George Dummert, the owner of a Carleton Place bakery situated in the old Patterson Funeral home on Bridge Street disappeared one day. The day after his funeral, a family member went to the cemetery to check his grave. What he found drove him to fright! Pieces of clothing were strewn near his grave, and also on another nearby. His place of rest had been recently opened and the body had been removed.
That very same day, James Dolan, a close family friend of the Dummerts, was driving visitors along Highway 15 to Smiths Falls. In Numogate, he overtook a wagon traveling in the same direction with two body size Traveller’s Trunks on it. Upon seeing Dolan, the wagon drivers got off the wagon and walked their horses along the side of the road until Dolan was out of sight. Body snatching became so prevalent that it was not unusual for relatives and friends of someone who had just died to watch over the body until burial, and then to keep watch over the grave after burial, to stop it being violated.
Later, it was presumed that this very same wagon was carrying the two freshly dug up corpses to Queen’s University in Kingston, to be used in the training of future doctors. Unfortunately, it was a somewhat common practice at the time to be moving bodies one way or another. In 1861 the Carleton Place Herald reported that the body of Mrs. Samuel Pittard of Ashton was to be exhumed as her husband was suspected of foul play due to idle gossip. After poor Jane, age 34, was dug up, it was concluded she had died of natural causes. This had been the second body dug up in two weeks in the same cemetery due to the tongues of scandal. A conclusion was concurred that of everyone followed Psalm 15:3 none of this would not be happening.
“He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour”.
I do not like to desecrate scriptures, but I think in today’s current culture we would stay:
More on the sad state of the Pittard family of Ashton, Ontario Part 2- click here.
Dr. Dan ‘Danny’ Kauffman: The mind is a strange and wonderful thing. I’m not sure it will ever be able to figure itself out. Everything else maybe, from the atom to the universe. Everything except itself. – Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Buy Linda Secaspina’s Books— Flashbacks of Little Miss Flash Cadilac– Tilting the Kilt-Vintage Whispers of Carleton Place and 4 others on Amazon or Amazon Canada or Wisteria at 62 Bridge Street in Carleton Place
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