(1 May 1832 or 1 May 1833-1 May 1891), contractor, businessman. (Pat Purcell, and apparently sometimes Peter Purcell) Brother of John and Michael Purcell. Born at Glen Walter, GC, on his father’s farm. Parents: Michael Purcell (d. 1872, aged 78), a native of Kilkenny, Ireland, and his wife Catherine Grant (d. 1852, aged 59) , a native of Argyleshire, Scotland. Rose’s biographical dictionary described Patrick Purcell as uniting in himself, through this ancestry, “the best qualities of the two great branches of the Celtic race.” Patrick Purcell had only a very limited education but he was noted to be especially quick and able in business calculations. In his early years he settled briefly in Genesee County, N. Y., but returned to GC. At one stage early in his career, he and Daniel Cashion, father of Angus and James Cashion, operated a threshing machine together.

     Purcell became a successful contractor, moneylender, businessman with store and sawmill and other interests, and one of best-known and wealthiest of the Glengarrians actually resident in GC in his time. As a contractor, he had building contracts on the Prescott and Ottawa Railway, the Grand Trunk, the Intercolonial Railway and the CPR, but contemporaries seem to have considered his fulfilment of his important contract for building St. Peter’s Canal in Cape Breton, N. S., as the highest achievement of his contracting career.

     He was reeve of Charlottenburgh Township, but for a man of his capacities and success, higher office was a reasonable goal. Accordingly, he was elected MP for GC in the election of 22 Feb. 1887, defeating Donald MacMaster in a campaign marked by extravagant use of Purcell money to secure votes. The election results were challenged by Macmaster and others in a sensational court case at Cornwall, Jan. 1888, in which the astonishing corruption of the election was exposed to fascinated newspaper readers throughout Canada, and GC’s reputation suffered the greatest single injury it has ever undergone. Purcell was unseated, but was allowed to keep his seat when the Supreme Court reversed the verdict on technicalities and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council refused to hear the case. The printed record of the court case is an astonishing document illustrating the electoral practices of the time. Purcell’s behaviour in the election was probably no worse in kind than that of many candidates at the time, but was exacerbated by his having so much money at his disposal. But whatever the excuses, it may be noted also in this connection that as far back as 1881 there was a complaint, not necessarily to be rejected by us as ill-founded and mere grumbling, about irregularities including temptations with money carried out by Purcell’s “supporters” in his reeveship campaign. (Cornwall Reporter 31 Dec. 1881)

     Purcell had been elected an MP as a Liberal, but in the past, while maintaining connections with both parties he had been, by preference a Conservative. What exactly had his political history been? In a letter to the press in 1882, Purcell stated that he had supported the Sandfield brothers but had never voted “Grit,” and had always strongly supported Sir Charles Tupper and his party. (Cornwall Reporter, 5 Aug. 1882, with editorial comment on the letter; see also issue 12 Aug. 1882) However, a few days later the Alexandria columnist in the Liberal Freeholder reviewed the history of Purcell’s political opinions to show he had a more Reformist background than he was currently ready to acknowledge. (Cornwall Freeholder 11 Aug. 1882) Early the next year, Purcell defined himself as a Conservative. At the same time, he denied the charge that he resented not having got the GC Conservative nomination for the provincial election, but stated that he would oppose the Conservative candidate R.R. McLennan all the same. (Cornwall Freeholder 19 Jan. 1883) Once in Parliament, Purcell was noted to vote often with Sir John A. Macdonald’s Conservatives. (Glengarrian 3 June 1887) In 1889 he gave a gift of $1000 to Sir Charles Tupper of the Conservative Party, when he heard that Tupper was planning to retire from political life.

     As an MP, he promoted a bill for the protection of railway labourers, but disappointed GC Orangemen by failing to vote for the Orange incorporation bill, which his fellow Roman Catholic, Senator McMillan supported.

     From the early 1880s, Purcell was living in John A. (Cariboo) Cameron’s Fairfield House at Summerstown. It is not clear from the land registry documents by what process he acquired it, but in early 1881 he was said to have bought Fairfield House and before the end of the year he was remodelling it with at least 30 men at work. (Cornwall Reporter, 5 March 1881, Cornwall Freeholder 14 Oct. 1881, Glengarry Times, 10 & 17 Dec. 1881) In the 1880s, he began the purchase of a tract of over 50,000 acres in what is now Saskatchewan, but the purchase was not completed. In the federal election of 5 March 1891 he was not a candidate. Less than two months later, he died at Annapolis, N. S., where he was working on a building contract. He was attended in his last illness by his friend the well-known Dr Darby Bergin of Cornwall, Ont. The pallbearers at his funeral were D.B. Maclennan, R.R. (Big Rory) McLennan, MP, William Mack, MLA, of Cornwall, James Rayside, MLA, D.A. MacArthur, and the well-known contractor Hugh Ryan, who had been one of Purcell’s partners in contracting. Purcell was buried at Flanagan’s Point cemetery in GC, but the body was stolen by J. J. Craig and N.J. Deruchie and not recovered till it was found floating in the St. Lawence three years later. The exact story behind this much-publicized act of bodysnatching remains one of the great puzzles of GC history but is presumably irrecoverable after all these years.

     Purcell was married in the 1850s to Isabella McDonald of the Glen near Williamstown, GC. Several children were born but none survived. Correspondence from 1877 and 1878 in the Andrew McBain Papers in the Ontario Archives refers to a sexual scandal in which Purcell was reputed to be involved, and the legal action Mrs Purcell was assumed to be taking in response. In the explosive Flora Macdonald letter of 1887 (see Stilwell) Purcell was accused of dragging “into the mire at least one of Glengarry’s fair and frail daughters.” Whether the fact is remarkable or not, it may be noted that among all the GC politicians who have lives in the present dictionary, only Purcell seems to have been accused of sexual irregularities. Mrs Patrick Purcell moved to Cornwall after her husband’s death. She died in Cornwall on 21 July 1912, aged 87. (obituary and report on her will, CF 26 July 1912, Cornwall Standard 26 July 1912) Patrick Purcell had an adopted son, called Alexander P. Tully (1866-1905), but he is mentioned only in a minor way in Purcell’s will and there seems no surviving evidence that he was ever prominent in Purcell’s life. Mrs Purcell outlived Tully, but left his children a legacy in her will. It may be guessed that if Purcell’s protégé D. H. McKenzie had survived Purcell, he would have shared some part, large or small, of the Purcell property under the will. McKenzie was born too early to be adopted into Purcell’s individual family, but he seems to have been, quite informally but in effect, adopted into the larger Purcell family.

     Patrick Purcell was a hard-headed and at times perhaps exacting businessman, but many contemporary newspaper reports abundantly confirm the tradition that he was generous with his money. It was said that during a visit to Williamstown he gave over $300 to be divided among the needy. (Cornwall Freeholder 4 Dec. 1885) Also, he left impressive charitable donations in his will. All the evidence indicates that he was by far the most generous in his charitable contributions of all the well-to-do people who lived in Glengarry in the later 19th century. A member of the Purcell family in 1976 summed up his behaviour by saying that in his actions, depending on the circumstances, he was either very open-handed or very sharp and shrewd. He travelled to Britain and Ireland in 1882, and was in England again in 1886 when a brother was ill there, and he toured the British Isles and Europe with Alexander Leclair in 1889. He was interested, though probably not very intently, in the cause of Irish nationalism. He had a steam yacht called “Glengarry,” which he sold in 1889.

     By 1880, Purcell was rumoured to be millionaire, (Cornwall Freeholder 31 Dec. 1880) An Alexandria columnist in a Cornwall newspaper rather obsequiously wrote that “Few men in this county have been more successful in business than Mr. Patrick Purcell… who by his shrewd attention to business has within a very few years amassed an immense fortune.” (FH 17 July 1885) He was certainly very wealthy by contemporary GC standards, but by these a little money went a long way. The inventory (Surrogate Court files) of 1894 prepared in connection with the settlement of his estate reported that monies secured by mortgages came to $444,400, real estate came to $35,800, and the total value of the property of the deceased came to $538,394.98. There were legal disputes about the status and intentions of the bequests in his will. A newspaper writer just after his death, who reported the belief that the estate would amount to more than a million, had said also that “with his body in possession of ghouls and his estate in the talons of the law, the spirit of the deceased must be sorely vexed.” (FH 29 May 1891)

     Purcell may appear, though not very closely drawn, as one of the characters in A.P. Gardiners’s novel, The House of Cariboo (1900). See also entries for Alexander Leclair, D.H. Mackenzie, T. Rousseau and C.J. Stilwell. There were other Patrick Purcells in the family, including a Patrick Purcell (d. 8 June 1910, aged 60) who was brought from Ireland by his relative the MP and “lived for many years near Summerstown Station.” (obituary Cornwall Freeholder 10 June 1910)

Cornwall Freeholder 1 & 8 May 1891, Ottawa Citizen 2 May 1891; obituary, with valuable biog. detail, ASC ii, 49 * life in Rose, ii, 669 (includes Rose’s warm tribute to achievement of Glengarrians as contractors) * Cochrane, IV, 168 (detailed sketch of career, portrait) * MacGillivray & Ross: index (for the fullest scholarly attempt to date to disentangle the Purcell career), also 689 for refs. * Johnson (1968) * will of Patrick Purcell, Surrogate Court files for SDG * Purcell mausoleum and gravestones of the Purcells and A. P. Tully, Precious Blood cemetery, Flanagan’s Point, GC * A.W. McDougald’s eyewitness recollections of the 1887 election, in which he was part of the Purcell campaign team: sections 8-10 of his history of GC, Glengarry News 17 Feb. 1933 ff. * “printed record”: transcript of election trial at Cornwall, 1888, with related documents from 1887, all printed in form of book of pp. iii, 135, and preserved in files of Supreme Court, Ottawa (=case book in Purcell v. [Alexander] Kennedy, Supreme Court of Canada file 763). It is rich in GC material, see Purcell 1887 * poem on the 1887 election scandal by “Mac” of St. Elmo, Cornwall Standard 2 Feb. 1888; for two other poems on this election, see MacGillivray & Ross 183-185, 689 * Sir Charles Tupper Papers in NAC, Reel C-3203 pp. 2497-8 (a rare handwritten letter, badly spelled, from Purcell), Reel C-3204 pp. 2637-40 * Orange bill: comment on his action, Glengarrian 11 April & 7 March 1890      Lives of Hugh Ryan (with the refs. there to Purcell) in Morgan (1898) & Dictionary of Canadian Biography, XII (see also mentioned XII, 699, XIII, 662) * Ian Bowering, The Inverarden Collection (1987) (this vol. has reproduction of oil portrait of Purcell) * obituary of W. H. Dunkin, Cornwall native, businessman, who when young went to Cape Breton, 1869, as bookkeeper for Purcell, CS 11 June 1925 * steam yacht: DTL Standard Freeholder 24 July 1948 based on Cornwall Freeholder 26 July 1889 and DTL SFH 23 Oct. 1948 based on CF 25 Oct. 1889 * “Opening Celebration of St. Peter’s Canal,” clipping (NDNP) in collection of Beaton Institute, College of Cape Breton, Sydney, N.S. (newspaper report on formal opening of the canal 1869, Purcell as contractor, his hospitality to the guests, his praise of his work force) * Purcell’s body recovered in St. Lawrence: Vankleek Hill Review 3 Aug. 1894; for the theft of the body, see also MacGillivray & Ross 191, 689, and notes to John James Craig * discovery of a skeleton at Fairfield in 1947 sparks erroneous belief that it might be Purcell’s, SFH 18 & 19 Sept. 1947, Glengarry News 19 & 26 Sept. 1947 * “legal disputes… will”: CF 29 May 1891; there were disputes again in 1912, as per 20 Years Ago column, CF 23 April 1932 Purcell advertises money to loan, CF 25 Nov. 1881 * defeats A.J. Grant for reeve of Charlottenburgh, CF 6 Jan. 1882 * Sir Sandford Fleming, Hugh Ryan, and Purcell, contractors, 1884, for bridge over St. Lawrence, DTL SFH 28 Oct. 1944 based on CF 31 Oct. 1884 * his sawmill at Summerstown “is running full blast,” CF 11 Dec. 1885 * contributes $100 to defence fund for Irish nationalist C. S. Parnell , CF 7 Dec. 1888, cited in 20 Years Ago column, CF 4 Dec. 1908 * Purcell opens shanty near Apple Hill, Glengarrian 29 Nov. 1889 * buys sawmill(s?), tract of land, at Apple Hill, Glengarrian 10 & 17 Jan. 1890 * gift to Queen’s University, Glengarrian 14 March 1890 * buys quarry at Apple Hill, Glengarrian 16 May 1890 * his views on the depressed state of farming, sees free trade as the solution Cornwall Freeholder 13 Feb. 1891