The Housemaid and the Lynching

James Borski, a local historian and volunteer guide at the Menominee historical museum, told me this story on June 23, 2011

He once spoke with a woman in her nineties. As a sixteen-year-old girl she had been working as a maid. She heard a commotion outside the house where she was working. It was the sound of the mob hanging the McDonald boys outside by the railroad track. The girl was so scared she wanted to go home to Canada.

Borski also told me that the McDonald boys were originally buried in potters field at the old cemetery, which is where the middle school is located today. In 1882 the cemetery was removed to Riverside Cemetery where the McDonalds were once again interred in potters field. A sexton at the cemetery knew the location of the grave but died before he could tell Borski, so now the precise grave location is unknown.