By John Rhodes
Special to The Chatham Voice
When I was a youngster, my family had a cottage on the Rankin Cut at Mitchell’s Bay. The cottage next west to ours was the retirement abode of retired soldier/policeman, J.B. Sheff.
John Baptiste Sheff was born in Dover Township on April 19, 1895 and as a young man he took a great interest in the military, joining the Kent Regiment in 1914.
When the First World War commenced, he joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force with the rank of lance corporal and was present at many of the major battles in which Canada participated.
At the conclusion of the fighting, he held the rank of major.
On returning to Chatham, he obtained a factory position at the Hayes Wheel Company which was located at the junction of Spencer Avenue and Raleigh Street; most of the factory is still there.
In the early 1920s, a position became available within the old Kent County Constabulary which he was awarded. He rose through the ranks and became a sergeant.
He re-entered the military for duty in the Second World War, holding the rank of captain and saw Provo duty in England; his military recognition awards included the Distinguished Conduct Medal and Member of the British Empire.
In 1930 he transferred to the newly established district 1 unit of the Ontario Provincial Police and remained in service until his retirement in the mid 1950s; he then sold his home on Jeffrey Street and moved, permanently, to his cottage at Mitchell’s Bay which was where I first met him as a small boy in the early 1960s.
He enjoyed telling stories about the military and about his police work with his most significant case being that of the axe murder of Joe Kamoen, a Dover township farmer. The perpetrator was a farm hand named Francis Vandevelde who was executed by hanging at the Kent County jail on Dec. 22, 1929.
This was one of the last official acts of the Kent County Constabulary before they were absorbed by the Ontario Provincial Police in 1930; J.B. Sheff was present at the execution. Mr. Vandevelde was the second of two men hanged at the county jail, the other man was known as Pah Mah Gay, a Potawatomi aboriginal who killed two men; he went to the gallows on Dec. 22, 1860.
J.B. Sheff died at Chatham in 1975 and reposes in St. Anthony Cemetery.
