Schubert House
by Kathy Bassett
Title
Schubert House
Artist
Kathy Bassett
Medium
Photograph - Photography - Photo Painting - Digital Art
Description
The O'Keefe Ranch is home to some 1,500 textual documents relating to the O'Keefe Family, including documents relating to early operations of the Ranch, the General Store and the Post Office. The archives also contain documents relating to the Greenhow and Schubert families; BC school examination papers dating from the early 20th century; and papers relating to general BC ranching history.
The archives contains more than 1200 photographic objects, and a further 1200 copy prints.
If you would like to visit in person, please make an appointment with our Curator by emailing curator@okeeferanch.ca. If you are unable to visit the Ranch in person, our staff and volunteers will be happy to undergo the research for you and send you any relevant documents in our collection. The first half hour of research is free, after that there is an hourly charge. Please ask about our Fee Schedule for research and reproduction costs. Thank you for the info!!
Artifacts The Ranch has more than 7000 artifacts that belonged to the O'Keefe family or have been donated by local residents.
Some collection highlights include:
A 114-piece Meissen porcelain set, made around 1860
A painting by William Brymner
Elizabeth O�Keefe�s silverware, given to her by Cornelius on the birth of their first daughter, Margaret Mary
A 1905 music box in the O�Keefe Mansion
Textiles, consisting of O�Keefe family clothes such as the women�s summer white dresses, and men�s formal suits. There is also a late 1800s Royal Battenburg lace wedding dress, and beaded flapper dresses from the 1920s
Firearms, including a First World War Ross Rifle
Wood and coal burning stoves. Stoves range from a ca. 1790 six-plate stove, to a collection of Canada West (pre-Confederation) stoves and heaters unequalled in Canada, to a one-of-a-kind tile-backed cooking range made by Davignon Company of Quebec for the St. Louis World Fair in 1904. There is also a collection of miniature salesman�s sample stoves from the early 1900s
Library
The library is a relatively small collection of books, mostly relating to the ranching culture in western North America. However, the collection also includes Victorian style, decor, and etiquette; traditional crafts; the history of the education system in BC; general BC history; and local history of Vernon and the surrounding Okanagan region.
The library also has a small collection of Special Collection books which include books owned by the O�Keefe, Greenhow, and Schubert families; first edition Zane Grey novels; religious periodicals; popular 19th and early 20th century literature; and school textbooks dating from the early 20th century that cover such topics as geography, history, literature, composition, French, math, and music.The story of the O�Keefe Ranch usually centres on the many business ventures of Cornelius O�Keefe, but a number of hard-working, educated and industrious women helped shape the Ranch, as well as the North Okanagan.
In the 1960s, it was Betty O�Keefe, the wife of Cornelius� youngest son, Tierney, who came up with the idea to open the Ranch as an historic site. Tierney and Betty ran the Ranch for 10 years, from 1967 to 1977, when it was sold to the Devonian Foundation, turned over to the City of Vernon, and operated by a non-profit society. In the 1960s, when Tierney and Betty began taking their family�s old possession out of attics and closets to put on display, they didn�t necessarily know the number of women who had touched the Ranch, and it has taken subsequent researchers, volunteers and curators decades to uncover some of those individuals. For example, we know that O�Keefe had a common-law marriage with a First Nations woman named Alapetsa, and that the pair two children�a daughter and a son, the latter of whom drowned in childhood. Alapetsa and her daughter, Christine, were the first women on the Ranch, but their subsequent relationship with the O�Keefe family after Cornelius re-married remains relatively unclear.
Uploaded
September 3rd, 2016
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