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Corey O'Dell was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, on June 27, 1827. There is
evidence of his being licensed to keep and drive a Public Coach there in both
1848 and 1850. In the intervening year, 1849, it is believed that he found his
way to Nova Scotia - in those days the ferry boat traveled from Saint John
directly to Annapolis Royal - in answer to an advertisement for Pony Express
riders. The Pony Express service was short lived. It lasted only the year, but
Corey O'Dell did indeed become the Pony Express rider for the
Kentville-Victoria Beach part of the Halifax-Victoria Beach run.
Although Corey returned to Saint
John after the demise of the Pony Express, he must have discovered something to
his liking in the bustling commercial centre of Annapolis Royal, for by the
late 1850s, he and his wife Mary (Harris) and their two sons Carman and Griffin
were residents of the town. Corey worked for a number of years as the
tavern/innkeeper in the thriving Commercial House on Lower St. George Street
before he purchased the large double lot and buildings, situated just to the
east.
He moved the existing house,
except for the kitchen ell, to the back of his property, where it became a
carriage house. He then built a fourteen-room home and place of business onto
the ell, where he practiced his trade of tavern/innkeeper.
Click on the picture to enlarge
Local tradition
has it that much of the building was given over to the business: the tavern,
dining room, front parlour, six bedrooms upstairs and the area over the old
kitchen (reserved for the stagecoach drivers) were all used by the public.
Situated at the head of the Annapolis to Granville ferry slip, and only a short
distance from the wharves, which saw the comings and goings of the Saint John
and Boston ferry boats, the O'Dell House was ideally located to attract trade.
Although Corey O'Dell eventually replaced the tavern with a grocery store, his
business efforts apparently met with success. At his death on March 14, 1887,
he was a man of considerable material wealth.
There is some evidence to
suggest that rooms were still rented out to guests as late as the 1920s;
however, for the last decades of O'Dell ownership, the business element seems
to have disappeared. Corey O'Dell's daughter-in-law Sarah died in 1957 and the
house passed out of the family. The new owners converted it into an apartment
building. A few years later, in 1967, it was bought by Ralph and Marguerite
Wagner on behalf of Historic Restoration Enteprises (now the Annapolis Heritage
Society) with a view to turning it into a museum. The O'Dell House Museum
opened to the public in 1969.
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The parlour features 11 pieces of
original O'Dell furniture, including the grapeback sofa, three grapeback
straight chairs, a grapeback easy chair, two rocking chairs, a marble top table
and two half tables. These have been generously loaned to the museum by
Heather, Corey, Carman and Lorraine O'Dell, direct descendants of the original
Corey and his wife.
Also on loan in this room are
three oval-framed photographs of Corey and Mary O'Dell and Corey's mother
Salome Downey O'Dell. The photograph of Corey, located on the right, is the
only known image of him in existence.
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