Mysterious Double Drowning Stirs Campobello Citizens

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Body of John Harvey Found in Water Filled Row Boat and Later Body of Mrs. Clyde Wallace Washed Ashore. Who Called Harvey to Eastport?

Two Families Bereaved

Campobello April 17 - A tragic double drowning shrouded in complete mystery as to details has lately taken place somewhere between Eastport and Campobello. On Friday morning last as Leslie Gough was taking a short - cut across the beach of Friar's Bay on his way to work he came across a small dinghy at high water mark as full of water as the sloping beach would permit with the dead body of a man crouched in the bottom with head under and body partly submerged in icy water.

John Harvey

Later identification proved it to be one John Harvey son of Walter Harvey of Lubec now but formerly of Campobello. It was high water that morning between 3 and 4 o'clock and nobody knows how far the dinghy had beaten up the beach before that. The dinghy had substained no damage thereby and as it was a very windy night must have struck near high water. While beaching it could easily have taken the water found within. No oars or thole pins could be found and the apinter was outside. This man was about 24 years old and well acquainted with row boats. A coroner's inquest pronounced a verdict of accidental drowning and the body was taken to Lubec for burial.

Through Friday inquiry disclosed that he in response to a mysterious call to come to Eastport for somebody had borrowed a small row boat and had gone to Eastport arriving there about dark. Shortly after the wind became very strong with snow squalls and through the whole night was very cold and not safe for small boat travel. He was reported to have been seen about Eastport most of the evening in company including a woman friend from Lubec. As yet nobody seems to know anything of him after 10 o'clock.

Reports on Saturday stated that nothing could be found on the whereabouts of the woman in the case and so Sunday came on.

Mrs. Clyde Wallace

This time Russell Gough was walking along Friar's Beach a few hundred yards beyond the dinghy site and saw part of a human body through the accumulated seaweed, which proved to be the missing woman. An inquest found accidental drowning and the woman to be the estranged wife of one Clyde Wallace of Lubec, but the mystery deepened as to how it all happened. Reports are current that recent medical autopsies found death due to drowning rather than exposure. On Campobello quite a stir and excitement has been created because of this tragedy but in Lubec two families are bereaved and five or six children left orphans. John Harvey had a wife and two small children and Mrs. Wallace is reported as being the mother of three or four more.

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Note: 1944 is written in margin of the article. The name of the paper is not provided. I assume it was written possibly in the Eastport Sentinal Newspaper.

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