Langley Centennial Museum
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Object Description
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Object ID
MSS 188
Artist
O'Dell family
Title
O'Dell family fonds.
Extent
0.1 cm of textual records.
Date
1924.
Description
The fonds consists of a 1924 tax assessment notice from the Township of Langley to William O'Dell.
People/Subject
Davis, Elizabeth, 1855-1921
Wife of Henry Davis.
Term Source: Fort Langley Cemetery pg. 12 (Hannay)
O'Dell family
William O'Dell was born in 1872 in Thornbury, Ontario, to an Irish immigrant father and a Scottish immigrant mother. In his mid to late teens he moved to Nanaimo, BC. He was listed as a carpenter there in the 1891 census. In 1892 he married Annie
Constance Lake in Vancouver She was born in 1866 in London, England, and was the faughter of Henry Lake, a member of Benjamin Disraelis' cabinet. William and Annie had three children: Henry Hubert (b. 1894), Elizabeth Constane Kthleen (b. 1895), and Eric Norman (b. 1901).
The family moved to Vancouver in 1898 or 1899. After working as a carpenter for several companies, William went into the construction business on his own. The business was probably a victim of the 1913 depression in Vancouver, as William and his eldest son, Hubert, were working in Vanderhoof when William enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916 and was sent overseas. An accident overseas caused him to lose his right arm.
In the early 1920s, William and Annie were caught up in the real estate promotion of poor agricultural land in Willoughby. The pitch aimed at returning veterans was that they could make a living farming and raising chickens on these small five acre plots, but for the O'Dells it was a meagre existence. The property was on the west side of Alexander Road (208th St), roughly wherre 84th Ave now intersects. (The small house of their immediate neighbours to the south - the Sileens? - is now where a townhouse development stands.) Annie died in July 1931, just 12 days before the birth of their first grandson, Eric.
William and Annie's son married Aurelia Olive Mufford in 1929, the daughter of John and Ruth Mufford.
In 1936 the Willoughby property was traded for a house in Vancouver. Despite having lost his arm, William was still a rgeat cabinetmaker, and made all of the kitchen cabinets for this Vancouver home. William died suddenly in November 1939.
(Info. from grandson Eric O'Dell.)
O'Dell, William
tax assessments
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Argus v4.4.0.36 - Langley Centennial Museum