11 February 2013

A Disaster and the Hornerites

I let my curiosity get the better of me a couple of days ago when examining a page from a Beechwood Cemetery burial register. I already blogged about some of the the resulting exploration at http://anglo-celtic-connections.blogspot.ca/2013/02/curious-pattern-of-burial-dates.html

On the same page of the burial register were three people, William Russell (32), Charles Hall Hutchison (27) and James Ira Casselman (54) indicated as killed in an accident on the Ottawa and Parry Sound Railway on 21 January 1897. There's a report of the derailment that resulted in these deaths at http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=NGcuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8NgFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1193%2C735108

The death registration for William Russell gives his religion as Hornerite - that was something new to me. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online profiles the sect's founder Ralph Horner here. There's a 1999 Master's dissertation by Clifford Roy Fortune at https://curve.carleton.ca/system/files/theses/25503.pdf which includes a chapter on "Ralph Horner's Ottawa Valley" and section of  Maps, Tables and Charts which looks like useful resources for those with Ottawa Valley ancestry.

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