North Clarendon, which had originally been owned by John Egan:¹⁰

• Matthew Daley had 100 acres at Lot 9 and 100 acres at Lot 11a of Range 13
• Charles McCullough had 100 acres at Lot 12 of Range 13, and another 200 acres at Lot 12 of Range 11
• Hanora (Killeen) Donahue had 50 acres at Lot 11b of Range 13

By at least 1881, the Donahues had 100 acres at Lot 11, Range 13, now held in the name of Patrick, eldest son of Michael Donahue and Hanora Killeen.

Patrick’s family ‘anything but affluent’

Michael Donahue died on January 1st, 1869, leaving Hanora Killeen a widow with ten children.¹¹

In an article published on August 9, 1883 (see below), the Shawville Equity reported that, with the death of Patrick Donahue’s father, the family had been “left in anything but affluent circumstances.” This was a polite way of saying they were poor.

Living very near the Donahues were Matthew Daley and his wife Ellen Killeen (older sister of Hanora [Killeen] Donahue). Information recorded in the 1851, 1861, and 1871 census returns reveals a striking difference in the material fortunes of these two families.

In 1852, Matthew Daley and Ellen Killeen were living in a log house with the first eight of their 16 or 17 children.¹³ Meanwhile, and very close by, Michael Donahue and Hanora Killeen were living in a log shanty with the first two of their 12 children — and it wasn’t even their own shanty! Instead, the Donahues were living in the shanty of James Hoban and his wife Ann Richardson, along with three Ledger children (from Ann’s first marriage to Edward Ledger) and four Hoban children, for a total of 13 people in a log shanty. By 1861, the Donahues were living in a shanty of their own. Meanwhile, the Daleys lived in a log-sided house, and were building a new house of stone. In 1871, Matthew Daley owned 200 acres, with 2 dwelling houses (presumably the older log-sided house and the newer stone house); 3 barns or stables; 1 carriage or sleigh; 2 cars, wagons, or sleds; 1 plough, 1 thrashing machine and 1 fanning mill. The widowed Hanora (Killeen) Donahue owned 50 acres of land, with one dwelling house (presumably the same shanty), and 1 barn or stable.

While Patrick was enumerated as a Farmer in both the 1871 and 1881 census returns (though with his widowed mother listed as the head of household), he also worked for wages to help support his mother and younger siblings. And also, we can assume, to pay the property taxes on the family farm. In January 1881, Patrick Donahue was in arrears for payment of the municipal taxes on the family’s 100-acre lot at Range 13, North half of Lot 11, Township of Clarendon. He owed $5.17. This sum he must have managed to pay, since the land was not seized and sold at public auction, but rather remained in Donahue hands for the next half-century or so.

As a wage-earner, Patrick worked for various employers in Renfrew Co., including the Messrs Murray of Pembroke, and Joseph Warren, a farmer at Wilberforce, Renfrew. And he also engaged in the “hazardous occupation” of “shantyman” (or lumberjack). It was while working at Taggart’s Shanty in the Temiscaming region that Patrick Donahue entered the Mattawa Hospital in the spring of 1883.

Death of Patrick Donahue

NOTE: I am indebted to Jim Kelly, a distant cousin and fellow family historian, for his discovery of the following newspaper account, which he generously shared with me.

On August 9, 1883, the Equity, a weekly paper published out of Shawville, Quebec, published an account of the sad death of Patrick Donoughue [Donahue]. This account was not original to the Equity. It appears to have been copied from the Citizen, almost certainly the Ottawa Daily Citizen, which had in turn copied it from the Observer, almost certainly the Pembroke Observer. This was an accepted practice with 19th-century obituaries and death notices, and an obituary published in one location might include a request that papers in another locality “please copy” or “please insert.”

Employed at Taggart’s Shanty

In the lumbering season of 1882-83, Patrick Donahue was employed at Taggart’s shanty in the Temiscaming region. His employer was George Taggart, a lumber merchant and “pioneer of the new Upper Ottawa River region,” who had recently “practically opened a new lumbering region” by making “the first raft of timber cut above the Quinze Rapids.”¹⁵ Patrick would likely have gone up to the shanty in the fall, with the expectation that he would “come down from the woods” in the spring.

He may have gone up in October 1882, and he would have taken the special train from Ottawa to Mattawa, which ran on Tuesdays and Fridays “for the accommodation of lumbermen sending their men, horses and supplies to the shanties.”¹⁶ On Friday, October 13, reported the Ottawa Daily Citizen, a special train of four cars had left Union Station “filled with men for the lumber shanties of the Upper Ottawa.” A police constable reported that “though a little noisy and somewhat boozy,” the men were “all in good humour.”¹⁷ Another special train ran on Tuesday, October 17, also well-filled, but the lumbermen’s agents were not finished hiring. On October 19, 1882, the Citizen reported that there were “large numbers of men” in the city waiting to be hired for the shanties, and that “large numbers of hands [were] still wanted for the more remote districts.”¹⁸ Ottawa newspapers reported on a scarcity of labour for the shanties in the early 1880s, as Ottawa Valley lumbermen were now competing with American agents hiring for lumber shanties in Michigan and Wisconsin.

‘He decided to enter the hospital’

According to the Equity‘s account (i.e., the Pembroke Observer‘s account, copied by the Ottawa Daily Citizen, which copy was then reprinted by the Shawville Equity), in the spring of 1883 Patrick caught “a severe cold, which clung to him tenaciously.” Perhaps he had a case of walking pneumonia? As he was “gradually growing worse,” he decided to make the 15-mile journey to “the hospital conducted by the Sisters of Charity at Temiscamaingue” [i.e., at Mattawa].

He must have been very ill to even consider entering the hospital, which would mean a loss of wages for the duration of his stay, and also for the time spent journeying to and from the hospital. Time not worked was time not paid. There was no sick pay, no unemployment insurance, no workman’s compensation. But perhaps Patrick was already too sick to work, and was therefore already losing wages while languishing in a rough lumber camp trying ineffectual — and costly –remedies?²⁰ And even worse than losing wages, if he was too sick to work, he might end up actually owing money to his employer. As David Lee explains in his Lumber Kings and Shantymen, many shantymen would continue to work while ill or injured, “knowing that not only would they not be paid for time missed, but they would have the cost of room and board deducted from their wages.”²¹ Presumably, Patrick obtained the permission of the shanty foreman (possibly James Dwyer?)²² before setting out for the hospital. Otherwise, he might have been accused of desertion, for which he would forfeit all wages for the entire season, and for which he might even be sued for breach of contract.²³

He set out on horseback,²⁴ only to meet with an unlucky accident. Crossing a water-logged bridge over a flooded creek, the horse stumbled and Patrick was thrown into the water. He made it to shore, but with no houses in this uninhabited forest neighourhood, he spent the night under the balsam and pine in his wet clothes. He finally made it to the hospital the next day, “very much exhausted” (and possibly showing signs of hypothermia?), where the good sisters would have supplied him with a clean bed, warm blankets, hot soup, motherly ministrations. But though “everything possible was done for him” at the hospital, Patrick Donahue died a mere six hours after “entering its doors.”

He was 33 years old, give or take a year or two, at the time of death.

A Few Other Sad Deaths

After publishing its account of the sad death of Patrick Donahue on August 9, a week later the Equity published a death notice for Donahue’s employer. On August 16, 1883, the Equity reported that George Taggart, “one of the best known and most popular lumbermen on the Ottawa,” had died suddenly at Mattawa on the 6th of August. He was 46 years old at the time of his death.

The cause of death was “brain fever,” of which mysterious malady his young wife Margaret McConnell had also died — in 1871, at the age of 20, and within a month or two of having given birth to the couple’s third son. Her death, along with that of the couple’s four-year old son George Rinaldo Taggart, was recorded in the 1871 census (Schedule No. 2 — Nominal Return of the deaths within the last twelve months). As per the 1871 schedule of deaths for Mattawan South, Margaret Taggart, aged 20, married, religion W [Wesleyan] Methodist, died of “Brain Fever” in March 1871, while her son George Rinaldo Taggart, aged 4, religion C [Church] of England, died of “Typhus Fever,” also in March 1871.²⁶

Meanwhile, back in the land of the living (i.e., on Schedule 1 — Nominal Return of the Living), the recently widowed George Taggart, Lumber Merchant, was enumerated along with his 2-year-old son Howard Douglas and his two-month-old son John Albert, his 42-year-old widowed mother-in-law Cecilia (Meech) McConnell, his 19-year-old brother-in-law Rinaldo McConnell, and a 20-year old Irish Catholic servant named Mary Anne O’Connor.

But by 1881, George Taggart’s household had been reduced to just he and his 10-year old son John Albert, his son Howard Douglas having died in February 1877.²⁷

Life was rough in the lumbering regions of the Ottawa Valley! And not only for humble shantymen like Patrick Donahue, but also for prosperous lumber merchants like George Taggart. Even as he was celebrated as a pioneer of the Upper Ottawa, riding high (and profitably!) over the Quinze Rapids, George Taggart suffered one loss after another in just a few short years. His eldest son died of typhus at 4 years of age; his beloved wife died of “brain fever” a mere eight days after the loss of that son; his middle son died in 1877 of some unspecified childhood illness or other, at the age of 7 or 8; and then, in August 1883, and at the age of 46, he himself succumbed to a “brain fever.”

1. William Teirs O’Reilly (1834-1890) was the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario. ↩︎
2. W.T. O’Reilly, Report to the Honourable the Treasurer of Ontario, in Ontario Legislative Assembly, Sessional Papers, Vol. 15, Part 4, 1883 ↩︎
3. “Vue sur le village de Mattawan”, digital image of an 1881 illustration (unknown artist), Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, BAnQ numérique (https://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/2069831), originally appearing in L’Opinion publique, Vol. 13, no 44 (2 Nov 1882), p. 526 ↩︎
4. Also known as the Grey Nuns of the Order of the Cross, this order was founded in 1845 by Mother Elizabeth Bruyère of the Grey Nuns of Montreal, as an autonomous congregation at Bytown (Ottawa). ↩︎
5. The Ladies of the Mattawa Hospital Auxiliary, History of the Mattawa General Hospital 1878-1978, p. 9 ↩︎
6. Mattawa (Ont.) Hôpital des Soeurs grises, Le Monde illustré, Vol. 12, no 593 (14 septembre 1895), p. 289 ↩︎
7. This was a Sister St-Jean, who was Superior/Administrator from 1879-1886 (History of the Mattawa General Hospital 1878-1978, p. 5) ↩︎
8. A similar demographic profile is found in the 1884 report by Mr. Christie, who visited Mattawa Hospital on September 26, 1883. Of the 185 patients treated from October 1, 1882 to September 30, 1883, 183 were male, and only 2 were female; 159 were Roman Catholics and 26 were Protestants; only 30 came from the village of Mattawa, with the majority coming from the County of Renfrew. The one difference is in reported nationalities, with 105 Canadians, 8 English, 43 Irish, 19 Scotch [Scottish], 10 from other countries. It’s possible that Christie used Canadian to refer to French Canadians, with the other “nationalities” including Canadian-born patients of English, Irish and Scottish origin? Ontario Legislative Assembly, Fourteenth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities Upon the Hospitals of the Province of Ontario, Being for the Year Ending 30th September, 1883 (Toronto: 1884) ↩︎
9. The Equity (Shawville, Que.), 1 July 1937, p. 4. Both Donahue and McCullough were connected to Matthew Daley by marriage. ↩︎
10. In March 1845, John Egan received a grant for 1600 acres in Clarendon, including “the north end quarters of lot numbers ten, eleven, thirteen, and fourteen…in the Thirteenth Range” (“Quebec, Canada records,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS54-T3XY-4?view=fullText : Feb 16, 2025), image 372 of 1264). ↩︎
11. Two of the couple’s twelve children had died in early childhood. ↩︎
12. From page 56, column 31 (Houses: brick, stone, frame, log, or other types of construction) of the 1851 Census (Canada East, Ottawa, Clarendon), lines 35-44. ↩︎
13. Apparently this couple had 17 children: 11 sons and 6 daughters. I have found records for 11 sons and 5 daughters. ↩︎
14. “Personnel d’un chantier dans la région de la Mattawa,” digital image of a 1904 photograph, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, BAnQ numérique (https://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/2071988), originally appearing in Album universel, Vol. 21, no 1077 (10 décembre 1904), p. 626 ↩︎
15. “Upper Ottawa Lumbering Notes,” Ottawa Daily Citizen, 7 April 1883, p. 4 ↩︎
16. Ottawa Daily Citizen, October 18, 1882, p. 4 ↩︎
17. Ibid., October 14, 1882, p. 4 ↩︎
18. Ibid., October 19, 1882, p. 4 ↩︎
19. Inset from Electoral District of Pontiac, Que., Electoral Atlas of the Dominion of Canada (1895) ↩︎
20. As David Lee describes it, the shanty would have a “van,” a large padlocked wooden chest, from which the shantymen could purchase a variety of personal items, including “‘pain killers’ (which may have contained alcohol and even narcotics).” The men “often complained” of the “exorbitant prices” charged by this rough and rudimentary version of the company store. Lumber Kings & Shantymen: Logging and Lumbering in the Ottawa Valley (Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., 2006), p. 174 ↩︎
21. Ibid., p. 170 ↩︎
22. James Dwyer of Pembroke was the foreman for George Taggart in 1878. When he married Jane Ryan in July 1882, his occupation was given as “foreman in lumber Shanty,” but his employer was not named. ↩︎
23. Lee, Lumber Kings and Shantymen, p. 169 ↩︎
24. His own horse? or was it borrowed? I suspect the latter. ↩︎
25. Ontario Legislative Assembly, Fourteenth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities Upon the Hospitals of the Province of Ontario, Being for the Year Ending 30th September, 1883 (Toronto: 1884), p. 45 ↩︎
26. But a headstone for George Robert Taggart, at Pinehill Union Cemetery, Mattawa, Nipissing District, gives his death date as Feb. 25th, 1871. A separate headstone for Margaret McConnell, “Beloved Wife of George Taggart,” lists her death date as March 5th, 1871, at age “20 Yrs & 6 Mos.” Margaret McConnell was the daughter of Rinaldo McConnell (1820-1866), a lumberman who drowned in the Mattawa River in June 1866. ↩︎
27. John Albert Taggart died of Consumption [tuberculosis] on May 22, 1888, at 17 years of age. ↩︎