Barkerville has received a donation of an organ that made its home in the historic town's St. Saviour's Church for decades.
Originally donated to the Quesnel Museum by James and Violet Doody, I was quite excited about this artifact because Ellie May Roddick (ne Bosworth) was Violet Doody's mother and had played the organ at the church in Barkerville for 35 years.
During the early 1940s, CBC recorded her playing the church organ and we have a copy of this music in our research archives. The plan is to place the organ into the Doody's house at Barkerville and to restore this building to the residence of the Doody family and have a hidden device to play some of the music when people visit.
Made by the W. Bell and Company Guelph Ontario, the Mouse Proof Peddles has a patent date of 1887. It is an artifact that connects a number of people and disparate elements of Barkerville, Cariboo and world history together, from Australia to Ireland, Ontario to B.C., and the Shamrock mine to Ten Mile Lake Park - a mesh of historical events, not unlike many of the stories of Barkerville.
Ellie May Bosworth had come from Australia in 1894 and got a job teaching school at the Eleven of England mine (subsequently La Fontaine Consolidated) just outside of Stanley. She married John Roddick who had come from Scotland.
Roddick had arrived in the area in the late 1890s and purchased a mining claim on Pine Creek, not far down the Bowron Lake Road from Barkerville, which he subsequently passed on to his eventual son in law, James Doody.
The Roddicks had a three children Violet, who was born in Barkerville, Pearl (Thompson) and Ralph.
James Doody had come from Ireland in 1926, and began working in the local mines under Fred Wells around 1930 when the Cariboo Gold Quartz was still known as the Sanders Mine (after the locator Al Sanders, who died in 1928).
He went on to become the foreman for the Shamrock Mine, an endeavour of the Newmont Mining Company that also operated the Island Mountain Mine. On a trip to Barkerville to buy stamps, James met Violet, who was then the Post Mistress, and they were married in 1933.
The Doody house in Barkerville was built in 1933, with its bathtub built into the kitchen breakfast nook with a wooden cover for seating and its pull down staircase to the loft has acting as the Williams Creek Schoolhouse for close to 40 years.
It is interesting to note that the Roddick house, which no longer exists, was for a time the schoolhouse at Barkerville, and was used by Mrs. Roddick to teach English to the Chinese children.
James Doody is perhaps most famous for his books on the local area history including the acclaimed, Romance of the Cariboo Proper, with tales of the early gold rush.
The Doody family left Barkerville in 1952 to settle on Ten Mile Lake near Quesnel. It was Violet Doody's decision to donate part of their land there to the province, which subsequently became Ten Mile Lake Park.
One day, while visiting the interpretive schoolteacher at the Williams Creek School House, I found an egg carton in the back of the kitchen cupboard - it had Vi written on it.
It was just as exciting as receiving the Bell organ at that point as to find something from someone who had left the house 50 years before. It was amazing that it had remained in the same spot for all of that time.
Having the organ return is even more satisfying, not unlike the birds returning in the spring - a historical reminder that not only was there life after the gold rush - but, mining and the town of Barkerville remain vital and alive, as it does today.
