Odell, William Franklin

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: D. M. Young, “ODELL, WILLIAM FRANKLIN,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 7, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/odell_william_franklin_7E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Office holder, notary, lawyer, surveyor, and politician; b. 19 Oct. 1774 in Burlington, N.J., only son of the Reverend Jonathan Odell, loyalist poet and scholar, and Anne De Cou; m. 31 Dec. 1808 Elizabeth Newall (Newell), granddaughter of Dr Samuel Cooke, first Anglican rector of Fredericton, and they had four sons and four daughters who survived infancy; d. 25 Dec. 1844 in Fredericton
    • William Franklin Odell was born into the circle of British North American office holders and named after his father’s patron, William Franklin, the last royal governor of New Jersey. In 1784, when William was ten, his father became provincial secretary of the new province of New Brunswick. No doubt it was the state of Jonathan’s purse that kept William from having a university education and, in turn, it was the family’s access to the small fruits of patronage that opened the way to a career in government service. On 16 March 1793, at age 18, he was appointed deputy clerk of the pleas of the Supreme Court, acting for the clerk; holders of this clerkship did not require legal training. He succeeded to the office on 19 July 1796 and became a pluralist, for the first time, on 2 Feb. 1802 when he received the additional appointment of clerk of the Legislative Council. He began reading law with Ward Chipman in Saint John some time in the late 1790s and was named a notary public in 1802, admitted as an attorney in 1804, and called to the bar in 1806. His responsibilities in the Supreme Court were extended in November 1804: he became clerk of the crown with duties relating to the criminal jurisdiction of the court.
    • The Odell name is synonymous with bureaucracy, learning, and gentility in early New Brunswick. William spent his working life producing and directing the flow of parchment and paper through which the government maintained its structure and exercised its authority. Between them Jonathan and William held the office of provincial secretary for 60 years.
    • Throughout his life William Franklin Odell enjoyed the support of a close-knit family that attempted to uphold genteel cosmopolitan Anglicanism in a colonial backwater. It seems fitting that New Brunswick continues to be reminded of this outdoorsman-courtier-bureaucrat through the existence of Odell Park and Game Refuge in the heart of Fredericton, once William’s farm, a 300-acre property in much of which the natural forest is preserved.
  • Son of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=6285
  • Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/61652275/william-franklin-odell