Edward Francis “Frank” Finnerty was born at Arnprior, Renfrew Co., Ontario on January 7, 1885, the fourth of the nine known children of John Finnerty and Catherine Benton. He was baptized on January 9, 1885 (St. John Chrysostom, Arnprior), with Robert Heavey/Havey and a Mary Jane [Brixton? Brighton?] serving as godparents.
At some point between 1891 and 1893, the family moved to Cloquet, Carlton County, Minnesota, where John Finnerty and his sons worked in the lumber trade.
Edward Francis Finnerty worked at the Northwest Paper Company’s mill, which had been built at Cloquet in 1898. And while the paper mill’s machinery was apparently considered the most modern of its day, I doubt they had a set of workplace safety standards in place that we would call modern.
On August 9, 1902, young Frank Finnerty was killed in a dreadful workplace accident. Apparently his clothing got caught in the machinery, and “his body was frightfully crushed.” Let’s hope he did die “instantly,” as reported in a couple of brief newspapers accounts of the tragedy; the alternative (a prolonged and painful death) is too ghastly to even contemplate. He was a mere 17 years of age when he met his untimely death (the Williston Graphic mistakenly gave his age as “fifteen years old”).
This was not the first time Catherine (Benton) Finnerty had lost a close male family member to a dreadful workplace accident. On March 7, 1890, her father Thomas Benton had died of a fractured skull, having been hit on the head with a 75-pound block of wood while working for the McLachlin Brothers Lumber Co. in Arnprior, Renfrew Co., Ontario.
Frank Finnerty is buried at the Old Calvary Cemetery in Cloquet, MN, next to his mother Catherine “Kate” (Benton) Finnerty, who died January 9, 1941.
