Odell, William Hunter

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: D. G. Bell, “ODELL, WILLIAM HUNTER,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 12, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/odell_william_hunter_12E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • lawyer, office holder, and judge; b. 26 Nov. 1811 in Fredericton, son of William Franklin Odell and Elizabeth Newell; m. 18 Sept. 1849 Elizabeth Ann Bliss in Halifax, and they had four daughters and a son; d. there 26 July 1891.
    • Reared in Fredericton and educated at King’s College, William Hunter Odell was admitted an attorney on 18 July 1835 and a barrister on 8 Feb. 1838. One of the fixed features of loyalist office-holding in New Brunswick was the attempt to pass preferment on to a son, of which the 60-year tenure of Jonathan and William Franklin Odell as provincial secretary and clerk of the Council was the most conspicuous example. By the time the third Odell’s career was to be launched such blatant nepotism was no longer uncontroversial. Thus, when in 1837 the departing lieutenant governor, was induced to appoint young Odell to the lucrative situation of clerk of the crown in the Supreme Court though he was absent from the province and not yet a barrister, the outrage was such that the newly arrived Sir John Harvey was soon persuaded to supplant him in favour of George Frederick Street Berton. Despite Harvey’s enmity towards the Odells and despite a discreditable confrontation with drunken soldiers in the streets of Fredericton, Odell was allowed to act as his father’s deputy provincial secretary from 1838 to 1844, and from 1839 was clerk of the Executive Council. In 1847 he was made a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for York County.
    • Odell is now remembered only as the last New Brunswicker to fight a duel, for which Bishop John Medley excommunicated him in 1848. At his death his Senate colleagues mourned him simply as a dignified gentleman of impeccable pedigree, an epitaph the last of the New Brunswick Odells would not have disdained.
  • 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/215493700/william_hunter-odell