Who is buried with D’Arcy McGee?

Thomas D’Arcy McGee, sometime Irish patriot, poet and newspaper editor, member of Parliament for Montreal and a father of Confederation, was shot dead on an Ottawa street on April 7, 1868. It is estimated that 80,000 people lined St-Jacques St. in Montreal for his funeral procession. A Catholic, he was laid to rest in a mausoleum in Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery.

Saturday marks the 150th anniversary of his assassination. Isn’t it about time we knew who is buried with him in the McGee vault? The cemetery itself lists seven persons buried there besides McGee: his daughter Agnes Clara McGee (1857-1941); his grandchildren Ernest Leo, Francis Alphonse, François-Xavier, Joseph Louis and Mary Euphrasia Quinn, all buried in the 1880s; and lastly, Edward Schmidt, a family friend, buried in 1942.

That list contains several errors. If you exclude the patently wrong birth date of April 13, 1868, assigned to McGee (six days after his death), the most notable error is the absence of McGee’s wife, Mary Theresa Caffrey. She died in Montreal on Jan. 18, 1871. She is surely buried in the vault. The second most glaring error concerns Joseph Louis Quinn, allegedly buried April 7, 1883. There never was a Joseph Louis Quinn — the McGee grandchild buried on that date was Mary Susan Louisa Quinn.

The cemetery information is inaccurate. McGee descendants do not know who exactly is buried there. Neither apparently does the parish of Notre-Dame, which should know, as it holds the Catholic death and burial registers. Neither, it seems, does the St. Patrick’s Society of Montreal, which, according to its Wikipedia entry, arranged for the burial of D’Arcy McGee and has since looked after his tomb. Isn’t it about time someone knew?

Frank Mackey, Pointe-Claire