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Murder_At_SharbotLake

Feature Article January 15

Feature Article January 15, 2004

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The coming of the railroad meant a better and easier life for many,

Murder at Sharbot Lake

When Cecil Paul was growing up, his mother Lila always told him that her grandfather had been murdered at Sharbot Lake. Lila lived a long life, dying in Trenton in November 2002 at the age of 95, and Cecil decided to write a book about the murder of his grandfather Matthew Garrett and dedicate it to his mother.

The murder was covered in the British Whig, a forerunner of the Kingston Whig Standard, as was the trial of the four accused murderers. Although the accounts are somewhat garbled, a picture emerges.

Murder_At_SharbotLakeOn the evening of November 18, Elizabeth Garrett, Matthews wife, and their daughter Mary were serving dinner in the boarding house he owned. The building still exists and is now the Sharbot Lake Country Inn. The railway was just coming through the village on its way from Kingston to Renfrew, and there were 600 construction workers in the village, where a year earlier there had been none. Four railway workers, just paid after a months work, asked for a room for the night, but Elisabeth Garrett refused to rent them one. She did, however, agree to serve them dinner.

During the dinner, the four men arrived in the restaurant in a drunken state. They were using foul language, and were eventually asked to leave. A friend of the Garretts, Alexander Ramage, got into fight with one of the men at the table.

Eventually, Matthew Garrett entered the fray and the four men were put out of the boarding house. Somehow, Matthew Garrett was pulled out with them, and he ended up on the ground outside of the boarding house after receiving a severe blow to the back of his head. He died the next day. He was 54 years old.

Murder_At_SharbotLakeMatthew Garrett

Matthew Garrett arrived in Canada in 1842 from England, and after eight years of travel and struggle, he arrived at Sharbot Lake in 1850, where he met Elizabeth Ellen Knox on October 29 of that year. They were living in Olden Township and farming at a property near Bass Lake until 1871, when they moved to Sharbot Lake. That was the same year the Kingston to Pembroke Railway was chartered, although construction did not reach Sharbot Lake for another five years.

As is pointed out in Murder at Sharbot Lake, if there was a single event that changed life in villages like Sharbot Lake, it was the coming of the railroad. Before that, travel was difficult at the best of times, and impossible in the winter. Trade was minimal and subsistence would have been the rule in close-knit, interdependent communities. Not only would the railroad bring 600 workers during the construction phase, it would also make goods and travel available into the future. And it also brought money.

In 1875, one year before the railroad arrived, Matthew Garrett purchased 75 acres, what is now the village of Sharbot Lake, for $75.. As Cecil Paul wrote on the cover of his book, The arrival of the railroad meant a better and easier way of life for many. For Matthew Garrett and his family, it meant hardship and disaster that would change their lives forever.

The murderers

Peter Smith, 21, his brother James, 18, William Foy, 27, and Patrick Dougherty, 27, were the four men charged with the murder of Matthew Garrett. Newspaper accounts say they were captured not far from the boarding house by midnight on the same night.

A few days later an inquest was held, and the four men were formally charged with the murder. Murder at Sharbot Lake contains detailed accounts of the testimony, both at the inquest and at the murder, and the testimony paints a picture of the chaotic scene at the time of the murder, with different actors rushing one way and another. It also tends to point the finger at two of the men, James Smith and Patrick Dougherty as possible murderers. In fact, in his charge to the jury, the judge, a Scot by the name of Kenneth Mackenzie, said the evidence pointed towards the guilt of the two men.

And they could easily have been convicted, but for the intervention of Thomas McGuire, a young Kingston-born lawyer. In his closing statement to the jury, McGuire spoke for two hours, pointing out that Garrett may indeed have fallen and struck his head on a trunk rather than being struck with an ironwood pin as the prosecution and two doctors postulated. He also questioned the role of Alexander Ramage, saying his intervention had precipitated the dispute in the first place. The fact that no one knew who had struck the deadly blow was also made use of by McGuire. Since a conviction would mean the death penalty, and at least one of the two men could not have delivered the fatal blow, McGuire was able to convince the jury to acquit all four men. His close was very pathetic and eloquent, the tears being drawn to the eyes of Counsel and many people in the court, is how the British Whig described McGuires final words to the jury.

The Garrett family

For Elizabeth Garrett, widowed with eight children, there was no recovering from the death of her husband. She moved back to the family farm and struggled on until her death 12 years later. The family eventually dispersed throughout the region and beyond. Lila (Garrett) Paul was the daughter of Newton Garrett, who was 5 years old at the time of his fathers death. She was born in Sharbot Lake in 1907. Cecil Paul was born in 1935 in Tichborne and now lives in Belleville.

Matthew and Elizabeths names are still prominent in Sharbot Lake today, as Matthew, Elizabeth and Garrett Streets are named after them.

Murder at Sharbot Lake is available from the Sharbot Lake branch of the Kingston Frontenac Public Library, where it has proven to be a much sought-after title.

With the participation of the Government of Canada