Pat & Corinna’s Family History - Person Sheet
Pat & Corinna’s Family History - Person Sheet
NameThomas Lougheed 
442
442Birth27 Jul 1843, Albion, Ontario, Canada
Death7 Nov 1883, Clarksburg, Ontario, Canada
OccupationCarpenter
ReligionAnglican
Cause of deathKilled by falling timbers
FatherWarren Lougheed (1813-1879)
MotherAnn McElroy (1823-1891)
Spouses
Notes for Thomas Lougheed
Thomas’ accidental death was recalled by J. Ashley Bailie for a local paper November 28, 1970:
“I venture to believe that I am the only living person who actually witnessed a tragedy in the village of Clarksburg about 85 years ago. It occurred at the ‘bee’ held for the raising of the frame work of the first planing mill in the ‘burg’.
About 2 o’clock most of the able-bodied men in Clarksburg and the surrounding country assembled at the site of the raising. Quite a lot of preliminary work had to be done with boards, rafters, and so on.
My father did not go to the raising. With shovel and wheelbarrow he was engaged in excavating a cellar. I was playing around in the grassy year between the Post Office and Mr. C. W. Hartman’s drugstore. Suddenly there was a great outburst of yelling and shouting. My father said the men were having a race. I climbed up to the top of the fence at the back of the yard and looked across about 200 yards to see what was going on. I saw a strange object rising high in the air, being pushed-up by men with pike poles. It was called a ‘bent’. Then I noticed that this bent was leaning dangerously outward. Then a large stick of timber fell off the bent and came spinning down to the ground. A dead silence followed this incident. Presently a young man came running. ‘Have you seen Dr. Hunt?’ he asked my father. ‘No, who’s hurt?’ ‘Tom Lougheed’. In a few minutes I went with my father over to the scene of the accident. There stretched out on the ground at full length lay the tall man. Dr. Hunt was kneeling beside him. Tom Lougheed was dead. The clever man, who had framed barns all over Collingwood and other townships, had departed from the scenes of time....
Years afterwards I was discussing this tragedy with Mr. George Mitchell who, as a young man, helped at the raising. George said that three men with pike-poles stood on the ground to steady the bent until the bottoms of the uprights could be slid snugly into the mortises which had been prepared to receive them. The pushers up got so excited that they pushed too hard; the fellows on the ground were not strong enough to hold against them; down fell the bent; Tom Lougheed was not quick enough to get out of the way and the falling timbers killed him.”
“I venture to believe that I am the only living person who actually witnessed a tragedy in the village of Clarksburg about 85 years ago. It occurred at the ‘bee’ held for the raising of the frame work of the first planing mill in the ‘burg’.
About 2 o’clock most of the able-bodied men in Clarksburg and the surrounding country assembled at the site of the raising. Quite a lot of preliminary work had to be done with boards, rafters, and so on.
My father did not go to the raising. With shovel and wheelbarrow he was engaged in excavating a cellar. I was playing around in the grassy year between the Post Office and Mr. C. W. Hartman’s drugstore. Suddenly there was a great outburst of yelling and shouting. My father said the men were having a race. I climbed up to the top of the fence at the back of the yard and looked across about 200 yards to see what was going on. I saw a strange object rising high in the air, being pushed-up by men with pike poles. It was called a ‘bent’. Then I noticed that this bent was leaning dangerously outward. Then a large stick of timber fell off the bent and came spinning down to the ground. A dead silence followed this incident. Presently a young man came running. ‘Have you seen Dr. Hunt?’ he asked my father. ‘No, who’s hurt?’ ‘Tom Lougheed’. In a few minutes I went with my father over to the scene of the accident. There stretched out on the ground at full length lay the tall man. Dr. Hunt was kneeling beside him. Tom Lougheed was dead. The clever man, who had framed barns all over Collingwood and other townships, had departed from the scenes of time....
Years afterwards I was discussing this tragedy with Mr. George Mitchell who, as a young man, helped at the raising. George said that three men with pike-poles stood on the ground to steady the bent until the bottoms of the uprights could be slid snugly into the mortises which had been prepared to receive them. The pushers up got so excited that they pushed too hard; the fellows on the ground were not strong enough to hold against them; down fell the bent; Tom Lougheed was not quick enough to get out of the way and the falling timbers killed him.”