(?-?), criminal and hoodlum. With Norman J. Deruchie, he terrorized the area around Summerstown and Glen Walter. The Canadian Gleaner of Huntingdon, Que., reported in the issue of 28 Nov. 1889 that “For some time past a gang of desperadoes have been committing outrages in the vicinity of Summerstown. Stores have been broken into and burglarized, residents have been requested at the point of a revolver to hand over their money, and cattle maimed in the most brutal manner. On Thursday evening several houses in the vicinity of Summerstown and east Cornwall were visited by them and efforts made to secure an entrance. A respectable farmer named John Craig had his horse shot from under him later in the night while on his way home, by the same parties. Warrants were issued for arrest of two noted characters, named John Craig and Norman Deruchie, of Summerstown, who were captured last evening and lodged in Cornwall gaol. When arrested they were well armed.” (Name John Craig appears twice thus in article, just as quoted here) In court, Norman Deruchie was sentenced to 14 years at hard labour on 14 Dec. 1889 for wounding a horse. John James Craig was sentenced the same day to one year at hard labour for wounding a horse and received a “suspended” sentence for burglary. The Summerstown columnist in the Glengarrian of 20 Dec. 1889, wrote, “The arrest of the ringleaders in the gang of desperados that has made life hardly worth living for the past year, has not entirely put a stop [to] the deviltry that has gone on for so long.”
Whatever the exact train of events proved to be following their sentencing of Dec. 1889, the two men seem to have served little of the prison time to which they sentenced, if indeed they served any. And within two years, in 1891, in their most celebrated episode, Craig and Deruchie stole the body of Patrick Purcell from its grave at Flanagan’s Point. On this occasion Deruchie was arrested and Craig went into hiding and was probably sheltered by the local people. The Ottawa Citizen of 21 May 1891 reported that “The place where he [Craig] is known to be is a thick swamp, and on account of the large amount of underbush [sic] he could keep in hiding until the frost drove him out, as he could easily enter the cellars at night and secure rations.” The Cornwall Freeholder of 29 May 1891 quoted the Montreal Star as saying that “It is rather curious that the state of outlawry existing in parts of the counties of Stormont and Glengarry should only be made public through the robbery of the grave of P. Purcell, although highway robbery and violence are alleged to have prevailed there for some time past.” The writer found an explanation in the Glengarry tendency to protect relatives. In the end no charges were pressed against either Craig or Deruchie.
It is likely that John Craig of the present entry was the same man as the John Craig who in 1887 was prosecuted for destroying a threshing machine. In this instance, he was found not guilty. It is to be hoped that the subject of this entry was not the “young man named Craig,” who in Aug. 1875 in Cornwall “fired a revolver charged with powder [perhaps, therefore, not with shot?] into the window of a house occupied by colored people.” One of the occupants of the house shot him in return, and Craig was “not expected to recover.” (Montreal Witness, 26 Aug. 1875) It is, in all, remarkable that the Grand Jury, meeting in Cornwall, stated in Dec.1887, “We have to congratulate the United Counties on the fact of the total absence of crime therefrom, which we attribute largely to the existence and enforcement of the Canada temperance act within our borders.” See also entries for the MacIntosh GANG and Slavin.
The publicity gained by the Purcell episode seems to have intimidated Craig and Deruchie, and after that point their names disappear from the news. By one retelling of the story, they reformed and resettled in the Canadian West.
MacGillivray & Ross 124-126, 136-137, 145-146, 191, 689 for late 19th-century violence in GC, and the Purcell episode * Archives of Ontario, RG 22-7, Eastern District, U.C. SDG Minute Book, General Sessions, 1867-1883, 1883-1899, pp. 185, 186, 120, 166, 131 * besides newspapers cited above: Glengarrian 8 & 29 Nov. 1889, 6 Dec. (2 items) &13 Dec. 1889 for prosecution following the assault on the farmer John Craig,1889; Cornwall Freeholder 15 & 22 May & 19 June 1891; Ottawa Citizen 16 , 19, 20 & 21 May 1891; Montreal Star throughout May 1891